Industrialization

From the little island of Malta, I now blog from Ann Arbor, Michigan—my home for the Northern hemispheric summer… The links between the two distant spots date back to organized emigration programs, where hundreds were encouraged to take the trip to the empire of Henry Ford and other production lines in search of greater and better opportunities.

I have landed in what is certainly a very different socio-economic picture. Malta and Michigan seem to have little in common apart from the presence of a Maltese community here and a spate of returned migrants from the US whose houses fly the stars and stripes on what is now the “other side” of the Atlantic. Yet these economically successful migrants are a generation dying out.