Introduction
Drawing on an ethnographic study of transnational ageing among Italians in Tunisia (Frisone Reference Frisone2025),Footnote 1 this article highlights continuity within discontinuity in the history of the Italian diaspora in Tunisia. Although Italy has never formally colonized Tunisia, I will describe the unequal diplomatic and migratory ties between Italy and Tunisia as distinctly (neo)colonial.
According to Michael Herzfeld (Reference Herzfeld2002), the colonial situation is not strictly dependent on political domination. He primarily discussed the concept of ‘crypto-colonialism’, a situation where a politically independent country is economically and culturally dependent on foreign nations. Many academic scholars have argued that the global North has maintained a persistent influence on the global South. In the Latin American debate, for instance, decolonial theory has sought to examine the contemporary power system as an extension of colonialism (Grosfoguel Reference Grosfoguel2011; Mignolo and Escobar Reference Mignolo and Escobar2013). According to this perspective, the colonial legacy continues to reproduce colonial hierarchies worldwide: in racial, religious, gender, class, spatial and epistemological terms. This hierarchy, rooted in capitalism, is crucial for understanding modern globalization, transmigration and transnationalism (Dussel Reference Dussel2003; Maldonado-Torres Reference Maldonado-Torres2007).
As I argue in this article, the effects of the colonial legacy are particularly evident in the case of migration. Here, the decolonial turn aligns with sociological research that links colonial history with current European migration in the global South. Barnor Hesse and Salman Sayyid (Reference Hesse, Sayyid, Nasreen, Kalra and Sayyid2008) explore British migration in Asia (‘BrAsian’) as a postcolonial reproduction of global disparities in a local context. Also, American and European anthropologies have long stressed regimes of (im)mobility (Glick Schiller and Salazar Reference Glick Schiller and Salazar2013) that restrict the free movement and agency of people from the global South. They note ongoing racialized relations in ex-colonial lands and the lifestyle migrations of global North middle-class citizens to countries in the global South (Benson and O’Reilly Reference Benson and O’Reilly2009). This divide reflects ongoing global power imbalances reminiscent of colonial dynamics (Benson and Osbaldiston Reference Benson and Osbaldiston2014; Hayes Reference Hayes2018; Schweppe Reference Schweppe2022).
As part of a stable migration system, reciprocal migration flows involve countries with a history of diplomatic, economic and political relations shaped by hierarchical disparities that reinforce (neo)colonial dominance and subordination/domination dynamics based on racial stereotypes. In the Lusophone migration system, for example, reciprocal migration between Portugal and Portuguese-speaking African countries, such as Angola and Mozambique, is based on historical circumstances intersecting with the roles of Portuguese colonialism (Quijano Reference Quijano2000), as well as long-term Portuguese migration during the colonial and postcolonial periods (King Reference King, Baumeister and Sala2015). The history of Italian migration in Tunisia displays a similar pattern that links past and present settlements, highlighting modern and contemporary forms of ‘colonisation without colonialism’ (Montalbano Reference Montalbano2023: 22).
Mark Choate (Reference Choate2008) explores emigrant colonization as Italy’s strategy to gain influence abroad – mainly in Africa and the Americas – without direct colonial governance. Italy cultivated cultural, political and economic ties, while expatriate communities fostered a sense of political identity and support. The colonial legacy endures, maintaining cultural, linguistic and institutional links to Europe. Tunisia remains a bridge between the near and far, shaped by the influence of French and Italian colonialism.
The Italian presence in Tunisia dates to the early modern period, with waves of migration from the fifteenth century to the post-World War Two era (Pasotti Reference Pasotti1971; Rainero Reference Rainero2002; Pendola Reference Pendola2007). During the French Protectorate (1881–1956), migration from Sicily, Campania and Sardinia increased significantly (Gianturco and Zaccai Reference Gianturco and Zaccai2004: 35). These migrants, primarily low-skilled workers, were drawn by French policies aimed at enhancing agriculture, construction and infrastructure (Melfa Reference Melfa2008).
Since the late nineteenth century, different regional groups – linguistically, religiously and traditionally divided – have formed a cohesive community based on shared symbols, values and an Italian identity, with education and the press playing central roles in this unity (Brondino Reference Brondino1998).Footnote 2 Between 1866 and 1888, the Italian population increased from 2,000 to 10,000 people, while the French population remained at 700 (De Montety Reference De Montety1937: 409). In 1891, the number of Italians reached 30,000 (Gianturco and Zaccai Reference Gianturco and Zaccai2004: 41). Italians have consistently maintained a colonial presence in both a praxeological and a pragmatic sense. French colonial settlement contrasts with an unofficial colonial presence – a sort of ‘lost colony’ (Montalbano Reference Montalbano2019). The Italian community was most numerous in Tunis’s surroundings, for example La Goulette, where entire neighbourhoods called Petite Sicily or Petite Calabria sprang up. The hybrid nature of the Italian diaspora in Tunisia, notably emphasized by Albert Memmi (Reference Memmi1973: 43–4), resulted in its liminal hierarchical position between the French colonizers and the colonized Tunisian natives. Italians were culturally close to the colonizers, but their economic poverty brought them closer to the colonized (Montalbano Reference Montalbano2023: 21).
