Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

the new contexts by creating highly cohesive ghetto communities that sometimesfavoured the origin of criminal organisations.Geography and MigrationIt was, not until 1961 before a national Geographic Congress concerned itself withthe geography of migration. On that occasion, Elio Migliorini, after having reaffirmedthe multidisciplinary implications of the theme of migration, highlightedthe contribution of geographers, pointing out the areas of research most distinctlyof territorial character, without however touching cultural aspects: in any case, thetopic was limited to Italian emigration abroad. In 1975, with the Salerno GeographicCongress, geographers took note that Italy was now becoming the country of arrivalfor the disinherited in search of work (Caldo, 1975), with successive in-depth studieson the Sicilian (1981) and Piedmont (1984) realities. In these studies the author showedparticular interest in cultural exchanges and, above all, underlined social aspects,work and housing conditions, the difficult encounter between profoundly differentlifestyles and cultures, and the lack of mutual linguistic knowledge and centres ofassociative centres.Still in the 1980s, in coincidence with the increasing presence of female geographers,a sensitivity towards more specific themes developed, such as the geography ofgender, aimed at showing the female contribution to immigration and to see immigrationfrom the point of view of women (Arena, 1983; Brunetta, 1995−96). At the 1983XXIII Geographic Congress, Vincenzo Guarrasi took up the relationships betweenmigration and the local culture, with reference to the Tunisian presence in the fishingtown Mazara del Vallo. Then starting from the 1990s, the Italian scientific researchof cultural issues and migration became increasingly richer, coincidently with theincreased weight that foreign immigration was assuming in Italy. Symposia, meetingsand study seminars became occasions for comparison and discussion about the initialresults of research. In-depth and accurate analyses of the phenomenon at differentlevels (national, regional, local) were made by the workgroup of the Association ofItalian Geographers (A.Ge.I) on foreign immigration in Italy, initially coordinatedby Giovanna Brunetta.In 1993, in Cagliari, Maria Luisa Gentileschi, already coordinator of the A.Ge.Iworkgroup on population mobility in Italy, organised, in collaboration with othergeographers, the first Italian-British Symposium on the Geography of Populationwith the title “ Questions of population in Europe: urban areas, ethnicity, centreperipherydynamics”. On this occasion, Italian and British geographers confrontedeach other on themes of great topicality. As far as the Italian reality was concerned,specific research highlighted the situation in a number of regions most interested inthe migratory flow: Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, the province of Messina, and themetropolitan area of Bari (Gentileschi, King, 1996).The first meeting of geographic studies entirely dedicated to the theme of recentimmigration was held in Macerata in 1996 with the title: “Immigration and multiculturein Italy today: Territory, problems and didactics.” It tackled various aspects,among which emerged the first most clearly intercultural contributions, the role259