Schiavi bianchi e prigionieri delle fazendas: una lettura del processo migratorio in quanto spazio di morte e distruzione dell’umano

The Italian migration to Latin America has produced, in the end of the 19th Century, a large plurality of narratives about the experience of the Italian immigrants in the subcontinent. By the early twentieth century, this debate among travelers, politicians, intellectuals, journalists and publicists of the migration process has been involved in the elaboration of a public policy contrary to a certain profile of emigration. The stories and analysis do not stop, among those who criticize the prohibitionist policy and among those who are afraid about its regression. In this historical context, we analyze the narrative about Brazil as an area of destruction of the subject, built by Oreste Ristori, in an attempt to block completely the departure of workers directed to this South American country. By showing the structure of domination that rises against the immigrants, Ristori shows the reader the action of biopower in the control of bodies and in the construction of the docile homus imigrantis.