ABSTRACT
During the Second World War Italy lost its colonial empire. Among the many consequences, there was the forced return of tens of thousands of settlers who lived and worked in the former colonies. This return migration, being both postwar and postcolonial, poses several interpretive issues: were they similar to the many postwar refugees who moved throughout Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War? How did their homeland manage their reintegration into Italian society? Did they perceive themselves as repatriated or displaced persons? What role did they play as actors in the process of decolonization? This chapter, using archival sources and articles from ex-settler association journals, will try to answer to these questions. Primary sources will be read through the frame given by the international literature on postcolonial repatriation, with special attention to those national cases – especially the French, the Portuguese, and the Japanese – that can be usefully compared with the Italian case. The first part will examine settlers’ evacuation plans and their fulfilment; the second part will consider how the Italian government managed the refugee emergency in postwar Italy; and the third part will study ex-settlers’ identity, self-representation, and political action. The ultimate goal is to show how the Italian case fits into the broader scenario of postcolonial mobility in Europe, thus contributing to the international debate on decolonization in a settler colonial context.
