Missing the Global Turn: Italy, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the Belated Removal of the Geographical Limitation

Abstract

Italy abolished the ‘geographical limitation’ permitted by the 1951 Refugee Convention only in 1990. Thereafter, it could award refugee status to people in flight from countries outside Europe. Why did Italy come so very late to this resolution? To answer this question, this article intercuts analysis on various different fronts: the strategies of successive national governments; the actual presence on Italian soil of people needing asylum, and the response of local communities; and Italy's location in the international setting. It demonstrates that until the end of the 1970s the Italian authorities continued to see the refugee issue as principally a problem for its internal policy. Italy remained disconnected from the global turn in policy on refugees, which many historians have placed in the period that spans the late 1950s and early 1960s. In their view, state institutions, voluntary agencies, and the international public experienced profound changes at this time in their perception of refugees, starting to see them as a problem at the global level rather than just affecting Europe. For Italy, however, this was not the case, and we therefore need to question the actual impact of the global turn delineated by the studies.