Dealing with ‘Returns’: African Decolonization and Repatriation to Italy, 1947–70

Abstract

The repatriation of many citizens to Italy from the former colonies, and from other Italian communities in Africa, between the Second World War and the late 1960s, had a significant impact on the country. Compatriots coming back from Africa forced Italian institutions to deal with problems of reception and resettlement and made the consequences of African decolonization evident in the peninsula. Looking at three different cases of repatriation, the return of settlers from Italian ex-colonies (Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia), and the return of Italians from Tunisia and Egypt, this article aims to display the political strategies enacted by post-war Italy in order to cope with citizens returning from Africa. The comparative approach highlights the political reasons that guided the State's action during the long repatriation. Italian governments had different attitudes towards the returnees, depending on the purposes of domestic and foreign policy but also on their places of departure and the supposed more difficult assimilation of certain groups of repatriates. In this regard, the article argues that the definitive resettlement in the peninsula of the returnees from Tunisia and Egypt was especially discouraged by the institutions, which long tried to divert those flows of migration to other destinations.