On 5 May 2006 a conference was held in Florence to pay tribute to the career of Anna Maria Martellone, who has devoted most of her academic career to research on Italian migrations (Tiziano Bonazzi). Many of her former students, as well as friends and fellow academics, explored the stages of research into Italo-American questions, focusing on the areas dearest to her: studies on participation in politics (Stefano Luconi and Elisabetta Vezzosi) and communities (Simone Cinotto). As well as taking stock of the research carried out in Italy and the United States, participants addressed the issue of migrations in the global era and their role in determining a constant process of breakdown and recomposition of identity and culture (Maddalena Tirabassi and Giovanni Gozzini). Commenting on the speeches, Ferdinando Fasce returned to the issue of the timing of migrations and the vocabulary used to analyse them. Martellone closed the forum, expressing the hope that the current debate on migrations in Italy would not exclude «the active involvement of that considerable part of historic Italian culture that for some decades has been dedicated to the study of Italian emigration into North and South America and the rest of the world».