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THE WORLD REFUGEES MADE -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Note on Names -- Introduction: Mobile Histories -- 1. Empire as Prelude -- 2. Wartime Repatriations and the Beginnings of Decolonization -- 3. Italy's Long Decolonization in the Era of Intergovernmentalism -- 4. Displaced Persons and the Borders of Citizenship -- 5. Reclaiming Fascism, Housing the Nation -- Conclusion: "We Will Return" -- Notes -- Archives and Collections Consulted -- Index.

In The World Refugees Made, Pamela Ballinger explores Italy's remaking in light of the loss of a wide range of territorial possessions—colonies, protectorates, and provinces—in Africa and the Balkans, the repatriation of Italian nationals from those territories, and the integration of these "national refugees" into a country devastated by war and overwhelmed by foreign displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Post-World War II Italy served as an important laboratory, in which categories differentiating foreign refugees (who had crossed national boundaries) from national refugees (those who presumably did not) were debated, refined, and consolidated. Such distinctions resonated far beyond that particular historical moment, informing legal frameworks that remain in place today. Offering an alternative genealogy of the postwar international refugee regime, Ballinger focuses on the consequences of one of its key omissions: the ineligibility from international refugee status of those migrants who became classified as national refugees. The presence of displaced persons also posed the complex question of who belonged, culturally and legally, in an Italy that was territorially and politically reconfigured by decolonization. The process of demarcating types of refugees thus represented a critical moment for Italy, one that endorsed an ethnic conception of identity that citizenship laws made explicit. Such an understanding of identity remains salient, as Italians still invoke language and race as bases of belonging in the face of mass immigration and ongoing refugee emergencies. Ballinger's analysis of the postwar international refugee regime and Italian decolonization illuminates the study of human rights history, humanitarianism, postwar reconstruction, fascism and its aftermaths, and modern Italian history.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- INTRODUCTION: In the Shadow of the Balkans, On the Shores of the Mediterranean -- CHAPTER ONE: Mapping the Terrain of Memory -- PART I: MAKING AND BREAKING STATES -- CHAPTER TWO: Geographies of Violence: Remembering War -- CHAPTER THREE: Constructing the "Trieste Question," Silencing the Exodus -- CHAPTER FOUR: Revisiting the History of World War II -- PART II: MAKING MEMORY -- CHAPTER FIVE: The Politics of Submersion: The Foibe -- CHAPTER SIX: Narrating Exodus: The Shapes of Memory -- CHAPTER SEVEN: Remaking Memory: The View from Istria -- CHAPTER EIGHT: Balkan Shadows, Balkan Mirrors: Paradoxes of "Authentic Hybridity -- EPILOGUE: "Good-bye, Homeland -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index

This article explores the Homeless European Land Program, an experiment in resettling foreign refugees in post-Second World War Sardinia undertaken by two idealistic Americans with the support of the Brethren Service Committee and the fledgling UNHCR. Focusing on individuals rejected for immigration, the initiative aimed to integrate these 'hard core' refugees by rendering them agents of development of a 'backwards' region of the Italian South and to overcome Italian reluctance to serve as a country of permanent resettlement for the displaced. The history of this project reveals the contradictory impulses of early Cold War refugee relief and humanitarianism: the competition between intergovernmental and voluntary agencies, of secular and spiritual enterprises, and of images of refugees as dependent and difficult to settle and yet capable of self-sufficiency. Many of the ideas piloted in Sardinia, notably the linking of self-sufficiency and development, later became prominent in the UNHCR's work in the Global South.

AbstractThis article examines extended debates after World War II over the repatriation of Italian civilians from Albania, part of the Italian fascist empire from 1939 until 1943. Italy's decolonization, when it is studied at all, usually figures as rapid and non-traumatic, and an inevitable byproduct of Italy's defeat in the war. The tendency to gloss over the complexities of decolonization proves particularly marked in the Albanian case, given the brevity of Italy's formal rule over that country and the overwhelming historiographical focus on the Italian military experience there. In recovering the complex history of Italian and Albanian relations within which negotiations over repatriation occurred, this article demonstrates the prolonged process of imperial repatriation and its consequences for the individuals involved. In some cases, Italian citizens, and their families, only "returned" home to Italy in the 1990s. The repatriation of these "remainders" of empire concerned not only the Italian and Albanian states but also local committees (notably the Circolo Garibaldi) and international organizations, including the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In recuperating this history, the analysis rejects seeming truisms about the forgotten or repressed memory of Italian colonialism. Drawing upon critical theories of "gaps," the article addresses the methodological challenges in writing such a history.

This article is part of the special section titled Recursive Easts, Shifting Peripheries, guest edited by Pamela Ballinger. This article examines the critical purchase of the notion of Eastern Europe. Although scholarship exploring various easternisms flourished in the two decades following the Cold War's end, for some observers this framework appears increasingly irrelevant for understanding contemporary Europe. The symbolic and political boundary processes marking out East and West within Europe, however, possess both deep histories and durable afterlives, as recent events (from the financial crisis to the Mediterranean refugee crisis) demonstrate. In refocusing our gaze on the (re)constructions of the East in European politics, this article does not advocate a mere reiteration of earlier perspectives on Orientalism (or Balkanism). Rather, the discussion points the way towards productive dialogue between bodies of literature on regionally specific variants of easternism while simultaneously introducing new concepts (such as the tidemark) into the debates. Furthermore, the essay makes the case for the continued salience of the periphery concept, which retains significance as a local category of meaning and practice in many European contexts. "Periphery" thus offers a particularly powerful lens through which to consider the recombinations and intersections of old distinctions—North versus South, East versus West—transforming the spatial, political, and cultural landscapes of contemporary Europe.

This article is part of the special section titled Recursive Easts, Shifting Peripheries, guest edited by Pamela Ballinger. In this brief introduction to the special forum on the topic of "Recursive Easts, Shifting Peripheries: Whither Europe's 'Easts' and 'Peripheries'?" the author lays out the conceptual framework for the forum's contributions. The forum takes as its starting point the supposed "obsolescence" of both the notion of Eastern Europe and the scholarship dedicated to this topic, which flourished in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War's end. The author argues, instead, the continued urgency and value in studying the operation of easternisms and processes of peripheralization within the European context. In particular, the author highlights the recursive nature of easternisms and peripheries.

Italian decolonization has often been described as precocious, given Italy's loss of effective control over its colonies as a result of military defeat in the Second World War. In Libya, however, the projects of agrarian 'demographic colonization' that became a showpiece of fascist colonialism continued until 1960 and created persistent tensions between Italy and the independent Libyan state. This article examines a key aspect of Italy's protracted disengagement from Libya: the extended colonial twilight in which Italian farmers continued to work land under the aegis of the parastatal Italian National Social Security Institute. The analysis demonstrates that the fascist colonial project in Libya aimed to sedentarize not only rebellious Libyan pastoralists but also the restless Italian agrarians who formed the backbone of Italian mass emigration overseas. In placing families in planned rural settlements in Libya, the Institute and Italian state officials struggled to circumscribe the mobilities of these colonists. Even after 1945 and fascism's end, settlers possessed little freedom of movement, as demonstrated by the frequent obstacles to repatriation to Italy. Examining settlers' experiences reveals the complexity of the 'long decolonization' of Italian Libya, as well as how mobility became a key site of contest under fascism and beyond.

Abstract
This article explores the emerging historiography of human rights. After reviewing the current emphasis in the literature on the origins of human rights, the essay inquires into possible futures of this nascent historical field. What might scholarly interest in more unified frames of knowledge that bridge the natural and the cultural realms mean for future historiographies of human rights?