ABSTRACT
Second- and third-generation Italian immigrants in South Africa experience a paradoxical sense of nostalgia because they long for a “home” in Italy, a country that they have mostly experienced only on vacation. This phenomenon can be explained by referring to “inherited nostalgia”, a nostalgia taken over from previous generations. However, for second- and third-generation Italian immigrants, nostalgia is not just looking back at a distant past, but also a feeling projected into the future. It triggers the desire to “go back” to the forebears’ country of origin. Those who acted on this impulse eventually realized (more or less consciously) that their attempt to move forward was in fact an impossible looking back: the destination turned out to be different from the imagined country that they had created for themselves.