Italians constructed a community called ‘Italians of Tunisia’ as an identity category in the guise of an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson Reference Anderson1983). Although Benedict Anderson employed this concept to describe a symbolic sense of national belonging, it also applies to diasporas. Freed from the negative connotations associated with Jewish dispersion (Cohen Reference Cohen1997), diaspora refers to groups dispersed from their homeland that maintain cultural, historical or national ties (Sheffer Reference Sheffer2003; Reis Reference Reis2004). According to Italian sociologists Giovanna Gianturco and Claudia Zaccai (Reference Gianturco and Zaccai2004: 14), Italian migration during the protectorate period aligns with this strict definition of diaspora. Furthermore, the authors emphasize that the notion of diaspora is essential for understanding the interconnections of contemporary migration, linking both past and present Italian emigrations to Tunisia.
If the diaspora offers a key to describing the community of Italians diachronically, the concept of ‘colonization without colonialism’ allows us to understand the historical development of Italian settlements. Colonization involves an alien population in a territory; at the same time, colonialism signifies political domination (Morone Reference Morone2015: 35). The French Protectorate in Tunisia represents a rare example of French political colonialism intertwined with Italian residential colonization (Montalbano Reference Montalbano2023). The Italian colony was a lived, empirical and factual reality (Morone Reference Morone and Audenino2018). Gabriele Montalbano (Reference Montalbano2019) reinterprets the migratory flow between 1881 and 1911 as a colonial settlement project, emphasizing the role of labour both in shaping a sense of Italian identity developed within the diaspora and in influencing the economic and social structure of colonial Tunisia, in an agonistic relationship with the French ruling power.
This ambiguous imbalance between French colonialism and Italian colonization fuelled the leitmotif of the ‘peril italien’, providing a rationale for naturalization policies (Speziale Reference Speziale and Faranda2016). In 1923, the French parliament enacted a law on nationality in Tunisia, encouraging Italians to relinquish their citizenship in favour of French nationality, with promises of job security and a 33.33 per cent salary increase (tiers colonial). This decision put an end to the 1896 agreements between the Bey of Tunis and Italy, which permitted Italians to retain citizenship, trade rights and property (El Houssi Reference El Houssi2014: 31; Finzi Reference Finzi and Faranda2016: 50). During the Fascist era (1922–43), the revanchist pride of the Italian community in Tunisia was fuelled by the misplaced hope that Mussolini’s government would champion their cause against the French enemy. Instead, by the mid-1920s, Mussolini gradually ceded ground to the French government, fearing that venturing into a Tunisian affair would jeopardize his control over the Italian colonies in North Africa (El Houssi Reference El Houssi2014: 39).Footnote 3 Finally, in 1935, the Laval–Mussolini agreement favoured France: Italians born before 1945 kept their nationality, those born between 1945 and 1965 could choose upon adulthood, and those born after 1965 automatically became French (Speziale Reference Speziale and Faranda2016: 37).
Independence in 1964 marked a significant turning point in relations between Italian, Tunisian and French communities. In the aftermath of independence, the Tunisian authorities took advantage of the situation not only to expel the French enemy but also to curb the social and, above all, economic rise of the Italian community, which had experienced significant social mobility (Pasotti Reference Pasotti1971: 126). Many now owned lands on which Tunisian farmers worked (Melfa Reference Melfa2008) or construction companies that employed both Italian and Tunisian labour (Finzi Reference Finzi2003). The Tunisians restricted or completely prevented the free movement of Italian workers and applied these restrictions even to the descendants of the Italian diaspora, a community that had been deprived of its residence and work permits in the past (Finzi Reference Finzi and Faranda2016: 55). It was at this point that the history of the modern Italian diaspora in Tunisia began to take a sharp turn. However, the Italian diaspora in Tunisia survived, with new migration flows from the Italian peninsula starting again in the 1980s.
