IT303: Italian Women’s Writing II
Ghermandi and
transnational identities
Models of Migration
• Melting pot
• Assimilation
Nation building
• ‘Fatta l’Italia,
bisogna fare gli
italiani’
• Massimo D’Azeglio
A sense of national identity:
• Narrative of shared history
• Creation of shared memories and cultural
heritage
– monuments, anniversaries
• Symbols of nation
– flags, anthems, heroes,
• Language
• Appeal to shared values
• ‘Othering’
Transnationalism
Not:
Towards:
• uprooting, rupture, • crossing geographical,
transplantation
cultural and political
borders
• assimilation
• plural identities
• loss of ties
• Importance of nation • maintaining multiple
connections and social
state
relationships
• Decline in importance of
nation state
Transnational movements
‘non mi ero mai soffermata
sul fatto che per loro ci
fossero due luoghi,
entrambi arrivo e
partenza. Una clessidra
scanidiva il loro tempo, e
quando terminava la
sabbia da una parte e
veniva girata, il luogo
dell’arrivo si transformatva
in partenza’ (p. 136)
‘Transnational migration is the process by which
immigrants forge and sustain simultaneous
multi-stranded social relations that link together
their societies of origin and settlement (Schiller
et al. 1995).
‘Transmigrants are immigrants whose daily
lives depend on multiple and constant
interconnections across international borders
and whose public identities are configured in
relationship to more than one national state’
(cited in Schiller et al. 1995).
‘By transnational spaces we mean relatively
stable, lasting and dense sets of ties reaching
beyond and across borders of sovereign states.
Transnational spaces comprise combinations of
ties and their substance, positions with
networks and organisations that cut across the
borders of at least two national states (Bauböck
& Faist, 2010)
Question:
• To what extent can Ghermandi’s work
be described as transnational?
Sources:
Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist, eds., Diaspora and
Transnationalism: Concepts Theories and Methods
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010),
available to download on oapen.org - see esp. first
chapter.
Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch and Cristina Szanton
Blanc, ‘From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing
Transnational Migration, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol.
68, no. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 48-63.