Abstract
The racialization of Italian citizenship and identity traces back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the first citizenship law of the unified state was approved. At a time when Italy partook in the imperialist race of European nations to colonize Africa, ‘race’ and ‘mixed race’ explicitly appeared as legal categories of the country’s statehood. The end of the Second World War brought about a gradual withholding of both the use of such legal categories and of a critical discussion in the public sphere of their legacy. This chapter critically considers to what extent ‘race’ is at the core of the legislative and discursive foundation of Italian national identity and citizenship. It underlines some country-specific reasons why the use of ‘mixed race’ in today’s Italy appears to be particularly problematic and why any actual debate on race has been foreclosed from the current Italian public and political spheres.
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Notes
- 1.
‘“Race” out, gender equality in as France updates constitution’, France 24, https://www.france24.com/en/20180628-race-out-gender-equality-france-updates-constitution.
- 2.
- 3.
Approved by the Royal Decree of 15 November 1865.
- 4.
- 5.
Session 19 June 1911. Camera dei Senatori. Atti parlamentari, Legislatura XXIII, Sessione I, Discussioni (dal 23 maggio al 25 giugno 1911), VIII, 6362, 6563. Rome: Tipografia del Senato.
- 6.
- 7.
Law n.999, 6 July 1933.
- 8.
‘Quando i caratteri somatici e altri indizi [facevano] fondatamente ritenere che uno dei genitori [fosse] di razza bianca’ Law. 6 July 1933, n. 999, Ordinamento Organico per l’Eritrea e la Somalia, art. 18. My translation.
- 9.
R.d.l. 19 April 1937, no. 880, turned into l. 30 December 1937, no. 2590 (Barrera 1996, p. 38).
- 10.
Norme relative ai Meticci, 13 May 1940.
- 11.
Until 1947 when racial laws were revoked.
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- 13.
- 14.
Law 5th February, 1992, n. 91.
- 15.
Website of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs: http://www.esteri.it/MAE/Templates/GenericTemplate.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID={CAEFCD4E-B07F-4BF4-9FE0-F01AFB14F5EE}&NRORIGINALURL=%2fMAE%2fEN%2fMinistero%2fServizi%2fSportello_Info%2fDomandeFrequenti%2fCittadinanza%2f&NRCACHEHINT=Guest#domanda2).
- 16.
Many personal narratives can be read on the website of Rete G2-Seconde Generazioni,a network formed by immigrants’ children, see www.secondegenerazioni.it.
- 17.
- 18.
See the new Decree Law no. 113 of 4 October(converted, with amendments, into Law no. 132 of 1 December 2018) on security and immigration promoted by the current Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Matteo Salvini. The decree, also known as the ‘Salvini decree’, introduces amongst other things the abolition of humanitarian protection (replaced with ‘special cases’); wider powers of detention of migrants; the revocation of Italian citizenship and the exclusion of asylum seekers from the local reception system (SPRAR). It also doubled the waiting time to get Italian citizenship and it increased the application fee.
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Pesarini, A., Tintori, G. (2020). Mixed Identities in Italy: A Country in Denial. In: Rocha, Z.L., Aspinall, P.J. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Classification. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22874-3_19
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