Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2012
Podium Presentation
The Powers that Be: Anti-Immigration Ideology in Italy (Abstract)
Alex Lindstrom
Faculty Mentor: Greg Baldi
Political Science
The rise of anti-immigration parties throughout the world has been largely at the hands
of radical right-wing political parties. These parties develop political power and mobilize
public opinion via an exaggerated appeal to xenophobic anxieties, prejudices and
resentments in a deliberate attempt to manipulate individuals toward the view that
immigration is a threat to their economic and social well-being. However, there is ample
evidence to combat the validity of such efforts, demonstrating the shallow, superficial
and logically insufficient groundwork on which anti-immigration rhetoric is supposedly
based. Scholarly analysis of the political conditions in Italy point out the apparent
ubiquity of “exclusionary populism” in said rhetoric, a restrictive and culturally
homogenous view of citizenship. More disturbingly, literature on the subject also points
out that it is universal to all aforementioned right-wing political parties that the language
of liberalism is used to justify their political agendas, and that this is merely a guise
which, upon examination, proves to be entirely superficial and inconsistent with liberal
values. Italy provides an excellent sample for discussion of the broader anti-immigration
trends across Europe, and as such is the main country of analysis. Italy's immigration
population in actuality constitutes only about 4% of the population, however, the growth
rate is tremendous and has given leverage to political parties seeking to espouse their
exclusionary populism. As such the resulting public attitudes are founded in
misinformation and an inability or unwillingness to understand that the immigrant
population there is economically and socially beneficial in significant and necessary
ways.