Bridging Past and Present Diasporas in the Mediterranean: The ITHACA Project
Résumés
Cet article vise à présenter les objectifs et les premiers résultats du projet européen ITHACA – Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency (2021‑2025). Il se concentre en particulier sur la création d’une base de données dans laquelle différentes études de cas concernant des migrations et des diasporas de l’époque moderne et contemporaine sont comparées. À travers la création d’ensembles de données cohérents et à l’adoption de catégories comparables, l’objectif du projet est de comprendre les caractéristiques récurrentes et les discontinuités des phénomènes migratoires et diasporiques, dans une perspective de longue durée. À cet égard, la base de données ITHACA n’a pas été conçue comme un référentiel conclu, cohérent et exhaustif, mais plutôt comme un prototype, capable d’inclure de nouvelles études de cas pour une compréhension toujours plus riche du phénomène étudié.
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Introduction: the ITHACA project and migration in a long‑term perspective
- 1 The project <www./ithacahorizon.eu/> has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pr</www> (...)
- 2 In 2019, ITHACA addressed a European Commission call for proposals under the title “Narratives on m (...)
1This essay proposes a critical discussion of the first scientific outcomes of the EU‑funded research and innovation project ITHACA – Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency: Entangled Narratives Across Europe and the Mediterranean Region.1 Within the Horizon 2020 and the Horizon Europe programs, the European Commission has funded numerous research projects to produce evidence‑based recommendations for the European governance of migration as well as innovative (including ICT) solutions for collecting and documenting the history of migration to and within Europe.2
2To address this call, the ITHACA project has been applying a historical approach since its design. Its main objective, which will be discussed in detail in this essay, is to provide interpretation frameworks of migration which are based on historical analysis, with the stated goal of encouraging the development of a long‑term vision among practitioners, policy makers and researchers.
3Historical knowledge – in its interaction with other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy and geography – is proposed as a means for understanding migratory phenomena and, at the same time, a possible starting point for reflection on the policies adopted to govern the displacements of men and women, with particular regard to forced or induced migrations. The project aim is to move away from an emergency logic, as well as to provide reliable information on the migratory phenomenon in the Mediterranean area.
- 3 In the growing debate on digital humanities, AI and migration in the contemporary age, see Francis (...)
4In order to achieve this objective and to foster reflection on migration trajectories and their evolution over time, ITHACA pursued to build a comparative database.3 The fundamental idea is to set up a digital archive that preserves and analyses memories of migration for scholars, migrants, practitioners, and policymakers. By focusing on the historical memory of the past and present, through the potential offered by the new frontier of digital humanities, the ITHACA project identified its scope in the creation of a digital platform that can constitute a model of preservation and integrated analysis of migration narratives, in a long‑term, trans‑national and multi‑causal perspective.
5Finally, it is important to explain how ITHACA has addressed the subject of diasporas, at the core of this monographic issue. Within the project, the study of migration is focused on narratives and sources providing testimonies of/on mostly individual mobility: the basis, as we will show, is the experience of an “ego”, meaning of an individual or a group. This leads to privileging specific points of view and, so to speak, to enhancing individual (self)perception and representation of migration as well as diasporic phenomena. Although there is no shortage of analyses investigating the displacement of groups and communities, ITHACA mostly follows individual trajectories: the project database offers, therefore, an effective tool to observe and study diasporas, adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary methodology. The framework is the Mediterranean space – envisioned extensively, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic, from the North Sea to sub‑Saharan Africa – as a scenario of stories, individual paths and, by design, a place of displacements that tend not to have a centre, nor a predefined direction. This points to a polycentrism in the cases studied and lends itself particularly well to diasporic routes and dispersion of social groups.
6In the following pages, we will outline some of the results already achieved by the project (which is currently building the final version of the database that will be discussed). Firstly, the methodological challenges faced in proceeding in a natively interdisciplinary project will be illustrated; the consequences of the methodology adopted in the definition of the data architecture and in the analysis of the case studies entered into the digital archive will then be shown. Lastly, some of the expected results of the project in terms of the development of new knowledge will be explored.
Methodological challenges
- 4 Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent, New York, Basic Books, (...)
