Mediterranean Mobility in the Colonial Age. Networks, migrations and contact zones between Southern Europe and North Africa (1860-1960)

Abstract

The project proposes an analysis of human mobility between Southern Europe and North Africa during the colonial period, favouring a historical approach that examines them as original (political, social) elaboration processes. Specifically, the research is interested in those migratory flows coming from Southern Europe and directed to the Afro-Mediterranean colonial spaces " foreign " that is, not belonging to the colonial empires of the migrants' nations of origin. Going beyond the coloniser/colonised dichotomy, the focus of the research aims at a study of the spaces of contact, both social and physical, between the populations involved while maintaining a focus on the dynamics of class and belonging (national, religious, racial, political and gender). The time span of analysis includes from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which assigned the Mediterranean region a new geopolitical role in global dynamics, to the years of independence of the North African countries.

Fields

Contemporary History

Project duration

01/09/2021 - 31/08/2022 (12 months)

Local coordinator

Patrizia Dogliani

National coordinator (or coordinator)

Patrizia Dogliani

Partnership

École Normale Supérieure, Paris

Funding

€25,000