Paper short abstract:

A visual ethnography research work dealing with the experience of home and memory within a group of people which have been displaced following to the breakdown of the Morandi bridge, in Genova (Italy), on 14.08.2018.

Paper long abstract:

What did displaced people really lose, in addition to the house, following the collapse of the Morandi bridge, on 14th August 2018, in Genoa? Memories, ornaments and objects that are meaningful or representative of a family history, but above all the meaning of a relationship with the past, with a physical place and with a community.

What then happens are the attempts to make sense of this experience, the efforts to negotiate with the institutions, the anger that never disappears, and the daily practices that no longer adapt to new spaces and new rhythms of life. All this constitutes a process of reconstruction of social subjectivity.

Thus, to those who were previously mere neighbors or persons who knew each other only superficially, to those who were labeled with a word that seems to refer only to the material dimensions of home, the so called "sfollati" (displaced persons), appear a new sense of belonging; and in this context, memory, both individual and collective, becomes a tool of political struggle.