In the refined context of the Sala ZuccaridelSenato della Repubblica, where the frescoes seem to preserve centuries of words and institutional events, on 12 March 2026 a public ceremony was celebrated that is not only an event, but a civil rite: the International Award of Excellence “Divinmente Donna”, promoted and organized by the cultural association VerbumlandiArt. An event that, year after year, has become a symbolic place where female talent is not simply recognized, but narrated, shared, returned to the community as a collective heritage.
Among women awarded for 2026 – all excellent personalities who illustrate and witness in society the extraordinary value of female commitment – a figure stands out for its ability to transform numbers into stories, statistics in faces, migrations into a human account: Delfina Licata, a sociologist of the Fondazione Migrantes, has been the voice and mind of the Italian Report in the World (RIM).
Delfina Licata not only studies mobility and emigration: he listens to it. It follows it in its winding paths, sudden departures and desired returns, in the nostalgies that cross the oceans and in the new roots that intertwine elsewhere. His work is a bridge between generations and geographies, a sentimental atlas of Italy that changes and moves. Since 2006 he has been coordinating a transnational editorial team that reconstructs the map of contemporary Italian emigration every year. Before that, he has worked for over a decade to the main immigration dossiers in Italy, honing a rigorous methodology on the phenomenon of migration and a rare sensitivity, that of those who know that behind each given there is a life that deserves to be understood and told.
His career is full of significant assignments that tell a constant commitment. It can be described, in summary, from the Festival of Migration of Modena to the projects of the Ministry of Education, from the Table of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Tourism of Radici to the recent appointment in the parliamentary committee of inquiry on the demographic transition, which adds a significant participation in conferences and seminars of study on the Italian migration phenomenon, of which you are an expert of excellence. Different roles and a single red thread: the will to give an analytical and scientific feedback on who moves from Italy, who leaves, who returns, who seeks a possible elsewhere. A Report that is an indispensable reference point for anyone wishing to study, know and understand Italian emigration.
During the ceremony, chaired by the godmother Marisa Manzini, Deputy Attorney General of the Republic in Catanzaro, led by the president of the Regina Resta Prize and the president of the Scientific Committee Maria Pia Turiello, who with Mirella Cristina and Eugenio Bisceglia also conducted the event, the name of Delfina Licata is resounded as that of a woman who has been able to transform the search into a care gesture towards the country. A woman who does not observe from afar, but enters the stories, crosses them, returns them together with respect and depth in the annual Italian Report in the World. It gave clear perception of the motivation of the bestowal that accompanied the award.
REASONS
To the sociologist Delfina Licata, scholar of migration dynamics and authoritative voice in the panorama of contemporary social research, for its precious scientific and cultural commitment dedicated to the study of human mobility and Italian communities in the world. Through his work at the Migrantes Foundation, and in particular as curator and editor of the Italian Report in the World, he contributed to give analytical depth and human value to the narrative of Italian migrations, transforming data and statistics into stories of people, identity and future. Due to its ability to combine scientific rigor and social sensitivity, offering a lucid and human reading of contemporary migration phenomena and promoting greater cultural and civil awareness on the transformations of global society. With his thought and research, Delfina Licata represents an authoritative female voice that illuminates the public debate on migration, promoting dialogue, knowledge and responsibility for Italian communities in the world.
The “Divinmente Donna” Award is not, therefore, a simple recognition, an invitation to look at the world with new eyes. To recognize in female biographies not only excellence, but vision. To understand that culture, when lived as a responsibility, can really change the way a society is told. In this sense, the presence of Delfina Licata among the distinguished is not only deserved, it is necessary. Because telling about migration means telling Italy. And doing it with its competence, its delicacy and tenacity means giving back to the country a deeper awareness of itself.
L’articolo Delfina Licata, the voice that tells the other Italy in the world proviene da IlNewyorkese.
