History Commons^™

Italy At Home And Abroad After 150 Years: The Legacy Of Emigration And The Future Of Italianità, Mark I. Choate

Faculty Publications

Shortly after unification in the Risorgimento, mass emigration stretched Italy in unforeseen ways, changing its culture, economics, and politics, and even its state, territory, language, and population. This enforced globalization polarized Italy and radically changed Italy as a nation-state and as a national culture. Controversies over emigration sharply divided Italian Liberals from the Nationalists and Fascists. The ideals of the nation-state, articulated by Mazzini, have been transformed by emigration in ways that have anticipated the twenty-first century global world. Today Italy faces similar challenges with rising immigration, together with the potential for constructive solutions.