On board

• Photographer
  Valerio Bellone

This photo was taken at the Genoa port. It is part of the series "On board" a work about the new, and old, italian migrants. Italians have been protagonists of the largest migratory exodus in modern history. In little over a century are expatriate twenty-four million people. In recent years the global economic crisis has generated a new migratory flow from the south to the north of Italy and Europe. We are witnessing a new exodus, and mainly concerns the Sicily, who is the protagonist region of 110,000 inhabitants, mostly young, expatriate in a sole year. These new graduates and highly skilled migrants, with the sons of the old immigrants are part of a flow that each year, in large cruise ships, plows the Tyrrhenian Sea, during the Christmas and summer holidays. The great comeback down south is characterized by Italian-foreign families that ply the seas eager to get back in the never forgotten motherland, at least once a year. Thanks to the huge ships, old and new immigrants have the opportunity to fill the own cars with native food and drink, which are difficult to find in other parts of Europe. A cheerful and at the same time melancholy rite, that involves millions of people every year.