Lifting the veil: migrant murder, a 'madre italiana', and the politics of transnational colonisation

Abstract

The Italian imperialist program of the period before the Great War went beyond the project to annex other Mediterranean territories in order to include the colonization of the immigrant communities. Today, historians tend to concentrate on Italian foreign policy rather than on the perspective and experience of migration. This essay begins with a murder case in the United States to show a type of Italian response to the international agenda, by deepening the role of the press abroad, and especially of a newspaper editor. The analysis of the pressures on a worker who emigrated from southern Italy allows us to evaluate the function of gender, class and race in the discourse of transnational politics.