“Ciao Italia: The Contradictory History of Italian Immigration in France”

From the second half of the nineteenth^e century and until the 1960s, Italians were the most numerous foreigners in France to come and fill the jobs created by economic growth. Celebrated today, their integration did not go smoothly. Between demeaning prejudices and benevolent looks, the image of the Italian in France took shape in a paradoxical mode and their reception conditions were difficult.

The Ciao Italia exhibition translates the specific contradictions of the history of this immigration, while highlighting the contribution of Italians to French society and culture. 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 from the Risorgimento of the 1860s to the Dolce Vita celebrated by Fellini. in 1960.

With Ciao Italia, the National Museum of the History of Immigration reports for the first time on a national scale, the history of Italian immigration in France, which remains to this day the most important in the French history.