Speranza e Sacrificio: Memories, Oral Histories and Myths about Migration

Abstract

The rhetoric of hope, sacrifice, success and contribution has frequently found fertile ground in contemporary discourse about Italian migration history. Such reassuring mythology paradoxically supports the negative perception and media representation of contemporary migrants who come to Italy. This article challenges such rhetoric from the core of one of its fundamental assumptions, by reconsidering the consolidated myth of 'migration for a better life' through migrants' own memories and interpretations. The discussion is based on 15 dialogues with six men and nine women who migrated from Italy to Australia in the second post-war period, and settled in Queensland. The article suggests that a focus on the intensity of migrants' lives, stories and memories can offer a fairer and more ethical understanding of Italian migrants' histories, as well as of contemporary migratory phenomena.