The Ligurian migration phenomenon: the “internal” case of Genoa, from the Unification of Italy to the early Twentieth Century

The paper aims to focus on the Ligurian migration phenomenon between 1800s and 1900s, analyzed from a geographical point of view and from a historical and anthropological point of view. Specifically, by examining first the 1800 Ligurian migration, we will highlight the tendency, inherent in the Ligurian inhabitants, with a planetary projection of economic activities that led to a substantial flow of capital to Genoa, which, however, throughout the first half of the Nineteenth Century was exclusively controlled by the aristocracy who held economic and political monopoly without manifesting any ability to renewal. In the second part we proceed to identify the "focus" that led to the economic and social transformations, which determined the big change of Genoa: thanks to the Italian scientist’s congress, held in this city in 1846, banks, scientific manufacturing and trade companies that led gradually to investments in naval, engineering and building sectors began to thrive. In little more than two decades the city became a major industrial centre and the aristocracy is supplanted by a more enterprising bourgeoisie, able to determine a change in the physiognomy of the city. This fact is particularly interesting for the purpose of the work: in fact we want to show how the economic and historical turning point was the cause of a migratory movement that sees Genoa as a centre of internal migration that leads the city and Liguria to double its population in 150 years. Migrations that sees immigrants arriving from all over Italy, and that has no obstacles in its path, because Genoa welcomes them with a high degree of integration without segregate them in neighborhoods without fostering ethnic-religious conflicts. Genoa, therefore, has become during its industrial development not only the starting point for migrants to the Americas but also the centre of internal migration that helped to determine the new face of the cit