7In order to outline the methodological challenges the project faced, it is useful to start with the considerations suggested by one of the most prominent scholars of humanitarianism and refugee history, Peter Gatrell. The historian has questioned how migrants, scholars and politicians will interpret migration in the 21st century and what contemporary sources will be available to and consulted by tomorrow’s historians.4 A comprehensive answer remains a desideratum. However, this point recalls others of fundamental importance: the need to preserve the documentation produced by refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean and by the multiple actors and stakeholders dealing with them. Or, again, the difficulty of linking narratives marked by a past of colonial domination and post‑colonial transformations. In the face of these population movements, multiple and often conflicting narratives and representations have been created and disseminated by a plethora of different actors.
- 5 Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Refo (...)
- 6 See Ibrahim Awad (ed.), Cairo Papers in Social Science, vol. 35, no 2‑(International Migration in t (...)
8A similar line of reasoning can be applied to the migrations and diasporas of the Medieval and Modern Ages which, as has been amply demonstrated by studies, have been the subject of reinterpretations, representations and often outright “manipulations” by political and religious authorities (it will suffice to consider the rhetoric of the “health” of the social body that Nicholas Terpstra has shed light on).5 This is also linked to the reconceptualisation of the notion of diaspora in the Mediterranean by recent works.6
9For both past and present, historians have some challenges to address: above all, the identification of sources and memories preserved and/or produced by/on migrants; secondly, the important need, especially for contemporary events, to conserve these sources, save them from the catastrophes, wars and geopolitical upheavals that are often at the root of migration; thirdly, the definition of methodologies suitable for de‑constructing narratives, without losing the richness that comes from the point of view of those who produced them (the migrants or those who narrated their displacement). This means identifying migration trajectories, their unfolding over time, the perception of migration by those who undertook it and those who observed or provoked it, and the analysis of the causes and consequences of forced displacement. These characteristics, as mentioned above, prescribe an approach in which different historical perspectives (cultural history, connected history, global history, history of emotions, etc.) as well as diverse disciplines are combined, from time to time involving anthropology, ethnography, etc. As we shall see, all this is reflected in the configuration of the tool chosen for the development of the project – the ITHACA database – which, in the construction of an effective dataset, must take into account the different methodologies of analysis needed to understand a complex phenomenon such as migration.
- 7 For the movements caused by the Reformation intended as a migration, see for instance: Zwierlein Co (...)
10There is also a second factor to consider, which is closely connected to the goal of placing the migration phenomenon in a historical perspective: the ability to hold the present and the past together and to build a long‑term perspective. There is no doubt that historians, including early modern historians, are profoundly influenced by the present and the “migration emergency,” so much so that they reread crucial passages such as the Protestant Reformation, the confessionalisation of Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries, the slave trade in the Mediterranean or the expulsion of Jewish communities from Christian countries as a form of migration.7 Juxtaposing these events with contemporary migrations must avoid reducing everything to an indeterminate notion of an “eternal present”, eliminating the often‑deep differences between contexts, spaces and power relations that occurred in various historical periods. For this reason, it is useful not only to proceed from the present towards the past, but in the opposite direction as well, trying to understand which categories used for the examination of the past can fit or be useful for the interpretation of the present. The hypothesis is that by interconnecting migration narratives from different epochs and contexts it is possible to establish similarities and discrepancies between phenomena that are temporally distant and, therefore, to move away from a logic of “emergency management” of migration, leaving room for a more conscious and historical‑based approach.
From methodology to data modelling: the ITHACA database
- 8 See the glossary of the H2020 project OPPORTUNITIES – For a fair narrative on migration <www.opport (...)
11Before delving into the case studies at the heart of the ITHACA project, it is appropriate to show how the methodological challenges mentioned above – first of all, interdisciplinarity and comparison – determined the definition of a data‑entry structure for the project. There are three main points to consider: the process that led to the definition of a data architecture; the presence of a double level of analysis (objective‑subjective) for each entry in the database; the definition of a flexible structure, designed to take into account different disciplinary perspectives. Let us start with the first point. The ITHACA team adopted a co‑creative approach for the definition of the data structure (an increasingly established methodology in the digital humanities). Starting from an international standard (the Dublin core) and inspired by interoperability criteria, the ITHACA team – which includes senior scholars and early‑career researchers active in different fields (history, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, linguistics, geography, demography, archival science) as well as associations and NGOs working with migrants – defined which data should be collected by the project researchers, with the aim of fostering a comparison in a long-term historical perspective. Through numerous workshops, a shared data‑architecture and data‑collection method were thus defined. The guiding principles were: the effort to assume an interdisciplinary perspective, despite the fact that the individual researchers belong to a specific discipline; the definition of a number of controlled vocabularies (thesauri) that would allow the research of the various teams to interconnect; the centrality of the migration trajectory (i.e. the movement of an individual in space and time) as the focus and pivot of each entry. Due to the diverse range of scientific approaches described above, it was also fundamental to develop a shared definition and understanding of key concepts such as “migration” and “narrative”, which underpin each case study included in the ITHACA database. A process was developed to establish a shared meaning attributed by ITHACA’s multidisciplinary team to these key‑words. This initiative – like the creation of the data‑architecture – was carried out through a participatory approach. ITHACA’s researchers were asked to define the meaning they attribute to the three terms: “narrative”, “migration”, and finally to their union “migration narrative.” The results were then processed, applying the thematic analysis method. The outcome of the participatory exercise led to a definition of migration narrative, understood, in the ITHACA project, as an experience of forced and induced mobility of/on an individual.8
- 9 See Lisa Spiro, “‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities,” in Matthew (...)