Acting as a link between the two waves of migration – one dating back to the modern age and covering roughly the entire period of the French Protectorate (1881–1956), and the contemporary one we are still witnessing today – the story revolves around the flight of Bettino Craxi, secretary of the Italian Socialist Party and prime minister from 1983 to 1987, who took refuge in Tunisia to escape Italian justice, residing there until his death. He was convicted of corruption related to the 1990s judicial scandal ‘Tangentopoli’, following years of arrests of Italian government and parliament members. In May 1993, authorities confiscated his passport to prevent him from escaping. It was too late. He had already fled to Tunisia, staying in Hammamet under Ben Ali’s protection. This was not a random event. Craxi supported Tunisian dictator Ben Ali during the 1987 coup that ousted Bourguiba, opposing France’s attempt to hold a peaceful election. This reveals an ongoing rivalry between France and Italy for influence, despite Tunisia’s independence. Among the interests involved was the management of Libyan oil pipelines through Tunisia. Under Craxi, Italy prioritized political and economic ties with Tunisia over those with France (Valori Reference Valori2015). Craxi lived as a fugitive in Hammamet until his death from a heart attack on 19 January 2000. Affected by diabetes, he refused extradition to Italy for hospital care at San Raffaele under house arrest.
More recently, in the renewed context of international relations between Italy and Tunisia, Italian companies have once again invested in the North African country, making it an attractive destination for relocating their businesses (Cordova Reference Cordova and Finzi2016a). This has led to the expatriation of skilled workers, technicians and entrepreneurs, who have been joined in recent years by retirees who have taken advantage of tax breaks to improve their standard of living and quality of life in Tunisia, with Hammamet being among the most popular destinations.
In what follows, I examine the effects of current Italian (neo)colonial settlements through the lens of ethnographic research. Between 2023 and 2025, I conducted ethnographic research in two of these locations: La Goulette, where the descendants of the historical community still reside today (‘the lost colony’); and Hammamet, a lively seaside town on the north-eastern coast that has more recently become a hub for a significant and growing influx of retired Italian expatriates (‘the vacation colony’).
In the first section, I deal with La Goulette, the harbour of Tunis, which has a significant community of Italian descendants from early migration waves preceding the 1960s repatriations. Here, I participated in several cultural events organized by Italian secular and Catholic institutions to promote Italian culture and to engage with the local community. I met over sixty members of a longstanding expatriate community, primarily born in Tunis, who blend Italian and Tunisian traditions and predominantly speak French. La Goulette is interpreted as a ‘lost colony’ because the ancient community of Italians (mostly Sicilians) in Tunisia has almost disappeared today. Yet, it is still possible to meet the descendants of this ancient colonial settlement, who nostalgically mourn the multicultural and interreligious climate that developed between the nineteenth century and Tunisia’s independence. At that time, La Goulette was characterized by a fusion of different nationalities, including Tunisians, French and Italians (many of whom were originally from Sicily), as well as Maltese, Greeks, Turks, Albanians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Balkan peoples, North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans.
The second section is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Hammamet, a small town in Nabeul’s governorate, which has attracted Italian retirees for nearly two decades. Through participant observation and network analysis (Boissevain and Mitchell Reference Boissevain and Mitchell1973; Barnes Reference Barnes and Barnes1974), I examined their activities – tennis, horse riding, card games, excursions to Berber villages, cultural events, festive celebrations and night outings – focusing on their routines, socialization strategies, consumer behaviour and models of ageing, as well as relational dynamics between Italian outsiders and Tunisian insiders (Boissevain Reference Boissevain and Boissevain2013). Hammamet is viewed as a ‘vacation colony’ in the sense that it is a neocolonial settlement for middle-class pensioners who now flock to the seaside town on the Tunisian coast to enjoy tax benefits that guarantee a higher standard of living and well-being in their old age. This peculiar colony does not involve political domination in the strict sense. Still, through the link between tourism and migration, it reproduces an asymmetrical, neocolonial relationship that can be seen in the consumerist motivations characterizing the retired Italians’ diaspora in Hammamet.
La Goulette: the legacy of a lost colony
At La Goulette, beyond the port roundabout, the taxi traverses the final kilometres along the narrow strip of land that stretches across the sea to reach its destination. Tunis is visible far to the right, with new neighbourhoods emerging along the shores of the lake. The new bridge that bypasses the boarding area for Radès fades into the distance, merging with Hammam-Lif in the embrace of Bou Kornin, the highest peak in the region. (Bivona Reference Bivona2024: 18, translated by the author)
Marcello Bivona was born in Tunis to a Sicilian mother and a Sardinian father, both of whom were born in Tunisia. His great-grandparents had emigrated four generations earlier at the end of the nineteenth century. He shared with me how his parents and others suffered after Tunisia’s independence despite their close ties with many Tunisian families. Bourguiba’s policies had a significant impact on Italian farmers and landowners, particularly the 1963 Nationality Law and the 1964 expropriations (Morone Reference Morone2015). Since his father was one of the first to be affected, he moved with his parents as a child to a location near Milan, where he still resides. He has dedicated his life to recording the history of his family and the Italian diaspora in Tunisia, producing a memoir (Bivona Reference Bivona2024) and two feature-length documentary films: Return to Tunis (1997) and Sicilians of Africa (2021). Bivona is not the only descendant of this misunderstood community who regrets seeing its history removed from historical narratives.
