ABSTRACT
During Italy's mass migration movement, Italians went all over the world, the United States, Argentina and Brazil being the main destination countries and income differentials being one of the basic push factors. This chapter shows, the provincial level analysis of Italian emigration to Africa will be able to tell us who left and why. It shows that many females emigrated to Africa from southern towns, which can be considered a first step towards emancipation through work, a temporary step that was agreed upon by the whole family and whose sole objective was to increase the family's earnings. The chapter concentrates on free migration movements. However, despite mass emigration flows to the United States, the African emigration pattern never died out completely before the First World War and remained a well-known niche opportunity. Most emigrants were young males, but a few small towns in the province of Catanzaro supplied women to cover a sudden, lucrative increase in demand for female labour.