12Concerning the second point mentioned above – the double level of analysis –, the data architecture focused on two aspects: on the one hand, the description of the source (archival, digital, iconographic, oral, etc.) by which a certain migration narrative was provided; on the other hand, the migration narrative itself, examined by assuming the point of view of its producer (the migrant in the case of self-narratives; or the observer of the migrant). This double level has the advantage of making the information verifiable by referring to primary sources, and above all it holds together a scientific analysis with the preservation of the point of view contained in it. This makes it possible to retain the richness of the narratives as well as the personal perception of the migration entered in the database. At the same time, dividing the information into comparable and searchable categories facilitates aggregate analyses (quantitative analyses, statistical projections, geovisualisations, etc.) that would be complex and sometimes impossible with the adoption of an overly qualitative approach. Finally, in order to enhance the richness of the disciplines represented by the ITHACA researchers, it was decided to create a data‑architecture which would include the research questions of all the project members. In other words, in the data entry concerning their own case studies, historians have been asked to collect useful data for anthropologists, geographers, demographers, sociologists, etc., and anthropologists, geographers, etc. did the same for the other categories of scholars. The result is, as we said, an interdisciplinary data architecture, in accordance with an approach well established in the digital humanities.9 The data structure can be outlined as follows:
Tab. 1: Data architecture of the ITHACA database
Archival level - description of the source from which the migration narrative was extracted (* marks the fields for which controlled and shared vocabularies are used) |
a) the source title b) description and contextualisation of the source c) the source typology* d) the language or languages used in the source e) the source’s author f) possible co‑authors or contributors g) the traditional or digital archive in which the source is preserved h) possible editions or digitalisations of the source i) free notes or observations |
Ego‑story level – description of migration narrative (* marks the fields for which controlled and shared vocabularies are used) |
a) Individual, that is the protagonist of the migration narrative b) gender identification c) group identification (as described in the narrative itself) d) age* (divided by category: baby, child, young person, adult, etc.) e) elements concerning the sexual orientation of the ego and/or LGBTQIA+ issues f) migratory status* g) education* (divided by category: primary education, middle education, higher education, etc.) h) profession* (describing the economic field in which the ego operates: trade, agriculture, industry, etc.) i) trajectory* l) analytic description of the migration narrative |
13With regard to the migration trajectory, this must naturally consist of at least two points (a departure and an arrival): however, it is possible to extend the stages touched by a certain trajectory, thus enriching the understanding of the itinerary followed by the migrant.
14For each point in the trajectory, a place, a time and a typology of event connected to that place are defined (e.g. place of: birth, origin, transit, arrival, etc.). The typology of events is defined by means of a controlled vocabulary (which allows the places of the trajectories to be filtered based on their meaning: e.g. all places of arrival in a given historical epoch; all places of transit, etc.).
15The migration data will then be geolocalised and displayed on a map within the OmekaS software which will host all the collected data.
16A user experience and data‑visualisation study is currently underway with the aim of enabling, as effectively as possible, a comparison of trajectories, also with reference to their variation over time.
Diasporas and migration: implementing the ITHACA database
- 10 See for example: Giampaolo Salice, « Diasporas et numérique : une opportunité, pour la recherche hi (...)
