Entangled or 'Extruded' Histories? Displacement, National Refugees, and Repatriation after the Second World War

This article uses 'national refugees' in Italy after 1945 as a starting point for broader reflections on the classifications of displaced persons (DPs) employed in both international refugee law and historical accounts of the refugee in the postwar world. After 1945, Italy became temporary home to many persons displaced by the war and the consolidation of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. At the same time, Italy had its own refugees forced to leave territories (including African colonies) lost with the collapse of fascism. Scholarship on flows resulting from decolonization (including settler returns) has remained distinct from that on post-war DPs. The analysis demonstrates the productiveness of conceptualizing these various experiences of displacement as 'entangled histories' marked by asymmetries of various types. In addition to reconsidering these global population movements as 'entangled', scholars might reframe the histories of imperial displacements as 'extruded'. The notion of extrusion highlights the ways in which these histories and their bearers (particularly colonial repatriates) often prove uncomfortable, as in the Italian case.