ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to compare the data that emerge from economic and sociological studies on new emigration from Italy with the stories told by documentary web series on Italians abroad, which started to be produced around 2013–2014, the years of the highest figures of emigration from Italy. The web series format frames these narrations as “pseudo-authentic”, and reflects on life and labour from a “post-migratory” perspective. The master narrative of brain drain as a “gain” for the “greater Italy”, as expressed in the video interview format of the government-sponsored web series “Cartoline dall’altra Italia”, has recently been abandoned for new formats of “on the road” stories that narrate new mobilities questioning homeland-centred identities. The format which comes closest to the “post-migrant” alternative is Johanne Affricot’s web series “The Expats”, on black Italian creatives abroad, who consider themselves Italians and citizens of the world and experience their hybrid fragmented identities in terms of a gain.
