The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy

Ballinger, Pamela

The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy

dc.contributor.author	Ballinger, Pamela
dc.date.accessioned	2023-04-20T14:11:13Z
dc.date.available	2023-04-20T14:11:13Z
dc.date.issued	2020-03-15
dc.description.abstract	In The World Refugees Made, Pamela Ballinger explores Italy's remaking in light of the loss of a wide range of territorial possessions—colonies, protectorates, and provinces—in Africa and the Balkans, the repatriation of Italian nationals from those territories, and the integration of these "national refugees" into a country devastated by war and overwhelmed by foreign displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Post-World War II Italy served as an important laboratory, in which categories differentiating foreign refugees (who had crossed national boundaries) from national refugees (those who presumably did not) were debated, refined, and consolidated. Such distinctions resonated far beyond that particular historical moment, informing legal frameworks that remain in place today. Offering an alternative genealogy of the postwar international refugee regime, Ballinger focuses on the consequences of one of its key omissions: the ineligibility from international refugee status of those migrants who became classified as national refugees. The presence of displaced persons also posed the complex question of who belonged, culturally and legally, in an Italy that was territorially and politically reconfigured by decolonization. The process of demarcating types of refugees thus represented a critical moment for Italy, one that endorsed an ethnic conception of identity that citizenship laws made explicit. Such an understanding of identity remains salient, as Italians still invoke language and race as bases of belonging in the face of mass immigration and ongoing refugee emergencies. Ballinger's analysis of the postwar international refugee regime and Italian decolonization illuminates the study of human rights history, humanitarianism, postwar reconstruction, fascism and its aftermaths, and modern Italian history.	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.7298/8jjm-af41
dc.identifier.isbn	9781501747588 (print hardcover)
dc.identifier.isbn	9781501770111 (print paperback)
dc.identifier.isbn	9781501747595 (epub)
dc.identifier.isbn	9781501747601 (PDF ebook)
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1813/113081
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	Cornell University Press	en_US
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	*
dc.subject	Citzenship	en_US
dc.subject	Repatriation	en_US
dc.subject	Italian History	en_US
dc.subject	Human & Civil Rights	en_US
dc.subject	Post WWII	en_US
dc.title	The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy	en_US
dc.type	book	en_US
schema.accessibilityFeature	readingOrder	en_US
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schema.accessibilityFeature	displayTransformability	en_US
schema.accessibilityHazard	none	en_US
schema.accessibilitySummary	"Accessibility Feature(s)" apply only to the EPUB file.	en_US