In Southern Italy between 1900 and 1930, emigration was the journey of those leaving for America or other European countries, and the wait of those who stayed behind. And among those who remained, the most vulnerable were often the children.
The story of Italian emigration is almost always told through the eyes of adults: fathers seeking work, mothers rejoining their husbands, families reuniting overseas. Less frequently, attention is paid to those children temporarily left behind in their countries of origin, entrusted to relatives while they awaited better times. Yet, this form of "transnational" childhood was a widespread reality in many areas of Southern Italy.
Foster care wasn't born of abandonment or indifference. On the contrary, it was often a painful but necessary choice. Leaving with young children was too expensive, risky, and complicated. Travel conditions, the precariousness of employment abroad, and the uncertainty of housing pushed many parents to leave them with grandparents or other relatives for months or years. In many families, migration occurred in stages: first one parent, then the other, and finally, if possible, the children.
In this space suspended between presence and absence, the children grew up within a family that was both near and distant. They received letters, photographs, and occasional sums of money. Sometimes gifts arrived that had the flavor of a new world: a dress, an unfamiliar object, a foreign coin. But all of this didn't fill the void of a daily voice, a hand on the shoulder, a truly present mother or father.
For many of those children, childhood was marked by a dual sense of belonging. They were children of a country they knew well, but also of a elsewhere they learned to imagine through the stories of adults. They grew up with the idea that family was something shifting, incomplete, waiting to be reunited. And when they finally left, they often faced a second trauma: leaving the place where they had grown up and finding parents who had become almost strangers.
This is a less visible story of emigration, but perhaps one of the most profound. Because it reminds us that leaving wasn't just about seeking fortune. It also meant shattering the time of childhood, entrusting it to the patience of grandparents, to the strength of bonds, to the hope that one day everything would be put back together.
