This article examines Rome City Council's policies concerning the Roma during Francesco Rutelli's two terms as mayor (1993-2001). It demonstrates that the Rutelli administration's policies for these minority communities shifted from a superficial but genuine attempt to overcome aspects of marginalization to a criminalizing strategy of exclusion. It is argued here that the failure significantly to improve the social conditions of the Roma was due to (a) a refusal to tackle the inter-related causes of their social exclusion and (b) submission to the anti-Roma hostility of parts of the voting public. Following the demolition of Rome's largest shanty town in October 2000, the Council was unable to house many of the Roma it had made homeless. It would seem that a ‘cleaning-up’ campaign was intro duced to distance undocumented individuals and those with criminal records from the city through a notable rise in police raids. This change in approach was accompanied and justified by an intensification of ethnicized public order discourse.

This paper analyses the role of the Centro Scalabrini in London in defining a sense of belonging and identification for Italians in Britain. The essay broadens the conventional focus on how community organizations contribute to constructing an ‘imagined community’ for minority or migrant populations by suggesting that organizations are used as cultural objects and collective props for enacting and experiencing collective affective belonging abroad. The paper examines the processes through which community spaces themselves are constructed as scenes of ethnicity, for example, in the visual and narrative accounts of events found in the community press. However, rather than arguing that ethnic organizations simply reproduce an identity and culture, it is argued that the community centre offers intimations of ethnicity, as well as ‘intimate ethnicity’, for those who use it and move through it. As a locale in which Italians and other migrants can find themselves again (ritrovarsi), what the centre offers is not the continuity or reproduction of the old world; it is the production of a portable Italianness through traces that are filled with sensuality, with the bodily experience of contact.

Scholars argue that the realignment of the electorate which took place with the transition to the so-called Italian Second Republic followed mainly a traditional partisan pattern, with electors of the former centre ruling parties (the Christian Democrats and the Socialists) turning to vote for the new centre and right parties (Forza Italia and the National Alliance), while left-wing voters continued to hold their traditional allegiance. Behind this apparent electoral turmoil there would appear to be little in the way of voter mobility. Such a reading implies continuity in the motivations of voters who behaved according to their previous ‘personal electoral history’ and in accordance with their sub-cultural political identification. Here an alternative interpretation is proposed in which it is argued that as a result of the 1994 realignment elections voters who deserted the centre (the heirs of the Christian Democrats) did so also according to their class interest and in response to the policy proposal of the centre-right. Since that time a ‘valence model’ of electoral behaviour has begun to emerge where ‘reasoning voters’ react to the performance of the incumbent, and voting also depends on an assessment of leadership, policy performance and issues.

The coast of Emilia-Romagna is a favourite destination for the seasonal movement of Senegalese street-sellers. It is no coincidence that Rimini hosted one of the first racist demonstrations of shopkeepers in 1989. The situation has worsened over time. In fact, the local public discourse on immigration never developed autonomously but has always been connected to the discourse expressing the main concern of the town: irregular trade. Yet discourses do not work alone and are linked also to social relations and to economic trends such as the restructuring of the local retailing economy and the tourist sector. This article therefore shows how racism in Rimini is the fluid product of, first, the overlapping of discourses about differing social phenomena which shape the dominant discourse on immigration; and, secondly, the identification with this dominant discourse that has emerged from everyday social relations and institutional practices. The latter part of the article presents elements of the counter-discourse, based on observations and conversations carried out with Senegalese immigrants in a summer camp outside Rimini. Finally, a proposal by the mayor of Rimini to exclude non-resident immigrants coming from outside the province is analysed as an example of the criminalization of immigrants through the application of a ‘sedentarist metaphysic’.

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.

The word antipolitica (‘anti-politics’) is widely used in contemporary Italian political debate. The concept of ‘anti-politics’ is also frequently used by social scientists in explaining the Italian political transition that took place during the 1990s and analysing the current political situation. In spite of this wide use, sociopolitical literature does not provide a consensual definition of the term. As result, the semantic field of the concept as yet appears poorly defined. This article provides a detailed look at the use of the term ‘anti-politics’ in the sociopolitical literature. Structuring the analysis around some basic conceptual distinctions, the article proposes a taxonomy of the meanings related to the term ‘anti-politics’, highlighting four different meanings of the concept. Referring in particular to the Italian political system, the article provides examples of the meanings of the concept of ‘anti-politics’ using phenomena occurring in the peninsula during the 1990s – phenomena which were central to the increasing use of the term in Italy during that decade.

The family in Italy lies at the centre of an apparent paradox. On the one hand, it appears stronger in its traditional form based on marriage and on intergenerational solidarity than in most European countries. The normal way of living for couples is marriage, marriage instability is lower than the European average, and births out of wedlock are scarce. On the other hand, with its low fertility and long permanence of children in their parents’ household, Italy appears to be a country where the forming of new families and the reproduction of families is most difficult. This article explores the reasons for this paradox, many of which lie in the persistent gender division of labour and in the lack of supportive family policies. At the same time the article shows that despite the apparent stability of the family many changes are under way, some of them dating back to the early 1960s: not only because of fertility decline, but also due to women's changing patterns of behaviour and expectations.

