This study provided a description of the prevalence of psychological distress among migrants, and an interpretive analysis of the personal characteristics that affected their mental health. The results of surveys completed by 801 migrants in Valencia and Andalusia showed that seven out often people experienced psychological distress, and approximately three of these seven suffered from extreme levels. On the other hand, the emotional impact of immigrants was repeatedly related to the country of birth, educational level, employment situation, administrative-legal status, length of residence, linguistic difficulties and religious beliefs. In general, a majority of the migrant population quietly cope with the symptoms of psychological distress associated with numerous personal and contextual factors of migration. For this reason, it would be advisable to adjust the reception system, especially by implementing prevention and psychotherapeutic intervention programmes, rethinking reception protocols for vulnerable groups and raising awareness in the host society of the need for the healthy inclusion of migrants.
In 1609, urged by his principal advisor, the Duke of Lerma, Philip III decided to expel the Moors from Spain. Between 1609 and 1614, nearly 300,000 people left Spain, mainly to the Maghreb. This exodus was the largest forced migration of the Modern Age. The approximately 120,000 Valencian Moors were the first to be deported under the strict control of the authorities. They were transported to the coasts of North Africa in royal fleets and merchant ships. It took the Kingdom of Valencia a century to recover the demographic and economic levels existing prior to the expulsion.
Italy, a land of emigration, has gradually become, especially since the 1990s, a land of immigration and traffic of transmigrant flows. In this context, it is gradually losing what motivated its reputation as a hospitable and open place and is, together with other European countries, responsible for the suffering and death of many human beings. However, a movement for the rights of migrants and for human rights in general does exist, and is striving to change the situation and make us "restare umani", as Vittorio Arrigoni said about Palestine before he was assassinated; and, within this movement, or accompanying it, are artists committed to human rights, who use their art to denounce, manifest solidarity and poetically open up worlds where we would all live much better. The article traces a brief historical journey and recalls the role of cinema in raising awareness in society.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw an increase in the territory occupied by the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula in al-Andalus. In the 1200s, the Crown of Aragon led the conquest of the Balearic Islands and the territory which, in 1240, King James I established as the medieval kingdom of Valencia, and, in these two new kingdoms, feudal society in all its aspects, institutional, relating to power, economic, religious, cultural, as well as social, was consolidated. This gave rise to significant migration from Catalonia and Aragon to Mallorca and Valencia, replacing a large part of the local Andalusian society expelled by force, and occupying the rural space and the urban world. This study explains how this migratory wave was extended over time; likewise how it was possible to identify, through the study of medieval anthroponymy, the statistical origin of those families of settlers, mostly from Catalonia in the majority of the regions of Valencia; an approximate estimate of the volume of people who migrated in that first century; their distribution in the different regions; and finally, the diversity of classes and social groups involved.
