Those Who Left and Those Who Remained

On the History of Silences and Memory in the Italian Northeastern Borderlands

Abstract

This essay approaches critically the relationship between oral history and rigorous historiography in the light of three recent studies on population movements in Italy after the Second World War. The essay argues that the case of the Italian postwar population movements triggered off by the final outcome of the war and by the identity politics related to them suggests that the most interesting research results and discoveries will often be reached through multidisciplinary approaches and research projects that combine different kinds of theories, research materials and methods. Maintaining a critical distance from the object of research is also of supreme importance.