Un discorso specifico su un argomento specifico: la geografia italiana e i processi migratori

As Foucault taught « one cannot speak of anything at any time […] it is not enough for us to open our eyes, to pay attention, or to be aware, for new objects suddenly to light up and emerge out of the ground ». The aim of the essay is to consider some transformations of the discourses on migration within the Italian geography. In a first phase (until the 1970s), Italian geographers – influenced by the « synthetic » and « encyclopaedic » conception of their discipline – neglect migratory phenomena or analyse they mainly in spatial term. However, is only in the 70s that, following the criticisms made by Lucio Gambi, they fully discover population flows and study them not anymore as one of the elements of the regional description. This happened when, from a country of emigration that exported millions of emigrants around the world, Italy has become a country of immigration. Geographical institutions, conferences and work groups also play an important role in this process. Finally, in recent times, the geography of migration becomes a specific discourse on a specific topic – that is, are seen as a subject that can be studied for its intrinsic characteristics.