One lived balanced on a fragile yet powerful thread. When it broke, it meant the abyss for everyone. This country has so many languages! Each person spoke their way, and we all understood each other. These languages were expressions of our belonging, way of being, feeling, living and coexisting in this lost crossroads of peoples and cultures. (Bivona Reference Bivona2024: 23, translated by the author)
Nevertheless, living in a hybrid society like La Goulette does not guarantee a peaceful existence. Bivona clarified this in one of our conversations: ‘Even though there were conflicts between different communities, they were managed in everyday life because we all lived together.’Footnote 4 In this and other similar accounts from descendants of the modern Italian diaspora, La Goulette is depicted as a multicultural and interreligious microcosm – a model of multiethnic and interreligious coexistence that encourages diverse forms of belonging and multiple identities, a place where different festivities, traditions, dishes and everyday languages coexist in a distinctive and original synthesis.
In what follows, I analyse the historical memory and life experiences of the individuals I encountered around La Goulette. These testimonies enable us to trace the biographical paths of these women and men, contributing to the depiction of Tunisia’s historical, familial and collective memory of the Italian diaspora. Rosalia,Footnote 5 aged sixty-nine at the time, is from the Trapani area. She shared her story with me in Italian, occasionally switching to French or Arabic. ‘I was born in Tunisia. My father was also born in La Goulette, Tunisia, while my grandfather came from Trapani. He was a fisherman who arrived young and married a girl from La Goulette, who also came from Trapani.’ Rosalia proudly recounted how Italian men participated in production, trade and fishing activities, employing Tunisian workers and sharing their material knowledge through arts and crafts. ‘My grandfather,’ she explained, ‘practised a type of fishing that was utterly unknown here!’
As Silvia Finzi (Reference Finzi2003; Reference Finzi and Faranda2016) points out, Italian migrants left concrete traces of their passage in Tunisia through architecture, construction and painting. ‘These buildings were all done by Sicilian masons’ – something Rosalia also emphasized. This involvement fostered Italian pride in expertise and a strong work ethic (Russo Reference Russo and Faranda2016: 88); meanwhile, many Italians sought social upward mobility (Gianturco and Zaccai Reference Gianturco and Zaccai2004: 42), which established unequal relationships with the local population, marked by patronage, clientelism and paternalism (Melfa Reference Melfa2008: 137). As in other parts of Africa where Italians cohabited with other European powers, colonial administrators employed them as qualified workers in Tunisia. On the Gold Coast, this reality gave rise to a compartmentalized social structure that divided Europeans and Africans along racial, class and political lines (Brivio Reference Brivio2013a: 48). Describing a selective coexistence, Rosalia recounted how Italians and Tunisians lived near each other, though not always closely or consistently together.
Many Sicilians, like me, were born here. Others were born in Sicily and lived here. Yet, all Italians, particularly Sicilians, frequented places with Tunisians. For instance, many Sicilians gathered in the Medina of Tunis, and there was a Little Sicily in Goulette. Here, everyone kept to themselves while respecting one another. Sicilians and Tunisians were closely tied, often moving quickly between the two communities.Footnote 6
However, for Rosalia, the sense of belonging to a distant land – Sicily – which was always present in family stories, became more vibrant in later life. Acknowledging these deep roots, Rosalia drew from her maternal side to build her sense of self.
As time passes, I feel increasingly close to my Sicilian roots. My mother was born in Sicily, and she often shared stories about her family, birth, and other topics … At first, I wouldn’t say it bothered me; however, it was a story I had heard countless times. Slowly, I realized that these stories had created a path in my mind, and the more time passed, the more I felt that they belonged to me. I have always identified as Sicilian, but I feel increasingly drawn back to my roots as time passes.
If, in Rosalia’s case, the maternal kinship bond is privileged, for all my interlocutors, ageing also means recalling a family past, thereby strengthening the sense of belonging specific to Italians in Tunisia. It is a way of life for Rosalia and many others who, like her, perceive themselves and their self-representation as perpetually diasporic. Nevertheless, ‘feeling increasingly Sicilian’ does not mean severing ties with Tunisia, where Rosalia was born, lived, grew up and eventually grew old.
