From the Risorgimento to Berlusconi, what has changed?
“Emigration was a key to the Nationalists’ success in crystallizing their rhetoric and attracting a broad audience.”
Mark Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad, Harvard UP, 2008.
“Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia government has set up a Ministry for Italians Abroad and recently altered the law to allow for the first time a postal vote for Italians living overseas.”
Greg Brown, “Political Bigamy: Dual Citizenship in Australia’s Migrant Communities,” People and Places, 10(1), 2002, pg. 74.
(posted by Laura E. Ruberto)
Interesting thing about the vote to Italians abroad is that the idea of doing that first was proposed by the left in the 80s i believe...took the right to implement it and it actually backfired because back in 2006 the votes from above made for a Prodi-PDS victory.
ReplyDeletethe 2006 backfiring was so revealing....except that, in the short term, doesn't seem to have stuck.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to consider more issues related to citizenship rights--both historically & now--seems so crucial to understanding how culture plays itself out in political terms