17The rise of digital humanities offers new tools to investigate migration as a complex, fluid phenomenon which takes place on different scales, and which involves multiple links between individuals and groups. In fact, connectivity is a characteristic feature of the diaspora phenomenon, and it lends itself particularly well to being studied through the lens of network analysis as well as through digital tools.10 In this framework, as mentioned above, ITHACA implemented the database at the very centre of the project, populating it with testimonies on past and present migrations/diasporas.
18The digital archive aims at creating a prototype capable of housing migration accounts from all eras and backgrounds. To test such a system, a number of case studies concerning past and present migrations and diasporas were chosen and analysed by teams with different disciplinary expertise.
Tab. 2: Case studies of the ITHACA database
Case study (short description) | Main disciplinary perspective |
The Jewish Diaspora in Italy during the Early Modern Era | Jewish history |
Protestant migration from Italy in the 16th Century | History of Christianity |
Population mobility in the Early Modern Mediterranean | Early Modern History |
Anatolian Greek refugees in the early 20th Century | Urban history |
Migration in Morocco in the past and present | Anthropology, Colonial history |
Documenting the Somali community in Rome | Sociology, Ethnography |
Immigrants and refugees in contemporary Jordan | History, Ethnography |
Immigrants and refugees in contemporary Tunisia | Anthropology, Ethnography |
Cataloguing narratives refugees under UNHCR protection during the 20th century | History, Archival Science |
Economic immigration from Albania to Greece | Economics, Demography |
Documenting LGBTQIA+ immigration | Sociology |
Research on undocumented migrants in the current Mediterranean and in Italy in particular | Sociology |
Environmental migration in Azerbaijan | Environmental history |
The selected case studies concern forced or induced migration due to religious, political or economic reasons, underlining how migration has historically been far from monocausal.
- 11 Marina Caffiero, The History of the Jews in Early Modern Italy: from the Renaissance to the Restora (...)
- 12 Michaël Gasperoni (ed.), Le siècle des ghettos : la marginalisation sociale et spatiale des juifs e (...)
- 13 Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross‑cult (...)
- 14 For the Jewish presence in Mantua see: Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua(...)
19Keeping our focus on the Modern Age, religion as the cause of migration is one prominent theme. The ITHACA team’s research devotes great attention to the Jewish populations of Europe, and those of Italy in particular. Present without interruption from the antiquity, their position, status, and representations have changed greatly over the centuries, sometimes in contradictory ways.11 As is well known, after the repressive measures of the Counter‑Reformation, Jewish minorities were expelled and, where the Christian majority allowed them to remain, they were confined to ghettos.12 Although there were exceptions, such as the international networks developed by the Jewish communities in Leghorn thanks to a regime of tolerance on the part of the political authorities,13 the mobility of Jews in modern Italy was often limited and supervised. However, this did not prevent movements that show the vitality of Italian Jewry even under a regime of repression. The case included in the ITHACA database focuses in particular on the population of the ghetto of Mantua in the 18th century: based on extraordinarily complete documentation, it is possible to establish entrances and exits from the community and thus to visualise the trajectories of movement and migration of Jews, households and individuals.14
- 15 For an overview on the Italian Peninsula: see Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in si (...)
- 16 Matteo Al Kalak, The Heresy of the Brothers: a Heterodox Community in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Turn (...)
20Further examples of migration due to religious reasons are contained in the ITHACA archive. One is the diaspora of those Italians who left the Peninsula for Switzerland in the 16th century due to the repressive policies of the Catholic Church and the Roman Inquisition.15 The case study is that of the heterodox community of Modena where, between 1530 and 1570, a large religious protest movement flourished.16 It looks at how, in periodic waves, religious dissidents left their city of origin to travel to places where they could freely profess their faith. Before finding refuge in the Helvetian valleys, the heretics pursued by the Inquisition completed a long journey that took them a long way, crossing Italy, France and Germany.
- 17 Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri, Tolerance Re‑Shaped in the Early-Modern Mediterranean Borderlands: Tr (...)
