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FrancoAngeli Journals

Papers

No. 3 (2026)

Stories from the Italian-French border: Drawings and writings of migration from/to Oulx.

  • Silvia Aru
  • Arianna Locatelli
  • Luca Ramello
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rgioa3-2026oa23542
Submitted
agosto 26, 2026
Published
2026-10-05

Abstract

This article presents an unpublished set of drawings and writings left by people in transit at the Rifugio Fraternità Massi in Oulx, on the Italian-French border, an area crossed by one of the main irregular migration routes within the European Union. The paper proposes an analysis of these materials developed through a teaching lab within a university course in Critical migration studies of the University and Polytechnic of Turin. From a theoretical perspective, the contribution seeks to introduce the notion of ‘migration traces’ into the Italian scholarly debate, a topic that has been widely discussed in the Anglophone literature, highlighting the epistemic potential of these materials for the geography of migration. Through its focus on migration traces and their analysis, the article ultimately offers a bottom-up perspective on migratory routes towards and across Europe.

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