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Podcast: New Books in Italian Studies
Episode: Joseph John Viscomi, "Migration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure Between Italy and Egypt" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Description: How has migration shaped Mediterranean history? And what role did conflicting temporalities and the politics of departure play in the age of decolonisation? Using a microhistorical approach, Migration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure Between Italy and Egypt (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores the experiences of over 55,000 Italian subjects in Egypt during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Before 1937, Ottoman-era legal regimes fostered the coupling of nationalism and imperialism among Italians in Egypt, particularly as the fascist government sought to revive the myth of Mare Nostrum. With decolonisation, however, Italians began abandoning Egypt en masse. By 1960, over 40,000 ha...