Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-04-02DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.5
Alessandra Gissi
{"title":"‘Entirely white’? Female immigrants and domestic work in Italy (1960s–1970s)","authors":"Alessandra Gissi","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.5","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, a renewed history of foreign immigration in Italy, focusing on the very first migration flows after the Second World War, has offered a more appropriate periodisation of the phenomenon. Women have been at the forefront of these flows, which were initially determined by the new postcolonial setting of the former Italian colonies (Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia). Subsequently, the immigrants came from various other countries (Spain, Cape Verde, Portugal, El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ceylon, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan). At the same time, the majority of them were employed in a specific sector of the labour market: domestic work. This article focuses on female immigrants who were employed as domestic workers, their presence in public discourse in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, and government policies in this area. Drawing on statistical data and surveys, press and audiovisual materials, and feminist theory and practices, it aims to analyse the construction of paradigms – visibility, invisibility, subalternity, rights and racialisation – associated with female immigration and domestic work as a specific sector of employment.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140533265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-03-25DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.3
Carla Mereu Keating
{"title":"Working in the dream factory: gendering women's film labour under Fascism","authors":"Carla Mereu Keating","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article draws on a broad range of under-explored historical sources to document the career trajectories of the women who worked in the Italian film industry between 1930 and 1944. Challenging established histories that normalise male dominance in Italian cinema during and after Mussolini's regime, the article sheds light on women's overlooked contribution to Italy's sound film industry and explores the multilayered, shifting dimension of their precarious and gendered labour. Engaging with key questions raised by historians of Italian Fascism and by feminist research in film and media history, the article delineates intersectional barriers to film employment faced by women in the years of the dictatorship and points to their historical legacy.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140209762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.4
Eloisa Betti
{"title":"Italian women workers and women activists between home and factory: the struggle against labour precarity (1950s–1970s)","authors":"Eloisa Betti","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>From a gender historical perspective, labour precarity constitutes a long-term phenomenon. Women's work represents a privileged observatory to understand how instability and precarity also characterised the cycle of economic and industrial expansion of the 1950s and 1960s. The article compares the conditions of female factory workers with those of home-based workers, a traditionally invisible category of workers, who between the 1960s and 1970s promoted demonstrations and protests with the support of trade unions, women's associations and local institutions. Changes in the subjectivity of women workers and homeworkers, whose demands often came together and gave rise to joint protests, not only became part of broader discussions on the relationship between industrial crisis and precariousness, but also generated discourses on specific forms of work that are now central to debates on flexible/precarious work such as part-time work.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"151 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140146097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.8
Konstantina Zanou
{"title":"Italy's diasporas: a discussion between Donna R. Gabaccia, Lucy Riall, Pamela Ballinger, and Konstantina Zanou","authors":"Konstantina Zanou","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>It has been over 20 years since Donna R. Gabaccia's seminal work <span>Italy's Many Diasporas</span> was published (London & New York, 2000), an overview of the social, cultural and economic history of Italy's various migrations. Much has changed since then, but this book remains a classic. In this roundtable, historians Lucy Riall, Pamela Ballinger and Konstantina Zanou reflect on the value of Gabaccia's work and on the historical moment of its production. They discuss with the author the developments in the historiography of Italian and other diasporas during the last two decades, and offer insights on new avenues of research including settler colonialism, race and belonging, migration and environmental change, global microhistory and biography, and the Mediterranean context of Italy's migrations.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140096881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1017/mit.2023.77
Balázs Juhász
