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“Becoming Visible”: Italian Women and Their Male Co-Citizens in the Liberal State

Sabina Donati (ed.)

in A Political History of National Citizenship and Identity in Italy, 1861-1950

“Becoming Visible”: Italian Women and Their Male Co-Citizens in the Liberal State

Citizenship of Women and Their Counterpart Throughout the Ventennium

Sabina Donati (ed.)

in A Political History of National Citizenship and Identity in Italy, 1861-1950

This chapter examines citizenship policies, strategies and discourses pertaining to Italian women and men during Mussolini’s regime. Drawing on studies about gender and fascism, it explores the issue ... More

This chapter examines citizenship policies, strategies and discourses pertaining to Italian women and men during Mussolini’s regime. Drawing on studies about gender and fascism, it explores the issue of birth to citizens (jus sanguinis) and the fascist duty of being prolific within a context of eugenic thinking and dictatorial pro-natalist objectives. It also surveys the fascistization of civil, political and social rights, and outlines trends and dilemmas that illustrate the fascist variant of female status civitatis vis-à-vis its counterpart. In the discussion, comparisons are also made with Nazi Germany. Finally, the chapter surveys the major racial discourses that touched upon the notion of Italianness and that were articulated in the peninsula not only during the late fascist period but also throughout the 1920s and the early 1930s. It does so by focusing on racial thinking pertaining to origins of the Italians, anti-Southern prejudices, and anti-Semitism.Less

Migration and the City

Tanya Hart

in Health in the City: Race, Poverty, and the Negotiation of Women's Health in New York City, 1915-1930

This chapter discusses the sociological, literary and cultural aspects of life that African American, British West Indian, and Southern Italian women encountered and created after coming to New York ... More

This chapter discusses the sociological, literary and cultural aspects of life that African American, British West Indian, and Southern Italian women encountered and created after coming to New York City. These women often had parallel and overlapping reasons for their migrations and competed for housing, services, and even prospective sexual mates. In addition, the chapter reconstructs how these poor and working-class women dealt with the vagaries of daily urban living—abandonment, poor health, caring for their children, work, and abandonment—by using census and sociological data from the 1910s and 1920s and Community Organization Society social work interviews of women who lived in Columbus Hill and the Mulberry District.Less

National Risorgimento, the Piedmontese Solution and the Origins of Italian Monarchical Subjecthood (1859–1866)

Sabina Donati (ed.)

in A Political History of National Citizenship and Identity in Italy, 1861-1950

This chapter details the genesis and first characteristics of the national civic bond that united the peoples of the peninsula following the unification of Italy under the Savoy monarchy. Focusing on ... More

This chapter details the genesis and first characteristics of the national civic bond that united the peoples of the peninsula following the unification of Italy under the Savoy monarchy. Focusing on the period from 1859 to 1866, it examines the birth of Italian monarchical subjecthood within the context of national Risorgimento; it outlines the peculiar civic divisions that persisted-during the first years of unified Italy-through the regional application of specific pre-unification citizenship norms; and it then discusses the first post-unification Civil Code, introduced to consolidate nation-statehood with peninsulawide citizenship rules. In the course of the discussion, it also highlights the use of jus sanguinis and jus soli in Italy, and includes a comparison with contemporary Germany. Finally, drawing on current scholarship about racial thinking, it enriches the analysis with references to domestic racial discourse on Southern Italians as “internal Others” within a unified country.Less