The Italian immigrant experience in North America is discussed in relation to the concepts of nostos and nostalgia. The first term, normally referring to the return home from a sea voyage, is discussed comparing the foundational account of nostos, the Odyssey, with the early sojourn phase of Italian migration. By comparison, nostalgia, which can take the form either of homesickness or a longing for the past, is found in the permanent settlement phase, wherein the sense of homesickness predominates pre-World War II while that of longing for the past best defines the post-war period.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Sturino, F., (2025), "Nostos, Nostalgia and Italian Migration", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. Italian Canadiana
2. Italian migration
3. nostalgia
4. nostos
5. pre-War immigration
6. sojourners
7. the Odyssey

Original publication: Sturino, Franc. "Nostos, Nostalgia and Italian Migration." Italian Canadiana 35: 2021. 63-70. DOI: 10.33137/ic.v35i0.37217. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Italian Canadiana. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Italian Canadiana under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.