ODYSSEUS 2000
Personal Identity and social living

Let’s imagine our book as a “collective novel” in which forty/fifty people left home to move to another country. Sometimes they were on their own and sometimes their family was already travelling, so that they just had to follow their relatives.
Some of them  -Gypsies- belong to nomad peoples but they have been living in the town where we met them for a long time.
There are different itineraries but they all end in Europe. There are many different reasons: wars, political instability, job hunting, sports, studying. Some journeys were born in order to imitate a friend or a relative; some others did not even have a destination at the beginning.
 Some itineraries go straight to the final destination; some others take a long time and have many stages. Sometimes the wife leaves first and the others are going to join the rest of the family later. Some families leave together. Some of them did not stand the change and broke up; some others were created only after the arrival in a foreign country. Family units are often composed by people coming from the same country; but there are also men and women coming from different countries or couples composed by a foreigner and a native.
These families leave, travel, grow up and evolve. It is not only a material change from a country, a milieu, and a cultural context to another: it is their  life cycle that evolves from youth to the creation of a family, the birth of a baby in a new and foreign country.
Individual experiences are growing intertwined with the “migrant” story.
Some children were born in their home country: the journey was for them an early separation from their roots, friends and relatives. It was a sudden detachment instead of a gradual separation that life usually allows. Other children were born in a new country, in an environment with not defined landmarks, where parents too are trying to fit in.
These several and varied stories are told directly by the main characters, using their own words. It is hard to reduce them into generalizing sociological typologies. It is better to make an analysis in order to describe macro-phenomenon.  The sociological- statistic point of view is very important because it offers a global vision of the context, which is necessary in order to become aware of changes happening in our world. The autobiographic exposition let us find out one’s own point of view, all the questions and problems the characters have and that we could not understand. It allows a more particular perception of the context.
The interpretation chosen ?it pays attention to details, to every story, to the words the characters used- is an effort to trespass a describing level, in order to satisfy our need of being well-informed (our society is the “information-society”, and we feel guilty when we are not well informed about everything, also hundreds of stories that we can read in many different magazines).
All the stories gave us the opportunity to reflect upon useful topics. It is an occasion to transform interviewed people from “objects” of our studying into “subjects” that act and intervene. There is the opportunity to reflect upon our experience of listeners; then, on this basis, we can plan new itineraries where we can bring ourselves into play in order to be listened by other people. We must be able to see beyond the banal glance and to recognize that we have been so lucky to meet people that have our same feelings, but that were born in a social and cultural crossroad. The experience of these people is a sort of preview of a global process that will involve, or perhaps is already involving, all of us as individuals and not only as public operators.

These are our intentions but there are no foregone conclusions. It is hard to trespass methodological difficulties and also linguistic and cultural diversities in the work team: Italian, Spanish, German and Swedish people, that, more over, used English as vehicular language, with the help of interpreters. Debates, deepenings of methods and  personal perceptions become more difficult. Further more it takes a long time, waiting for a translation, to understand what the others really wanted to communicate.
The linguistic problem inside the group conditioned also the writing up of this “novel”: we should translate even the first and second drafts in all the languages of the partners; then we should correct and precise them: to work all together seams to be almost impossible.
It is necessary to simplify the work and to confine us to a few exchanges and debates. This -long distance work- is a further experience inside the experience and should already deserve a specific deepening.
The extent of materials too is another difficulty: thirty-five interviews made by fifteen different people and translated in different languages by sixteen other people. And we also have to consider the reflections of the experimental training laboratory "The intercultural learning". The first edition took place in Jesi on 19th- 23rd April 1999 and involved about 30 persons, the second one took place in Lleida on 10th - 14th April 2000 and involved other 30 persons.
The suggestion of a collective novel is also an escape route from the difficulties I explained: I take the responsibility for a reinterpretation; I will pull the strings, trying to understand the general meaning without neglecting peculiar aspects. I know for sure that it is not possible to reduce in a few pages al the experiences brought into play. But perhaps it is enough to spur all the characters to follow this way on their own or in other contexts, with other people, in order to better deepen all the aspects faded into the background and to develop new itineraries.

I divided the exposition into four parts. The first one is a sort of long introduction, presentation; it is a sort of group photo of all the people interviewed. The attention goes to the “context”. Home countries, the journey, the first fitting in a new country. It is a first contact with migrations and individual itineraries.
In the second part the photo includes also the interviewers, their “methodology” and experience. It is a reflection upon methods of biographic interviews, their utility not only in social survey but also in training and didactics.
The third part pays attention to the relationship ?or the intrigue- between language and identity.
The fourth part is dedicated to families’ “cultural mediators”: children. In fact they take the responsibility for a further step in the way their family began.