21As stated above, the ITHACA database does not only include diasporas or migrations due to religious motives. It will therefore be of particular interest to compare trajectories, timings and modalities of diasporas which were instigated, in time and space, by other reasons. The following three examples, gathered into the dataset on Early Modern Mediterranean mobility, are useful for outlining the project’s perspective. Keeping our focus on the Modern era, we can identify migrations that, although related to religious motivations, were not forced, but were instead prompted by family dynamics and by the consequent need to convert from one religion to another. One such case is that of Malta. Using civil status declarations (marriage processetti) recorded in the Maltese Parish Archives between 1678 and 1750, many migration trajectories (from France, Greece, Sicily and Southern Italy) were collected, an example of a much broader trend that shows how the number of foreigners entering Maltese society was sufficient to significantly change its composition.17
22Other individuals migrated instead due to primarily economic reasons. Based on sources provided by the Roman Inquisition in Malta, the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce and the Apostolic Visitors in Izmir, the second group of case studies related to the Mediterranean mobility mostly includes merchants: members of European merchant groups in Izmir in the late 17th and early 18th century; English protestant merchants in Valletta; Jewish merchants from Leghorn in Marseille. Their stories reveal not only the fluidity of economic movements in the mare nostrum space, but also a certain difficulty that traders encountered in fitting into the social fabric of arrival, often due to the will of institutions to prevent mixing between religious and geographical groups.
- 18 Marina Caffiero, Gli schiavi del papa: conversione e libertà dei musulmani a Roma in età moderna, B (...)
23Finally, a third case study concerns the so‑called Libro dei Turchi (Book of the Turks), which records the arrivals at the House of Catechumens in the Italian port of Civitavecchia of Muslim slaves who converted to Catholicism in Rome in the 18th century.18 Captured for the most part from the Pope’s galleys, their reason for conversion often lay in the vain hope of being set free. The dataset outlines the personal trajectories throughout Europe, and even in the New World or the Orient.
24These are only some of the cases that will be accessible via the ITHACA database: however, it is important to note that they were chosen for their heterogeneity (ethnic, religious, geographic, etc.) and for the diversity of the causes that provoked the migration, with the explicit aim of stimulating a reflection based on a comparison of the data. It is worth reiterating that the idea was in fact not to create a complete database concerning a specific phenomenon or source, but to test a prototype aimed at comparing different cases, of which analogies and differences are sought. It is with this in mind, after all, that the migrations and diasporas of the Modern Age have been placed alongside those of contemporary times. Once again, two examples among many that can be found within the ITHACA database will suffice.
- 19 Eugenia Bournova; Yannis Stoyannidis, Gazochori: “The History of a Neighbourhood (1857‑1980),” Thom (...)
25The first is provided by the migration of the Anatolian Greeks leaving Turkey during the population exchanges of the 1920s, focusing on the arrival of refugees from Asia Minor between the 1920s and the 1950s.19 For the implementation of the ITHACA database, the phenomenon was studied with regard to the Greater Athens Area, providing socio‑economic, demographic and gender‑based data of the effects of migration through the perspective of urban history. Drawing on national census and marriage records, this collection of data includes a number of items describing both individuals and large groups.
- 20 Catherine Therrien and Chloée Pellegrini, “French Migrants in Morocco: From a Desire for Elsewheren (...)
26Another difference is the comparison with other modes of forced migration, which combined religious, political and economic motivations, covering a potentially very wide chronological span. An interesting scenario, in this regard, is provided by the Moroccan case, allowing an analysis of forced migration as the product of slavery. Research focusing on this geographical context addresses not just the history of the French and Spanish protectorates and the international zone of Tangier during the 20th century, but also investigates Morocco’s own history of slavery from the 16th century onwards.20
27Aware of the need to investigate the historical diversities and the specificities without stopping at mere formal analogies, the parallels and comparisons that ITHACA intends to promote are aimed at raising new research questions which go beyond the finding of similarities between cases distant in time and/or space. Indeed, it will be useful to investigate and assess how much the mobility trajectories and networks of Modern migration/diasporas influenced those of later eras or how, on the contrary, the latter differed from the former. Still, it may be of interest to detect similarities and differences regarding the perception and self‑perception of migrants and, again, the quantitative and qualitative contribution that migration/diasporas made to socio‑economic change, including religious aspects, in the departure and arrival scenarios. The long‑term perspective also makes it possible to verify the extinction or recurrence of certain trajectories, or the circularity, over time, of certain paths (as the conditions that determine a migration/diasporas change, do human groups tend to return to their places of origin or not?). In addition, the presence of controlled vocabularies used for some categories will not only make it possible to observe trajectories geographically, but also to probe the qualitative data and to understand how migrant individuals experienced the places they passed through. Similarly, it will be possible to analyse trajectories on the basis of the characteristics of the migrant subject (gender, education, profession, etc.) and the combination of search filters will open up a plurality of questions that ITHACA wishes to raise.
