A journey. Italian migrant women between Eight and Twentieth century

Abstract

The essay deals with the issue of Italian women’s migration between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, highlighting the increasingly significant role played by the female figure in the migration project. First, with the internal migration of women and girls – an endemic phenomenon of social life that always existed among the working classes – and, then, with the great transoceanic migrations that took place between the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, women played a prominent role in the history of migration. Among historical literature on migration and narrated pedagogies (literary sources, life stories) the essay tries to understand certain aspects of the female migrant condition as well as of the emancipatory function from the culture of origin of the migration experience.