Welfare after Empire: Italy, Egypt, and the politics of assistance after 1945

How could a state's distanced approach to the welfare of its national subjects shape experiences at the end of empire? In this article, I consider this question by looking at the relationship between the Italian state and the departure of Italians from Egypt after 1945. The article presents a sociopolitical history of how experiences and expectations of welfare have shaped relations between the state and its migrant subjects at the end of empire. I argue that the regional strategies of the postwar Italian state turned away from institutional support of Italian residents in Egypt as a means of positioning itself closer to Nasser's government after 1954 and, in doing so, marginalised the interests of migrant Italians even while it relied on interwar narratives about their importance for Mediterranean political kinships. The article begins by using oral history to understand how the memories of repatriated Italians from Egypt framed the historical context of experiences and expectations of welfare support in relation to the state. It then looks back to the political conjuncture of the early 1950s and its reverberations among Italians in Egypt seeking to re-establish their lives after the Second World War, the collapse of fascist imperialism, and decolonisation. It examines how, at the very moment the two new republics moved closer together one another, Italian residents in Egypt were kept at a strategic distance by the Italian state and its diplomatic actors in Egypt. With the so-called unmixing of the colonial sea, then, it looks at how Italians sought - and failed to acquire - aid and assistance from the Italian state when departing from Egypt and how this contoured the perspectives of Italian repatriates.