From research to policy-making
- 21 Cf. David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, Oxford, Oxford University (...)
28In the mid‑20th century, the appraisal of Mediterranean history in the Modern Age revolutionised the methodologies of history as a discipline itself. The seminal work of Fernand Braudel depicted the Mediterranean as a space of exchange and mobility, overcoming the Eurocentric vision that had dominated French and largely European historiography. This was only the beginning of a series of changes, both methodological and analytical, that today allow the Mediterranean space to be interpreted a “great sea” of human encounters.21
29Unsurprisingly, this new perspective, which first of all matured in the academic and cultural spheres, has also reached the political authorities who in 2019 asked the scientific community to come up with research-based solutions to deal with the migration emergency.
- 22 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, Oxford (...)
30As explained, ITHACA sought to contribute by stimulating a comparative overview of the history of migrations in the Mediterraneanas well as by creating an evidence-based repository to analyse migration phenomena and public discourse. The research team worked on the topic of Mediterranean migrations in the Modern and contemporary era, adopting an approach to Mediterranean studies focused on intercultural connectivity. This perspective, revived since the early 2000s by the historiographical studies that followed the publication of The Corrupting Sea, has been intertwined with an expanded idea of the Mediterranean area which encompasses zones characterised by similar socio-economic structures.22
31ITHACA identified unexplored archives and records and provided new historical frameworks of analysis of migrants’ perception and self-perception and the consequent narration and self-narration of their experience. As far as the narrative of migration is concerned, it is fundamental to the understanding of how a discourse on otherness is historically produced. Self‑narrative, on the other hand, gives an insight into what a migrant looks for in the displacement and how aspirations, fears and identity representations are projected onto it.
32The database produced by the project was designed as a means to generate new questions and, above all, does not close itself off from the purpose for which it was conceived (to answer a question from policymakers). Hence, thanks to an effective data architecture, the questions expected to be addressed by the project are manifold. Some may focus on space, i.e. the trajectories that form the pivot of the project. How do the geographical directions followed by migration tend to evolve over time? Is it possible to predict trajectories? And, if so, what are the factors that determine them? Is it possible to identify a cyclical nature, in the long term, of migration or diasporic routes? And again: how do bi‑directional or mono‑directional trajectories show up over time?
33Other research questions, thanks to the presence of controlled vocabularies, can allow more qualitative analyses: what is the educational level of migrants? Has it increased or decreased over the various eras? Are there trajectories that show higher levels of education or professionalism? And why?
34Similarly, one can proceed to more classical analyses: how does the distribution of migration evolve according to gender? And how much does the variation in historical periods or causes leading to migration affect the gender of migrants? These are some of the possible questions that a database such as ITHACA’s can answer.
35It may be useful, in conclusion, to reflect on one last point: preliminary outcomes of the project – pending a more precise scientific elaboration – seem to show the presence of diasporas as a prevalent ‘mode’ of migration. Although there is no lack of more rigid routes, especially where they were governed or imposed by political authorities, what the data entering so far suggests is an extreme variety of migration trajectories originating from similar causes. Those who arrived as Muslim slaves in Civitavecchia (a common point of arrival) and hoped to improve their lives by converting, had behind them paths that spanned the whole of the Mediterranean; those who instead set out from the cities of northern Italy (a common point of departure) to flee the Inquisition, experienced tortuous routes that led them to wander many corners of Europe. In all cases, the dispersion of human and community groups represents a recurring fact and difficult to trace within the category of “migration flow”. The ITHACA database could therefore confirm the diasporic condition as a prevailing condition and, rather than configuring a network of trajectories, contribute to the identification of junctions or thickenings within a tangle of threads made up of individual histories and collective instances.
Notes
1 The project <www./ithacahorizon.eu/> has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 101004539.
2 In 2019, ITHACA addressed a European Commission call for proposals under the title “Narratives on migration and its impact: past and present”. The call aimed to select projects on the dynamics and developments of migration narratives at local, national and EU level, including countries of origin and transit. See <https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/H2020_MIGRATION-09-2020>.
3 In the growing debate on digital humanities, AI and migration in the contemporary age, see Francis L. Collins, “Geographies of Migration III: The Digital Migrant”, Progress in Human Geography, vol. 47, no 5, 2023, p. 738‑749, <https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231157709>.
4 Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent, New York, Basic Books, 2019; Peter Gatrell, “Refugees – What’s Wrong with History?,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 30, no 2, 2017, p. 170‑189, <https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/few013>.