{"title":"Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war and their employment in the Italian hinterland (1915–1920)","authors":"Balázs Juhász","doi":"10.1017/mit.2023.77","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2023.77","url":null,"abstract":"This essay deals with the criteria for the employment of POWs in Italy during the Great War. It is a contribution to the current research demonstrating the close connection between civilian and military spheres during the war, including in the area of internment. This intertwining is particularly evident when one studies the wartime economic system. Although the article shows that the contribution of POWs was marginal, their work was diverse and particularly visible in certain sectors. Therefore, it is important to clarify the rules that governed their employment, and the outcomes of their work.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"99 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140015578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-02-27DOI: 10.1017/mit.2023.76
Lucia Bonfreschi
{"title":"Political change through the culture of the Radical Party (1962–89)","authors":"Lucia Bonfreschi","doi":"10.1017/mit.2023.76","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2023.76","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The article aims to sketch out the main features of the political culture of the Radical Party (PR). This political culture is paradigmatic of a much broader phenomenon that has affected the politics of Western democracies since the 1970s: the critique of traditional parties in the name of a party model formed by spontaneous groupings of society; the extreme emphasis placed on individual choices in political action, and the programmatic tracing of the latter back to the former; and the call for a less ‘mediated’ relationship between citizens and institutions. Yet, this culture contained certain ingredients that would distance it from the populist forms of the twenty-first century. After grafting anti-authoritarianism onto its liberal matrix the PR identified the promotion of civil rights as the goal and battle for the transformation of the relationship between politics and the citizen. This transformation emphasised the sphere of individual freedom and the liberty to participate in community decisions, and thus implied a transformation of the ways and means of doing politics. In the late 1970s, the PR deepened its critique of parties and partitocracy and, at the same time, emphasised a supranational view of politics, eventually becoming a ‘transnational transparty’ party in 1989.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139976733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-02-07DOI: 10.1017/mit.2023.61
Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, Chiara Brogi, Karen Bertorelli
{"title":"Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI) Summer School 2023: conference report","authors":"Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, Chiara Brogi, Karen Bertorelli","doi":"10.1017/mit.2023.61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2023.61","url":null,"abstract":"This report is about the ASMI Summer School held in Pisa on 22–23 June 2023. The conference focused on twentieth-century history issues: gender studies, cultural studies, resistance studies, fascism studies and mafia studies, with the addition of a round table and two keynote lectures, which discussed the profession of the modern historian and the history of racism in Italy from the Second World War to the present.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139750406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-02-06DOI: 10.1017/mit.2023.69
Alexander Lang
{"title":"Fascist transnationalism during the occupation of Albania (1939–43)","authors":"Alexander Lang","doi":"10.1017/mit.2023.69","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2023.69","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article links the study of transnational and imperial fascism in the context of the Italian occupation of Albania by examining how Italian authorities sought to turn Albanians abroad into assets rather than liabilities. Organising and monitoring Albanians occurred through conferences, youth institutions and consular activities. Studying such concrete contacts and negotiations allows us to explore the practical issues latent in expanding fascist political subjectivity in transnational and imperial contexts. On the one hand, Italians hoped to verse Albanians in a fascist identity by using existing organisational strategies while silencing or converting potential anti-Italian critics. On the other, many Albanians expressed and offered support for these Italian efforts, though with reservations and conditions, raising questions as to what it meant to be an Albanian nationalist and/or fascist in the years of occupation. The Albanian case therefore contributes to our understanding of the tensions inherent in ‘universalising’ fascism for colonial subjects.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139695936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-01-15DOI: 10.1017/mit.2023.71
Isabel Crowhurst
{"title":"Sex work and gendered tax imaginaries","authors":"Isabel Crowhurst","doi":"10.1017/mit.2023.71","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2023.71","url":null,"abstract":"<p>By exploring how the taxation of sex work is interpreted and explained, this article aims to expand theoretical and empirical understandings of tax imaginaries – the collectively formed meanings ascribed to taxes, taxpaying, and the purposes they serve – and how gender is mobilised in their construction. It argues that tax imaginaries created and circulated through online expert commentaries on the taxation of prostitution in Italy discredit sex workers through well-established stigmatising gendered tropes, trivialise the predicaments that they face as taxpayers, and ignore or dismiss systemic ambiguities and discriminations that disadvantage sex workers as citizens. Old prejudices against sex workers are thus reinforced and new ones constituted through these tax imaginaries, while the social inequality and marginalisation experienced by sex workers is obscured.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139468862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}