This article offers a critical exploration of exclusionary practices enacted in Italy towards migrant prostitute women. It identifies the double construction of migrant prostitute women as victims of sex trafficking and as illegal/criminal migrants as a dominant paradigm that informs policy approaches aimed at addressing their presence in the country. It explores how this paradigm has emerged in the specific context of contemporary Italy, how it has been sustained, by whom and with what consequences. By drawing on the exploration of a specific incident, the article shows how gendered and racialised constructions of dangerous migrant sexualities can inform decisions over what determines the slippery and unstable demarcation between those who are identified as victims and those who are identified as criminals. Finally, the article suggests that, caught within the restrictive victim/criminal paradigm, migrant prostitutes fail to be recognised and treated as subjects.

After outlining the trends of Italian Mediterranean politics, this article examines the relationship between Italy and the Maghreb region. As a result of its central geographic position, acting as a natural bridge between Europe and Africa, Italy is undoubtedly more exposed and vulnerable than other countries to any critical developments in the political and economic situation of this area, so it is understandable that it occupies an increasingly important position in Italian foreign policy. Italy has especially considered it in its national interest to make it a specific, high priority to contribute to stabilising this region through multilateral and bilateral initiatives aimed at reinforcing political dialogue and economic cooperation with the coastal countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The aim has been to create a safety net around Italian maritime borders against the risks posed by an uncontrolled increase in migration (to which Italy is more exposed than other countries), the instability of North African energy resources and Islamist terrorists infiltrating Italian territory. Apart from examining the concerns regarding the Maghreb region that have become crucially important for Italian national interests (security, immigration, development, energy), the article analyses the salient elements of bilateral relations between Italy and the Maghreb countries, particularly Libya.

A distinguishing feature of the Berlusconi era has undoubtedly been his personal conflict with the judiciary. Therefore, this article explores the impact of Berlusconi's 20 years in politics on the Italian judicial system. The main argument developed in this analysis is that, thanks to a strong institutional framework built with the 1948 constitution, the Italian judiciary continued to guarantee an effective mechanism of checks and balances. In spite of reiterated attempts by the centre–right majority to modify judicial procedures and organisation to advantage Berlusconi in solving his judicial troubles (ad personam laws), the judiciary was, in the long run, successful in restraining these actions. In fact, several of the ad personam laws were abrogated by rulings of the Constitutional Court, or made substantially ineffective in the implementation stage. Moreover, no substantial reforms of the judicial system have been accomplished, although they were frequently announced. Nevertheless, it may be argued that Berlusconi's anti-judicial rhetoric has had a significant impact on public attitudes towards the judiciary, and contributed to exacerbating the polarisation between two opposite views of the justice system in Italy. The persistent anti-judicial message affected public opinion and was deeply incorporated by centre–right voters, creating a real cleavage on the issue of justice. Moreover, this huge conflict on the justice issue increasingly distracted the attention of political actors from the real organisational problems of the system of justice.

After Mussolini’s regime collapsed, Italy rebuilt itself as a nation and a democracy. The Republican Constitution approved in 1948 rejected the ideologies of both racism and racial discrimination, which had been strengthened and made harsher by Fascism since the mid-1930s. Yet, despite this, racism and racialisation continued in the post-Fascist years. The article analyses how the presence of former colonial subjects in Italy between the 1940s and 1960s was perceived, represented and managed, and demonstrates that the hegemonic discourse of the post-war period still considered Italy to be a white and ethnically homogeneous nation. It considers the stories of people from Libya and Eritrea who applied for Italian citizenship and the life in Italy of some Somali students in the 1960s. From different perspectives, these case studies show how in republican Italy inclusion and exclusion, as well as concepts of identity and otherness, were the consequence of processes of racialisation and ideas inherited from the previous period.

A unique, if problematical, historical source for the study of the ‘private sphere’, the problem page has, as yet, been the subject of little serious attention. This article initially considers the problem page in general terms, and with particular reference to 1950s Italy, a time when a notable feature of the changing patterns of cultural consumption was the emergence and upsurge in popularity of the weekly magazine. The rest of the paper is devoted to an analysis of best-selling author Alba de Céspedes' agony column, ‘Dalla parte di lei’, published in the magazine Epoca. The article shows that the column provides intriguing insights into the state of family and marriage during a time of transition. It discusses the idea of the agony column as a commodity, but also highlights de Céspedes' aim of providing a kind of compendium of lay morals, arguing that any attempt to provide an alternative to the Catholic Church, and the prevailing conservative attitudes of the time, was a matter of careful negotiation.

