From Marseilles to Saigon, via(including) the American continent, the emigration of the islanders is a phenomenon marking the XIXth and XXth centuries, saving(sparing) no family and no village. It joins a tradition going back up(raising) to modern time(period), or even medieval, towards Italy before being linked to the migratory context of Mezzogiorno of the Southern Europe. Between 1931 and 1938, more than 6 000 Corsica leaves the island every year to settle down elsewhere. In 1950s, they are another 1 000 - 1 200 to emigrate every year. The from XIXth century till XXth century, they estimate that at more than 150 000 the number of islanders who leave, by successive waves, for destinations which evolve in the course of decades without the visceral attachment in the island disappears. Factor(Mailman) of integration to the French national set(group), this emigration also shows itself main engine of the construction of Corsican identity. Fought(Disputed), undergone or accepted, negative or positive consequences on the insular company(society) are considerable(significant) so much human point of view, as economic, social and cultural but also political. In 1970s, the adoption of the term of "diaspora" to qualify the large insular community in continental France and abroad reveals the place(square) occupied by this phenomenon in the Corsican imagination.
Sénèque testifies the "traditional" role of welcome(reception) of the foreigners which the island played since the earliest times. From Middle Ages in modern period the immigrant is originally of the Italian peninsula. Tuscans, Sardinians and Ligures are not however perceived(collected) as "foreigners" in cultural integrated Corsica and economically the Italian set(group). French annexation changes the situation. Not long ago minority, the French people become an increasing component of the new newcomers(finishers). By extracting the island of the Italian cultural area to include it into the nation, influxes of immigrants resulting(coming) from the peninsula are perceived(collected) across an identity ambivalence instrumentalized by different diets(regimes) and Corsica themselves. The second half of the XXth century and the beginning of the XXIth century are marked by a new revolution with the substitution of the Italians - for a long time members of the majority party - to the advantage of the Maghrebi and of the Portuguese who(which) become the first foreign communities on the island. The recent international events, the crisis of national identity which crosses France and that reverberates in a peculiar way in Corsica prove to what extent the definition of insular identity builds itself with regard to altérités and to their representations with which the company(society) is confronted.
Identità (identity), a word which even in the plural lives(remains) invariable as an echo to the ideological concept of integration carried by this «community of destiny» supposed to define the Corsican people.