Migration and Labour in Global History: a Training Course for Secondary-School Teachers Promoted by Fondazione ISEC and the University of Insubria

A journey through five centuries of history to understand migration, labour, exploitation and citizenship from a global perspective. Fondazione ISEC in Milan, in collaboration with the University of Insubria, is organising the training course “Italy and Migration in Global Dynamics. Between Free and Forced Labour from the Early Modern Age to the Present”, aimed at teachers in lower and upper secondary schools.

The course is designed to explore the historical dimension of globalisation processes and to provide teachers with tools, sources and methodological insights for developing interdisciplinary teaching activities. The sessions will focus on the relationship between human mobility, free labour and forced labour, examined over a period stretching from the early modern age to the present.

Particular attention will be devoted to the role of Italy and Italians in the development of the global economy. The Italian peninsula will be analysed both as a country of departure, involved in major international migration flows, and, in more recent history, as a country of arrival and employment for migrant workers. The course will also address the involvement of Italian actors and networks in organising and transporting workers subjected to forms of coercion along routes linking Africa, the Americas and Asia, highlighting how, throughout history, the boundary between free and forced labour has been shifting and controversial.

The course is free of charge and entirely online and consists of five sessions scheduled between November and December 2026.

The programme will open on Thursday 12 November, from 4.30 to 6 p.m., with Federica Morelli of FBK-ISIG, who will give a lecture entitled “Freedom and Coercion in the History of Labour”. On Monday 16 November, again from 4.30 to 6 p.m., Catia Brilli of the University of Insubria and FBK-ISIG will address the topic “Free Labour and Slavery in the History of Early Modern Italian Diasporas”.

The third session will take place on Thursday 26 November, with Matteo Sanfilippo of the University of Tuscia and the Centro Studi Emigrazione Roma, who will speak on “Labour and Italian Migration from Unification to the Present”. On Wednesday 2 December, Simona Berhe of the University of Florence will present “Colonialism and Labour: Italians in Africa”. The series will conclude on Thursday 10 December with Giovanni Ferrarese of the CNR, who will give a lecture entitled “Illegal Gangmastering in Italy from the Post-War Period to the Present”. All sessions will run from 4.30 to 6 p.m.

The course provides teachers with tools that can also be used in the teaching of history and civic education, encouraging reflection on the relationship between migration, rights, labour exploitation and citizenship. The educational objective is to interpret migration from a long-term historical perspective and to place Italian history within the global dynamics of labour, while also examining the often uncertain boundaries between freedom and coercion in the past and present.

The academic project is coordinated by Giorgio Bigatti of Fondazione ISEC and Catia Brilli of the University of Insubria and FBK-ISIG.

To register for the course, participants should email didattica2@fondazioneisec.it, specifying the title of the course in their request: “Italy and Migration in Global Dynamics. Between Free and Forced Labour from the Early Modern Age to the Present”.