ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the form of mobility, as Bilotta notes, proven paradoxically both central and peripheral to accounts of modern Italy - migration - in order to know how scholars can best capture and explicate the multiple natures of Italy and Italianness. It reveals various forms of migration that, the Italian case offers an important corrective to the limited treatment of time that fall under the mobilities heading. The Italian case encourages to think beyond the mobilities paradigm by highlighting mobility as both a category of practice and analysis. The chapter discusses migrant returns as the result of World War I, the new politics of emigration/immigration as US restrictions redirected migrants to European destinations, fascist efforts to mobilize italiani nel mondo and labour agreements between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It examines the historical experiences of oltre italie that link together emigration and immigration in Italian spaces, by considering both the possibilities and potential perils of a mobilities approach.
