Territorialization practices in the L’Aquila Apennines: transhumance, emigration and tourism. – The paper discusses the interconnected human and animal flows that have characterized the mobility in the high lands of L’Aquila province since the unification of Italy, when flocks and shepherds crossed their paths with emigrants, while tourists began to populate the mountains with different purposes, up to the present day, when the Abruzzo mountains are experiencing new opportunities to enroot the population and promote the territorial revitalization. Subsequently, the socio-spatial dynamics of some food productions of the southern slope of the Gran Sasso d’Italia connected to the practice of Transhumance are presented: secondary products of the pastoral economy of the past, mainly connected to the wool trade, which currently play a central role in creating employment opportunities of small local communities, with important repercussions also in the redefinition of tourist trajectories.

The border as operational space: ‘black spaces’ and border infrastructures. – How can one make sense of territorial borders in a context characterized by increasingly dislocated and widespread migration and border management policies? What policies emerge from the intersection between different types of mobility? And what contribution can geography make to understanding these intersections? Adopting a terminology of borders-as-infrastructures, this essay promotes a topological perspective that focuses on the productive tensions inherent in the very functioning and spatial reach of borders. With a focus on the territorial control mechanisms adopted to channel and filter mobile agricultural labour in the region of Basilicata in 2014-2019, the article moves beyond an understanding of borders as mere territorial divisions or technological devices. The argument advanced here is that border infrastructures involve significant socio-material entanglements – interactions between physical and social forces – that continue to channel and direct our relationship with the territorial state.

The relational space of transhumance: practices, values, visions. – In the past few decades, the study of transhumance has shifted from documenting a declining practice to adopting a more comprehensive approach, integrating heritage studies, political ecology, and the analysis of territorial resignification dynamics. This monographic issue aims to emphasize an articulated and relational perspective on the phenomenon. By using both old and new transhumance practices as a foundation for exploring forms of territoriality, the focus lies on the interplay between mobility and the creation of patrimonial value, cultural landscapes, and governance processes. The central question addressed is whether an operational approach to transhumance routes can effectively reconnect the past and the future. The contents of the volume are organized to prioritize research objectives, with contributions concentrating on the knowledge and patrimonialization of transhumance areas at risk of abandonment, ultimately aiming to preserve their ecological, biological, and cultural values.

Informal Work: Proposing a Dialogue between Development Studies and Labour Geography. The Case of East and Southeast Asia. – The paper brings into dialogue selected streams of critical analysis on the ILO concept of informal labour – especially from the fields of political economy and development studies – with some major insights on labour and its transformations from labour geography. Focusing on the case of East and Southeast Asia, and resorting to the multiscalar notion of “labour regime”, the pa-per details crucial actors and devices that underlie specific ways of organ-izing work, its exploitation – and its informalization – in key export industries such as garment and electronics. More specifically, informalization processes are analyzed at the intersection between international capital mobility, the state and labor organizations, and in relation to the capacity of international capital to exploit pre-existing context-specific differentials, especially along the gender and rural-urban axes. Overall, the paper discloses key labour dynamics characterizing pivotal areas of the so-called “global factory”, while more generally highlighting the co-constitutive role that spatial, territorial and scalar configurations play in the processes of labour informalisation.

The role of policies for the activation of human capital and territorial mobility in con-trasting skilled youth emigration. – This study aims to investigate the role of local human capital activation policies and the value of territorial mobili-ty to contrast the phenomenon of qualified youth emigration. A phe-nomenon that has regained momentum in Italy in the last decade.
This study examines complex initiatives implemented by Italian regions and local authorities (especially Torno Subito by the Lazio Region and other programmes such as Ritorno al futuro by the Puglia Region and Master and Back by the Sardinia Region) that can serve as a model for national and European policy makers. Programmes that can help to counter skilled emigration and support the "right to stay" of a generation of skilled young people who, more than others, suffer from job insecuri-ty and a growing risk of marginalisation.

The Covid-19 pandemic within an inner area of Campania: peripherality, density and virus diffusion in the province of Avellino. – In Italy the Covid-19 emergency hit some of the territories crossed by the thickest commercial networks and the intense flows of human mobility
The paper aims to reason on the factors of territorial vulnerability that may have facilitated the spread of the virus, trying to formulate a first hypothesis about the low density settlement structure has protected the more peripheral communities of the inner areas. Starting from the epidemiological data in an inner province of Campania - that of Avellino - the analysis will try to give a first possible framework of the relationship between the degree of peripherality from the service poles, population density and virus diffusion.

Geographies of Covid-19. – A first analysis of the scenario occurred as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic puts in evidence the changes in the way people deal with the spatial-time dimension, in the human rela-tions and in the consequent socio-territorial configurations.
Since the first moments of the pandemic geography gave an important contribution in the study of the phenomenon and in the analysis of its territorial consequences, useful to elaborate solutions from the global to the local scales.
In this path, the reflections made in the field of geography, and in partic-ular in this issue, regard on one side the global modifications on interna-tional assets, travels and mobility, globalization and borders, on the other side the changes in the daily way of living, furnishing tools useful to con-trast the pandemic and models for a sustainable development.