Deportations, the Spreading of Dissent and the Development of Democracy

Abstract

Instead of preventing protest, deportations on political grounds could – under certain circumstances – help to spread dissent. Accordingly, the spaces deportees were sent became fertile ground for new coalitions. Analysing such spaces furthers our understanding of how resistance may be contained, dispersed and re-constituted. The main part of this article focuses on deportations to the Pontine Islands of Ponza and Ventotene under Italian Fascism. Under such conditions, new political ideas were elaborated. The genesis of the Ventotene Manifesto will be considered as a starting point for a genealogy that opens up alternative trajectories of development for another European Union and, indeed, for today’s understanding of democracy. If, today, Europe closes its borders, it destroys the idea behind such a vision of unification. Therefore, it is urgently necessary not only to recall the genesis of this manifesto, but also the authors’ experience of being refugees.