Ciao Italia, from the National Immigration Museum to INSPE – AMU

With the exhibition Ciao Italia!, the National Museum of the History of Immigration is providing an account, for the first time on a national scale, of the history of Italian immigration in France.

After a display at the Palais de la Porte Dorée from March 28 to September 10, 2017, the exhibition is being presented in a traveling “panels” format that will circulate until February 2023. The ESPE of Aix-Marseille hosted it on its sites between September 2018 and June 2019;

From the second half of the 19th century and until the 1960s, Italians were the most numerous foreigners in France to come and occupy the jobs created by economic growth.

Today celebrated, their integration was not without its difficulties. Between demeaning prejudices and benevolent looks, the image of the Italian in France took shape in a paradoxical way and their reception conditions were difficult.

Playing on the clichés and prejudices of the time and recalling the xenophobia of which they were victims, the exhibition seeks to retrace the geographical, socio-economic and cultural journey of Italian immigrants in France from the Risorgimento of the 1860s to the Dolce Vita celebrated by Fellini in 1960.