ABSTRACT
The crossings of Italian "historical" migrations between lived experience and narration. The emigration journey is a shifty subject of historical investigation. It's a story of men and women, of ships, and of economic-political interests. To migrants, it is above all a moment of suspension between the life they have left behind and the new one they will find in their respective countries of destination. To intellectuals, who experience the crossing as a form of knowledge - literary, scientific, sociological - the journey is the vantage point par excellence from which to observe migration flows and narrate them. The migrants' crossings between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, may become an interesting observatory to verify the often dramatic interlacing between the projects of people belonging to the lower orders and the dynamics of exploitation of which they were the objects both in Italy and the Americas. The sickbays, especially on ships returning from the United States, were packed with emigrants forcibly repatriated because affected by either tuberculosis or mental diseases. For those who were rejected and sent back to Italy - oftentimes at disembarkation - on account of mental illness, this meant not only the failure of the migration project but also the risk of spending the rest of their lives in a lunatic asylum.
Keywords:
Italian historical migrations; trans-Atlantic journey; the emigration journey as narration; psycho-physical check up of emigrants