"Smarginando. Festival Migrante" brings lots of events to town to tell the long story of Italian emigration. 

The Festival is the concept and creation of Leila Maiocco.

A special appointment for “Smarginando/ Festival migrante”. At 5:00 p.m. on 29 September 2022, in the splendid setting of D'Albertis Castle, at 18, Corso Dogali, just a stone's throw from the MEI - Museo Nazionale dell'Emigrazione Italiana in Piazza della Commenda, near Genoa's Principe railway station.

The presentation is organised by Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione Italiana and Mu.MA., with Centro studi CISEI and D’Albertis Castle, Museo delle Culture del Mondo (Museum of World Cultures) with the collaboration of the Donzelli Editore publishing house.

Admission is free and the books will be on sale at the bookshop for signing by the authors. A showcase on emigration has been organised for the event.

Delfina Licata and Toni Ricciardi are the two authors, and they will be talking about emigration with their recently published books: “L’Italia e i figli del vento” and “Storia dell’Emigrazione Italiana in Europa” respectively.

Migration is a permanent feature of world history; the integration process is still in a state of constant evolution. A search which finds the greatest resource for our future in mobility. Delfina Licata is a migration sociologist at the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian Episcopal Conference and editor of the report Italians in the World. Toni Ricciardi is a historian of migration and catastrophes at Geneva University and a member of the Editorial Committee of “Studi emigrazione” and “Altreitalie”. 

Our authors will be talking to two representatives of Italian culture: Emilio Franzina, historian and recently appointed chairman of the Scientific Committee of CISEI Genoa, and Massimo Minella journalist/writer.
 
Both books are published by Donzelli, a publisher that has always been attentive to the subject of emigration and has published numerous books on emigration-related research and history: a topic on which it is necessary to build a bibliography that is as informed and up-to-date as possible. The time we live in needs words to describe the changes.

Storia dell’Emigrazione Italiana in Europa - Toni Ricciardi: “Migration is a permanent feature of world history, which can be used as a tool through which to interpret events in a given context, or in the space of the world. Retracing the history of Italian migration in the European space means using it not only as an element in the construction of the European integration process, but above all as a theme within a hierarchy of issues that see emigration as a central element of the integration process, which is still constantly evolving”.

L'Italia e i figli del vento - Delfina Licata: “Mobility as a value, as a natural resource, for those who move and for those who welcome, for all of us who are born to be “figli del vento” (children of the wind: this is the beacon that guides the analysis performed. Italy is an old country, but not one that stands still. It is a country that moves. The immigrants move, the Italians move: young and old - with a considerable increase in the percentage of women, the most recent developments of which are analysed on these pages - move inwards and outwards too, using to technology to find new ways to be present in the places they have physically left behind”.

The presentation is part of the Festival Smarginando cycle.

Smarginando is the Festival created by the Fondazione Museo Nazionale dell'Emigrazione Italiana to promote the MEI, which opened in May at the Commenda di San Giovanni di Pré. A museum is all the more vital when it takes root in its own and in other cities.  Thanks to the Festival, the MEI goes beyond its own borders, seeking to trace a map of emotions via in-depth thematic studies. An itinerary through the various places of Italian emigration, small towns and communities that have built a popular, historical, social and cultural narrative around the theme of memory and remembrance.

Smarginando radiates across the whole of Italy, with cultural initiatives on migration through the network of museums, archives, libraries and associations.

Smarginando intends to go beyond the boundaries to narrate history and stories, beyond the limits of what is defined, construing an emotional geography that recreates the history of emigration from different places and spaces and using different languages: art, film, photography, history, literature, non-fiction, theatre, music and sport.
Free admission, the books will be on sale in the bookshop and a showcase on emigration has been organised for the occasion.