Occupying spaces, regulating bodies: a cultural history of the Celere and mobile police units in the Italian Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACT There has been a revival in studies on the various Italian police forces in recent times. This article is part of that trend and uses interpretive categories that have become widespread internationally, such as protest policing. The use of these categories allows the work to introduce specific events and law enforcement history within the broader history of contemporary Italy. In this context, the article examines a previously understudied issue from a historical and scientific perspective. There has never been a comprehensive study of the special police units called ‘Celeri’ and ‘Mobili’. However, since their creation in 1944, they have played an important role in the Italian Republic and affairs between politics and law and order through their unique characteristics, direct dependence on Interior ministers, their capacity for rapid intervention throughout the national territory, and their function as anti-riot police. Through largely unpublished sources, the article outlines the history of the Italian riot police, including the images and public perceptions associated with them. The interpretative perspective focuses on the relationships of antagonism and mutual influence between two ‘spaces’: the internal space of the special units and the external space of society in Italy. Polysemic categories of physical and symbolic knowledge, help explain the complex history of the Italian riot police. The article also investigates the ’bodies’ (police, society, political), the disconnect between practice and imagination, and the weight of certain stereotypes associated with these units which have, until now, impeded a scientific reconstruction of their history. 1