The first question is: why speak of "Italic peoples" rather than in the more usual and traditional term "Italians"; what distinguishes the concept of "Italic peoples" from that of "Italians"?

The Italic Project is the outcome of study and analysis over a lengthy period of time promoted and coordinated by Globus et Locus on the following issues:

• The evolution and the changing roles (be it cultural, economic or political) of the Italian communities abroad which have sprung up due to migratory processes and transnational mobility in the new global world;
• The strong localistic and regional roots of these processes and communities (Lombards, Venetians, Piedmontese etc., first and foremost, rather than Italian);
• The interconnections and networks which link the local communities of origin of the Italians abroad and the various “segments” of global society in which these communities have settled;
• Finally, the meaning and value of this Italian diaspora around the world and, at the same time, the strategies and policies which might facilitate a mutual appreciation of both the Italian communities abroad and the local and regional communities from which they originated.

The Italic diaspora is, in fact, a great resource which deserves to be highlighted and the subjectivity of which ought to be recognised and embraced: a resource for the societies which welcomed them as for those to which they belonged; a resource for the local and regional communities (in Italy) from which they originated; and finally, a resource too, for the ever more precarious and uncertain world that lies ahead. A world in need of new protagonists and new cultures capable of guaranteeing a more adequate and effective level of global governance and to which our diaspora can offer the contribution of its “glocal” identity and experience and the networks of relations to which these give rise.

It is therefore the objective of the “Italic Project” to analyse the phenomenon, define it in relation to its sociological, political and economic implications and facilitate the aggregation of this virtual community.

Seminars and workshops:

Glocalismo e lingua Italiana

Seminars in co-operation with the Catholic University of America

Convegno Italici nel mondo

Convegno sui media Italici

• Blog "Italicando"
• Links
• Italic Reviews

The concept of italic identity

When we speak of “Italic” and therefore “Italic identity”, we are speaking of a sense of belonging that is “cultural" in the broadest sense of the word rather than ethno-linguistic or juridical and institutional.

We are, in fact, dealing with a community – an estimated 60 million people of Italian origin the world over and, in a wider sense, including the “italophiles”, the figure rises to 250 million – composed not only of ex-patriot Italians and their descendants, but also all those who share the values and interests of the Italian way of life, through encounters with people, things (products bearing the label Made in Italy) and “signs” of the Italic world (from information to art, cinema and all those technological instruments which feed our “collective imagination”.

The thousands of associations, communities and community centres all over the world for people of Italian origin bear witness to the omnipresence and vitality of this great “community of sentiment”: one of the major transnational diasporas which increasingly characterise the world in the age of globalisation.

The Project

The Italic Project promoted by the Association Globus et Locus has the following fundamental objectives:

• to build a network to serve as a point of reference for all those (Foundations, Regional Authorities, national bodies, Chambers of Commerce, Universities, businesses, etc.) working for the development of local areas and communities and, in the course of this work, necessarily intersecting with those “diasporas of localisms” (Lombard, Venetian, Piedmontese, etc.) in almost every part of the global world;
• to use this network in order to promote meetings, collaboration, operative and planning synergies among these agents, with specific reference to that “disapora of localisms” which we today sum up in the term “Italic”. This should give added impetus to common efforts in this field, making it possible to carry out initiatives which the individual agents on their own would be incapable of or unable to afford, thus delivering “economies of scale”;
• to reach a consensus on the common premises of the major protagonists (in particular, the banking foundations) as far as the broader project is concerned.