I mean, the cycle started with the implementation of capitalism. Italy was functionally feudalistic (particularly in the southern territories) until the mid-19th century, with state power relegated to a hodgepodge of principalities. It’s only really been a unified country since 1870 and lagged on industrialization until the Cold War Era, when the US Marshall Plan made it an industrial and shipping beachhead for NATO-bloc manufacturing and trade (as well as a military base to strike out at North Africa and the Middle East).
The waves of Italian immigrants weren’t fleeing capitalism. They were fleeing the two World Wars and the industrial collapse of Europe. Americans, by contrast, won’t experience the same immediate socio-economic pressures to leave. So I suspect a lot of the reverse-migration we’ll see to Italy will be coming from an American wealthy middle class seeking to retire into a post-industrial retirement playground rather than an Italian underclass seeking gainful employment and safety from chronic civil wars and invasions.
Italy is going to be more like Florida in the 1990s than New Jersey in the 1920s.
I mean, the cycle started with the implementation of capitalism. Italy was functionally feudalistic (particularly in the southern territories) until the mid-19th century, with state power relegated to a hodgepodge of principalities. It’s only really been a unified country since 1870 and lagged on industrialization until the Cold War Era, when the US Marshall Plan made it an industrial and shipping beachhead for NATO-bloc manufacturing and trade (as well as a military base to strike out at North Africa and the Middle East).
The waves of Italian immigrants weren’t fleeing capitalism. They were fleeing the two World Wars and the industrial collapse of Europe. Americans, by contrast, won’t experience the same immediate socio-economic pressures to leave. So I suspect a lot of the reverse-migration we’ll see to Italy will be coming from an American wealthy middle class seeking to retire into a post-industrial retirement playground rather than an Italian underclass seeking gainful employment and safety from chronic civil wars and invasions.
Italy is going to be more like Florida in the 1990s than New Jersey in the 1920s.