Italian foreign communities as a new political subject: voting rights and cultural representation

Nowadays the history of Italian emigration represents the texture of our collettive memory, expressing its importance in all fields: essays, media and above all in politics. Actually it is facing a revival of the italian culture abroad, forgotten for a long time, so that even the higest offices of the government are celebrating Italian emigrants as a cultural resource for the nation both in the past when they could help us to rise the State after the Second World War and in the present for their huge role at the last elections. Many sociologists studied this theme, showing how transnational italian culture changed also the homeland society, carrying in Italy monetary funds and new cultural matrices in a cultural mix of tradition and social shifting (Garbaccia, 2003). However it is necessary to deep which is now the relationship between Italian people abroad and Italy, which is their lifestyle and which is the importance they give to the voting right. Infact migration is changing too and we can find two main elements 1) migration experience appears now reversible and 2) a cultural ubiquity or cultural nomadism are estabilishing within migration processes. According to Bellah (1996), Italian community abroad can be described through lifestyle enclaves based on common sense of identity, though postmodernity is changing it, drawing a migrant profile defined by Maffesoli (2000) as a nomadic identity, typical of post-modernization. Starting by a sociological approach based on the main migration theories and also considering a political point of view, our work aimed to study collective imagination surrounding italian identitity abroad expressed both by medias and communication on politics, but especially embodied by italian elected to represent the State in other countries. In this way a qualitative approach was chosen to understand the identity of italian migration through electoral vote, analyzing also elctoral campaigns and whether candidates used old or new technologies to communicate their voters. The project followed five main steps: 1 - Individuation and study about theories and texts on external voting laws; associationism role; communication strategies, political newsmaking and new technologies; new italian migration ideal-types; 2 – Backgroud research in which the contest was defined by a statistics and sociographic point of view, to deep main themes and to choose the most suited tools for the following research; 3 – Data gathering: a) more than 20 depth interviews to all external italian politicians elected all around the world (South America, USA) and in Europe (Germany, Swizerland, Austria, England, France); b) gathering of electoral campaigns materials; c) 5 focus groups between politicians and their staff; 4 - Data analisys; 5 - Draft of the research report. Bibliography Gabaccia D. R., 2003, Emigranti. Le diaspore degli italiani dal Medioevo a oggi, Torino, Einaudi Bellah R. N. et al., 1996, Le abitudini del cuore. Individualismo e impegno nella società complessa, Roma, Armando Editore Maffesoli M., 2000, Del nomadismo. Per una sociologia dell'erranza, Milano, Franco Angeli