The War in Italy and Postwar Migration to Canada and the United States

1946-1971

This project examines the impact of the Second World War on migration from Italy to Canada and the United States in the postwar period. It analyses and compares the memories of war among Italian transnational families in Italy and their families in Canada and the United States, two preferred destinations of Italians during the postwar decades. For Italians, the Second World War was unlike any other war. Not only was it experienced in deeply disparate ways by Italian families across the peninsula, soon after the war’s end, Italians quickly became part of some of the largest overseas migration movements to take place in this era. This interdisciplinary study brings to light a comparative analysis of war memories through a transnational, intergenerational, familial lens between both receiving and sending communities. Memories of this nature highlight the stories, mentalities, myths, and emotions related to war and migration reconstructed and remembered over time.This study examines and compares the familial, gender, and emotional interlocking memories of war and the intergenerational transmission of its remembrance through the prism of migration. The overarching aim of the research is to investigate the meanings of war memories over the long term on transnational families within and beyond the territory in which the war occurred and many decades after a migration process was initiated. It will deepen our understanding about how contrasting experiences of the war in Italy have shaped experiences of migration across generations.