the Saga of Italian Entrepreneurs in Romania: Ethnography an Economic Mobility Since 1980s

This volume offers an anthropological and socio-political analysis of the mobility of Italian entrepreneurs (with a particular focus on the Venetian component) in Romania starting from the 1980s. The author documents how the choices and strategies of these economic actors anticipated and accompanied the major transformations of the host country: from the end of the communist regime to the economic transition, up to its integration into the global market. Moving through the folds of globalization, the investigation highlights the different souls of this entrepreneurial migration - from innovators to fixers - analyzing the concrete impact of their networks in creating a local specificity, as in the emblematic case of the city of Timișoara. Alongside market dynamics, a profound existential dimension emerges, linked to the lived experiences of the protagonists and their search for a "second youth" abroad. Based on an ethnographic study conducted between 2009 and 2012 as part of a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the text represents a rigorous model of a scientific monograph, essential for understanding the contemporary evolution of Italian-Romanian relations.