“AND Who does this belong to?”. When I returned to in the summer Feed it, my grandmother’s town with four thousand souls spread across one side of the Madonie mountainswith the cousins who arrived from other regions we played a game. In the square, the place of the rubbing, our challenge was to look for that precise question (whose children and grandchildren we were) in the looks of the people who passed us and force them to actually say it. Whoever succeeded, won.
At that point the association of the nickname by which the grandfather was known in the village with the entire network of emigrated uncles began: the circle closed only after the flows of incoming and outgoing people had been clarified. So every year: as we grew we changed, one became a “foreigner” in the village againand that mapping was intended to make everyone feel like relatives. Even today we would need one. We are all increasingly nomadic, after all. But more and more people leave, travel, and then return. The reason? It is the nostalgia of feeling like a community. Half relatives, in fact.
Carve out a place for yourself
Gaia Costantino, for example, he left Puglia for Silicon Valleypassing through Turin (degree from the Polytechnic in Engineering) and Milan, before returning to Torre a Mare. At home. Marketing and digital advertising expert, founded Puglia Women Lead three years ago to promote digital skills and inclusion, organize events such as the “bootcamp”, the training camp, on artificial intelligence where two hundred girls programmed virtual assistants.
Expats are growing
This is how, on the map of that small village, space was made not only with her grandfather’s surname but also with everything he had collected around the world. Gaia is an expatone of those calculated in the “Italians in the World Report 2022” of the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian Episcopal Conference, according to which among those who leave Italy, almost 42 percent are under 34 years old: between 2006 and 2022, in particular, Italian mobility grew by 87 percent (and female mobility by 94.8 percent). Domenico Pastore and Gianluca Vegliante, the founders of Digital monksa coworking space opened in a wing of the Certosa di Padula, near Salerno: digital nomads pass through there who work and participate in “spiritual retreats”, i.e. conferences dedicated to technological innovation.
But even real monks pass by and peek. Liz Cirelli, born in London to parents from Puglia, went back and forth from Italy to take care of first her mother and then her father: in the end, when she was left alone, he chose the roots. He left London for Roseto. And he opened his large house, transforming it into cohousing where he holds meditation sessions and hosts those who work at the Digital Monks.
Many young people leave Italy to find a future abroad. But they often return and take with them what they have learned (Getty)
The theory of grafting
Welcome to the age of “return”that of those who travel to return with a backpack full of news to their origins, or to places that are often isolated, on the outskirts, and increasingly abandoned. Among the first to intercept the trend were Antonio Prota and Flavio Albano, two Apulians who met by chance at the university of Bari after years abroad. They wanted to build a narrative about innovation, giving the word to Italians around the worldand they realized that that project led to something else, because what united the stories of all those expats was the desire to return to Italy. Leaving cities, like New York, where there were neither elderly people nor a future suited to them.
The “return” is a phenomenon
Coming home, essentially: a place, as Franco Faggiani writes in All it takes is a breath of wind (Fazi), where we felt truly happy because the landscape consoles us and friendship is first and foremost welcoming. Those who return, then, can bring innovation to certain places marked by economic hardship and abandoned. «It is the graft theory according to which the returning emigrant represents an advantage for those who remained» says Albano. He is 38 years old and when he returned to Gravina he created an idea The return, a cultural movement that wants to revive Italian villages and which is inspired in its etymology by the “restanza”, the theory of the anthropologist Giovanni Teti which refers to those who remain in a place. Tornanza is a movement but also an essay, two video podcasts with about twenty storiesa project and more.
Brain drain returning home
«Those who return and those who have remained must be able to meet and talk in one place and on a regular basis, which is why we have created a hub with itinerant offices and a Festival to talk about experiences and ideas, and create community. Then an Academy, a place that offers courses on self-entrepreneurship to become hairpin benders (it will start in March). Those who return know that they cannot find what they left elsewhere but they can bring modernity. Those who remain, however, must find the money, but also the motivation to do things, and this energy can come to them precisely from the brain on the run back home. From this meeting was born the fuse of innovation” he adds.
The comparison with reality
It is the necessary fuse against depopulation but also against disorientation, or the stupor of those who don’t know what to do even when the funds are there. That is: where do we start from? We will talk about it on February 27th in Bari during the Tornanza Forum, an event that will bring together returners, stayers, arrivals and wandererswhere there will be round tables and the national manifesto for the regeneration of villages will be signed. The Tornanza Camp will start in March, the Erasmus of hairpin bendsthat is, a path dedicated to six selected women entrepreneurs who will experience itinerant training sessions in four villages with an international stage. «Given these stories of returns, it is right to think that we can curb the phenomenon of abandonment of certain places. However, reversing the trend is impossible, at least for the next twenty years” specifies Franco Arminio, a resident of Irpinia where he started his anti-depopulation crusade many years ago.
The “hairpin bends” can leave a mark
«The complete revolution can be achieved with a policy that does not see Italy as a country where there are only plains and cities like Rome and Milan. That is, you can really innovate in these places only if tailor-made political recipes arrive, because the abandoned internal areas of Liguria are different from those of Calabria. The countries will not die, but the anthropological situation of the past is unrepeatable” specifies Arminio who has just published Realize you are alive with Guidalberto Bormolini (Ponte alle Grazie). What the “hairpin bends” do is necessary and beautifulin short, but – he adds – we also need trains, hospitals and schools in these places. And not only that. «The relationship between places must also be rethought. The Pnrr policy in this sense is wrong because it is not necessary to understand how to spend money but how to solve problems. In essence, policies centered on individuals are needed and hairpin benders should be helped in this sense” he specifies.
«It’s true, in the big city the community doesn’t work and people return to the town because they feel the need. But be careful, the community is anemic and empty, compared to that of the past. We are all alone, victims of consumerism. However, the hairpin bends can leave a mark, they must be listened to» he concludes. As happens in Trifole. The forgotten roots of Gabriele Fabbro, a film broadcast on Prime Video in which the recovery of traditions and the rediscovery of the territory takes place between the Langhe and London.
Expat, one more stop
The destinations of returning expats are sometimes the mountains, sometimes the inland areas, sometimes the south. It happens in Catania, where Michele Smantello, Luigi Sutera and Giorgio Carlisi they decided to reopen Menage, the oldest restaurant in the city, inspired by the 1920sin the historic center.
One returned from Australia, the other from Barcelona and another from Saint-Tropez. «We focused everything on our passions and on the desire to do something beautiful in our land» they say. «The era when you had to stay away from home your whole life to be successful is over. Now the future is here. Traveling and gaining experiences abroad is very important, but you have to come back, believe in your ideas and invest.” And who do these guys belong to, the Sicilians will ask themselves. They belong to the future and to the mantra of returning: “You have returned, but your journey is not over”.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED