Il volume curato da Giuseppe Bettoni si apre con una sfida assai ambiziosa, quella posta nel suo titolo e nella sua prefazione, ovvero trattare politica, democrazie e migrazioni in Africa.

Migrants, abandonment and reuse of historical centers. The case of Riace in Calabria. – Italy, a migratory crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia, has always been affected by migratory movements that have affected its regions in different ways. In recent decades, they have assumed a synergistic demo-graphic dimension between population and depopulation, which modifies the structure and composition of the population, mitigating the unstop-pable demographic decline along with the depopulation of historic cen-ters. This is possible through urban redevelopment and socio-economic revitalization paths linked to the reception of migrants. The contribution analyzes possible causes and effects of migratory processes on the Cala-brian population, using the Riace case study as a model in which the “wel-come path” has had positive results and revitalized the historical center with the return of residents and the construction of a society with high values of cultural pluralism.

Migrations: between imaginaries and transnational dynamics. Research ideas from Guinea Bissau – The article analyzes two aspects of the migration process. On the one hand, the role played by migratory imagination in the definition of emigration choices and strategies and, on the other hand, through the case study of Guinea Bissau, the role played by family, association and village networks in establishing transnational relations of mutual collabo-ration between the host country and the country of departure.