Chi ha bisogno della montagna italiana? Migrazioni internazionali e nuova centralità delle Alpi e degli Appennini

Abstract

Due to urban and industrial development in the post-war period, the Italian Alps and Apennines have experience an intense phenomenon of depopulation, mainly caused by massive emigration to urban areas. Italian mountain regions, considered for a long time as marginal, neglected areas out of public and political attention, since long have also been affected by different forms of migration that question their representation as ‘places left behind’. At first focusing on the phenomenon of the ‘new mountain people’, and just later on taking into account also the role of foreign migrants in mountain areas, several studies highlighted the fundamental role  im-migration flows in transforming Italian mountains, favouring a ‘return to the centre’ of highlands also – and above all – in public and political discourse. This article investigates, also through the analysis of Berceto case, the role – current and potential – of foreign immigrants in this re-thematization in economic, territorial as well as demographic and socio-cultural terms of the marginalized territories of the Alps and Apennines.