Cultures in movement across the postcolonial middle sea

Responding to the ever-lasting fascination of four literary quotations that span from classic Greek epics to the contemporary Italian cultural scene, this introductory chapter to Migration and the contemporary Mediterranean constructs a narrative of migrant travelling and travelling cultures through consecutive frames – the sea, pilgrimage, migration and a common memory – that foreground the key themes of this collection. This chapter uses the idea of connectivity and adopts the theoretical standpoints and methodological approaches of postcolonial studies and cultural studies in order to present cultures in movement across the Mediterranean by focusing on the condition of the migrant and on neo-imperial practices of racialization. Examples of resistance or political struggle, and day-to-day survival or coexistence round off the theoretical frame of my argument.