In the 1700s, the migratory phenomenon not only assumed greater proportions but it delineated an emigration that, especially in the mountains and the piedmont area, presented trade characteristics that were diversified from area to area: stone masons, miners, smiths, woodcutters, carpenters in the Livenza and Tagliamento valleys, railroad workers in Val Tramontina, hotel personnel and porters in western piedmont.
The separation during the 1700s of family units for some months of each year or for entire seasons from the towns of Val d'Arzino and Val Tramontina to Carnia to watch and mount the herds is proof of a migratory picture marked by movement within the Alpine region.
The second half of the 1700s and the first half of the 1800s marked a transition period in which the departures, different from the past, tended to be concentrated at the beginning of Spring "in the season in which the land needed hands: damaging emigration – points out Giovanni Domenico Ciconi in 1845 – because it does not increase but instead decreases the agricultural knowledge of the emigrants, it entices itinerant living, makes little money and reduces the moral duties towards the family and the country".
Francesco Pelizzo, surgeon from Spilimbergo, in his Notizie statistiche della Provincia del Friuli del 1846 (Statistical information of the1846s Province of Friuli), believes that temporary emigration in Friuli is born from the desire to improve the economic situation and not from the necessity to remove oneself from the actions of "topographic elements".
Pelizzo believed the Friuli people would always emigrate by choice.
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