5 Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
6 See Ibrahim Awad (ed.), Cairo Papers in Social Science, vol. 35, no 2‑(International Migration in the Euro‑Mediterranean Region), 2019; Isabella Maurizio and Konstantina Zanou (eds), Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century, London/New York, Bloomsbury, 2015; Julia A. Clancy‑Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800‑1900, Berkeley/Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2011; Iain Chambers, Migrancy, Culture, Identity, London/New York, Routledge, “A comedia book”, 1994.
7 For the movements caused by the Reformation intended as a migration, see for instance: Zwierlein Cornel and Vincenzo Lavenia (eds), Fruits of Migration: Heterodox Italian Migrants and Central European Culture 1550‑1620, Leiden, Brill, “Intersections, 57”, 2018. Another example of how the categories of the present influence reflection on the past is offered by the recent issue of Diasporas, no 41‑(Les ambivalences de la protection : le droit d’asile xvie‑xxie siècle), 2023, <https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.11355>.
8 See the glossary of the H2020 project OPPORTUNITIES – For a fair narrative on migration <www.opportunitiesproject.eu/> and Carolin Gebauer and Roy Sommer, “Beyond Vicarious Storytelling: How Level Telling Fields Help Create a Fair Narrative on Migration,” Open Research Europe, 3.10, p. 3-14, 2023, <https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/3-10#FN3>.
9 See Lisa Spiro, “‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities,” in Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein (eds), Debates in the Digital Humanities, Minneapolis/London, NED‑New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, p. 16‑35, <https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-88c11800-9446-469b-a3be-3fdb36bfbd1e/section/9e014167-c688-43ab-8b12-0f6746095335>.
10 See for example: Giampaolo Salice, « Diasporas et numérique : une opportunité, pour la recherche historique », Stefania Marsura et Mathieu Grenet (trad.), Diasporas, no 40‑(20 ans de Diasporas), 2022, p. 85‑91, p. 87, <https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.9030>.
11 Marina Caffiero, The History of the Jews in Early Modern Italy: from the Renaissance to the Restoration, Paul M. Rosenberg trad., London/New York, Routledge, “Routledge studies in early modern religious dissents and radicalism”, 2022.
12 Michaël Gasperoni (ed.), Le siècle des ghettos : la marginalisation sociale et spatiale des juifs en Italie au xviie siècle, Paris, Puf, « xviie siècle, 282 », 2019.
13 Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross‑cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 2009.
14 For the Jewish presence in Mantua see: Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, Jerusalem, Kiryath Sepher, “Publications of the Goldstein‑Goren diaspora research institute, 17”, 1977.
15 For an overview on the Italian Peninsula: see Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in sixteenth‑Century Italy, Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi trad., Kirksville, Thomas Jefferson University Press, “Sixteenth century essays and studies, 43”, 1999; Massimo Firpo, Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation, Richard Bates trad., Burlington, Ashgate, “Catholic Christendom, 1300‑1700”, 2015.
16 Matteo Al Kalak, The Heresy of the Brothers: a Heterodox Community in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Turnhout, Brepols, 2022.
17 Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri, Tolerance Re‑Shaped in the Early-Modern Mediterranean Borderlands: Travellers, Missionaries and Proto‑Journalists (1683‑1724), London, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2018.
18 Marina Caffiero, Gli schiavi del papa: conversione e libertà dei musulmani a Roma in età moderna, Brescia, Morcelliana, « Storia, 117 », 2022.
19 Eugenia Bournova; Yannis Stoyannidis, Gazochori: “The History of a Neighbourhood (1857‑1980),” Thomas Maloutas and Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis (eds), Athens Social Atlas: Digital Compendium of Texts and Visual Material, <http://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/>, 2018, <https://doi.org/10.17902/20971.85>.
20 Catherine Therrien and Chloée Pellegrini, “French Migrants in Morocco: From a Desire for Elsewhereness to an Ambivalent Reality”, The Journal of African Studies, vol. 20, no 4‑(Revisiting Moroccan Migrations, 2015, p. 605‑621, <https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2015.1065044>.
21 Cf. David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
22 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000.
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Matteo Al Kalak et Maria Chiara Rioli, « Bridging Past and Present Diasporas in the Mediterranean: The ITHACA Project », Diasporas [En ligne], 43 | 2025, mis en ligne le 11 juin 2025, consulté le 07 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/17522 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/144ef
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