«Nous sommes des frontaliers». Voices from the frontier

di Valentina Lapiccirella Zingari
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 15 (2004), p. 101

The authoress outlines the subject and methods of her current anthropological study on identity and biographical self-representation in the boundary areas of Piedmont and the French departments of Savoie and Haut Alpes. During the 19th and 20th Centuries, these areas passed through several political changes which rendered national self-identification of individuals particularly complicated. Ample anticipations from the interviews with two elder female habitants of the area, Emma and Julia, prove the openness of self-identification processes. National belonging tends to be seen as an exogenous imposition by ‘grand’ historical event, whereas the more ‘authentic’ We-group is described in terms of cross-border biographies and family relations, and of local and regional communities in which co-exist cultural, confessional, and linguistic, diversities.