Ancestral land. The contemporary Hellenic diaspora in Italy between first and second generation

Abstract

Which were the main migration flows that characterized the Greek diaspora in Italy in the twentieth century? Which Hellenic communities have left significant historical footprints in Italian cities? How do Greek second generation members claim an emotional attachment to their ancestral land and define their sense of Greekness? Can the Greek origins and the search for cultural roots or family history prompt the children of Greek immigrants in Italy to consider Greece as a place of a possible “ancestral return� In this book the two authors attempt to answer these and other questions, starting with the need to provide a contribution to the studies on contemporary Hellenic diaspora in Italy, subject not yet adequately covered by social and historical disciplines. In the first part of the volume, through unpublished documentation from Greek and Italian archives, the authors reconstruct historically the Greek diaspora in Italy focusing on the flows of the second half of the twentieth century. The second part shows a qualitative study that is the result of a large and in-depth field research taking Greek second generation members as the reference target, both those currently living in Italy and those who have decided to implement the counter-diasporic migration project.