Introduzione. Ego-storie d'emigrazione

The introduction to this issue of «Venetica» reflects on the value of ego-histories and first-person narratives in the study of migration, particularly the “Great Emigration” to the Americas. It also reconstructs the history of scholarship on emigration from the Veneto to Brazil, highlighting the role of research undertaken since the 1970s and its connections with political, cultural, and identity-related contexts in Italy and Brazil. Special emphasis is placed on the relationship between scientific research, public memory, and political uses of the past, as well as the preservation and dissemination of research archives. The result is a framework that not only introduces the essays collected in this issue but also foregrounds first-person history as an analytical lens linking local and global dimensions, past and present.