Contemporary history has identified three big Italian migration movements to Switzerland: the big diaspora of the end of the 19 th century, the period between the First and the Second World Wars and the diaspora movement from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s. After the Schwarzenbach initiatives and the oil crisis of the 1970s, Italian migration to Switzerland has decreased. However, with the beginning of the 2007 – 2008 global economic crisis, Italy has witnessed a large new diaspora movement to the traditional countries of migration. Academic studies have found that the most diffused narrative on the brain drain phenomenon is over-simplistic and needs to be re-examined and updated; notably that this diaspora in the age of globalization has new and complex layers.

The aim of this research is to re-think photographic portrayals of the cultural identity of Italian migrants of the 21 st century in the area between Lausanne and Geneva in Switzerland (arc lémanique). The work reflects on issues related to the formation of cultural identity formation of the migrant as a continuing experience and to the sense of belonging to a space which becomes a known place after years of residency. How can an image capture a complex, ineffable, and un-representable notion of modern Italian cultural identity? Furthermore, how can an image represent the cultural identity of a
group of people whose lives have been changed by the experience of physically migrating to a terra incognita?