Municipal fragmentation is a real historical issue in Italy but its relevance has been differently perceived over time. With a focus on the municipal unions and amalgamations as the main tools for defragmentation, we will present an overview of the last quarter century (1990–2017) of territorial policy at the local level. The reforms introduced since 2010 marked a step change in this area: in fact, empirical evidence shows that the most recent defragmentation attempts have had a certain success. This article, by maintaining a descriptive approach, will try to answer why the most recent defragmentation policy achieved some results, in contrast to those of the past. Some explanatory factors will be presented by reviewing the stances of the main actors in this policy field and their interaction with national policy-maker goals and approaches as well as with normative elements and external conditions.

The general question underlying this article is how much have parties changed in Italy in the transition from the First to the Second Republic? The disintegration of the Christian Democrats (DC) in the early 1990s created a large opening on the centre-right of the political spectrum, which was promptly occupied by Forza Italia (FI). A totally new party organisationally speaking, FI, with its centralisation, its personalisation and its charismatic leadership, marked a clear break with all that the DC had represented in terms of its unrestricted pluralism based on strong factions. However, the franchise model adopted by Berlusconi's party, characterised by the co-existence of unity of command at the top, and differentiated and quasi-autonomous bodies locally, may facilitate the convergence of the parties representing the various interests and outlooks on the centre-right in the new rassemblement party that is the PdL. Through the latter, and given the new systemic conditions, Italy may achieve a transformation in the nature of the centre from Christian Democratic to conservative, enabling it to integrate most of the political right as well.

This article takes up the question posed by Claudio Pavone—‘Have the Italians truly known how to come to terms with their past?’—and argues that Italians have indeed grappled with their Fascist past, albeit in varied, contradictory, ambiguous and incomplete ways. This article demonstrates the myriad ways in which Italians—historians, politicians, intellectuals, and segments of the general public—have debated the meaning of Fascism since the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War. What follows below argues that selective remembering and wilful forgetting of the Mussolini regime are nevertheless evidence of an ongoing process of confronting the legacy of Italy's recent past.

This article discusses some of the distinguishing features of the debate over national identity that took place in Italy in the 1990s. Reacting against the threats of the Lega Nord and in response to the new ideological and political landscape of the post-Cold War order, a number of Italian intellectuals rediscovered the value of patriotism. Searching for the origins of the Italians' allegedly weak sense of national identity, some questioned the Resistance and the party system that originated from it. While this historical revisionism has been the object of well-deserved criticism, there is another type of thematization of identity which has received less attention: it deploys the old notion of an ‘Italian character’, which appears frequently in the press and the media. The article shows that this discourse, too, is a way of articulating patriotism, and then reflects on the meaning that this reconfiguration of ideologies and identities acquires in the new context, both domestic and international.

During 2011 Italy reached the verge of a financial default because of its huge public debt. Neither the centre-right nor the centre-left governments that alternated in power in the 2000s were able to introduce the reforms necessary for reducing the debt and promoting growth. The impotence of the government became incompatible with the requirements of the country's continued presence in the eurozone. In November 2011, under the pressure of financial markets and eurozone institutions and leaders, the incumbent centre-right government was obliged to resign, and was substituted by a government composed of technocrats and experts, the Monti government. This lasted until December 2012 and was supported in parliament by a cross-partisan coalition; it was able to introduce some of the structural reforms required, because of the threat of default but also because it did not need to seek the electoral support of powerful constituencies. This article advances an interpretation of the Italian crisis of November 2011, identifying the political and institutional structures and the specific political conditions that fostered a policy stalemate in the country in the 2000s and whose persistence makes the continuation of reforms after the February 2013 elections uncertain.

According to the penalty hypothesis, primaries are considered damaging for parties because of the social and political distinctiveness of the electorate, who usually choose unpalatable candidates for the median voter in general elections. This article deals with two leader selections organised by the Italian Partito Democratico (PD) in 2007 and 2009. Using survey data, voters' characteristics in the two primaries relating to the 2008 parliamentary elections are contrasted in order to find out the differences between the two selectorates and the general electorate. Then, the attitudes of the winners' and losers' supporters in primary elections are compared. Although not definitive, the results contradict the primary penalty thesis. Even if the data point out some relevant differences between selectors and electors, the losers' supporters do not seem to be demobilised by the primary results.

Between 1870 and 1970 the migration of 26 million people from Italy produced an uneven geography of Little Italies worldwide. Migrants initially clustered residentially in many lands, and their festivals, businesses, monuments and practices of everyday life also attracted negative commentary everywhere. But neighbourhoods labelled as Little Italies came to exist almost exclusively in North America and Australia. Comparison of Italy's migrants in the three most important former ‘settler colonies’ of the British Empire (the USA, Canada, Australia) to other world regions suggests why this was the case. Little Italies were, to a considerable extent, the product of what Robert F. Harney termed the Italo-phobia of the English-speaking world. English-speakers’ understandings of race and their history of anti-Catholicism helped to create an ideological foundation for fixing foreignness upon urban spaces occupied by immigrants who seemed racially different from the earlier Anglo-Celtic and northern European settlers.