Nation and Immigration: A Study of the Italian Press Discourse

During the last two decades, in particular since the annus mirabilis 1989, Italy has been faced with increasing migration flows from Central and Eastern Europe and the Third World. Immigrants, although in their vast majority illegal, have settled in the country thus challenging the political and cultural order of the nation-state.The hypothesistested in this paper is that their presence activates a process of re-definition of the Italian identity in an exclusionary way so as to raise symbolic, if not material, boundaries between Us and Them. The study is divided into three sections. First, the main features that characterise Italian identity will be examined and the civic or ethnic character of the nation will be highlighted. Second, recent migratory flows towards Italy will be described and the developmentof xenophobic attitudes in the country will be assessed. Third, the hypothesis regarding the transformation of national identity will be tested through the analysis of the press discourse on immigration in the period 1990-95. The study will concentrate on the use of national identity features in the press as a means to emphasise the distinction between Us and Them and exclude the latter from the host society.