I was born here, and my life roots and family are here. I feel at home in Marsala, especially in the place where my mother was born, but Tunisia is the country closest to my heart. I’m deeply connected to its places and people. When asked, ‘Who are you?’ I first say I’m Sicilian and Italian, followed by Tunisian and French, sometimes leaning more towards one than the other.
As emerges from these fragments, both individual and collective identity depend on the narratives of two memorial fulcrums: on the one hand, Sicily, the ‘original homeland’ with which a blood bond is claimed (Russo Reference Russo and Faranda2016: 103); on the other hand, Tunisia, the land of birth, growth and life. In both cases, the relationship with these places and the ties of belonging they represent are re-memorized (Russo Reference Russo2020: 139) according to a socially and historically defined narrative framework.
As with Rosalia, Bea’s account splits into two places of birth, two lands, and two horizons of belonging. Her narrative reveals a sense of subjective plurality, significantly represented by her unusual ‘double birth’. ‘Sono nata a Monte Erice nel 1937 [I was born in Monte Erice in 1937],’ she tells me in Italian. ‘Mais ma naissance est aussi inscrite à Tunis [But my birth is also registered in Tunis],’ she continues in French. ‘J’ai deux endroits de naissance. Je ne sais pas ce qui s’est passé [I have two birthplaces. I don’t know what happened].’ This hybrid identity features a mix of Italian words, school-learned French, and words from the Tunisian variant of Arabic. She shared her family’s story in rural Tunisia during the 1940s and 1950s. Her father arrived in the 1930s with his parents during the French Protectorate and by 1948 he owned a boulangerie in Massicot. While working in her parents’ shop, Bea fell in love with a young Tunisian gendarme, but their families opposed the marriage. Her mother sent her to stay with Bea’s aunt in Piedmont, Italy, to separate them. After Tunisian independence in 1956, her parents had two days to leave home. They vacated their shop and bakery, relocating to a rural area near Messina. She was distressed about her parents in Italy and wished to return to Tunisia to marry her ‘petit gendarme’. At twenty-one, he was too young to marry, yet she secured the necessary documents through her father-in-law’s connections and returned to Tunisia, where she married him. They had three children, and even today, two decades after her husband’s death, Bea still remembers him as her great love.
Similar stories emerge from two foundational myths that interweave narrative plots to construct familial and subjective identities. On the one hand, there are kinship ties; on the other, a sense of belonging to the homeland. Rosalia’s identification with her Sicilian roots prevails. For Bea, however, her love story with her late husband serves as a narrative backdrop that informs her choice to live and grow old feeling Tunisian. But this kind of exogamic alliance was relatively uncommon: as suggested by Bea herself, mixed relationships were often vehemently opposed by both Italian and Tunisian families. More often, romantic relationships were ethnically endogamous, bringing together individuals who shared the same diasporic memory and creating a strong emotional bond that nurtured mutual feelings of affection. This is evident in the case of two octogenarian Italian retirees, Rocco and Lina.
Rocco was born in Tunis in 1944, while Lina was born in a rural village in 1948. Although they attended the same school, they never crossed paths until their remarkable reunion in Italy after their repatriations. As residents of Aprilia, a small Italian town near Latina (southern Lazio), they met at a party of mutual friends, dancing and sharing their past with genuine emotion. After forty years of marriage, they relocated to La Goulette, where they operate a craft workshop for women in need. Lina recounted her return to Tunisia, where her family has deep roots. After turning sixty, she decided to take a ten-day trip to the country, a journey that awakened memories and emotions, prompting her to return the following year for a month. Due to health problems, she returned to Tunisia again for arm rehabilitation, preferring the sea over swimming pools for her therapeutic swimming. During one of these trips, Lina visited the village where she grew up and felt profound emotion. She met the school guardian, who accompanied her to the classroom where she studied as a child, sharing a touching moment with her.
In contrast, Rocco depicts Tunisia as a repressed facet of his life that resurfaces intensely. He remembers the family lands nurtured for generations until the country’s independence forced them to abandon everything. He relived the pain of that separation when he had to leave the fields filled with forgotten garlic and the beloved old olive tree on the hill at age fifteen. Unlike Lina, Rocco is not compelled to return to Tunisia. ‘That part of the world has become a blank map because it reminds me of too much pain.’ However, during his first visit to Tunisia with his wife, he met an old neighbour connected to his family. This woman recognized him as the son of her friend Giuseppe, greeted him warmly, and introduced him to her loved ones, reigniting the affectionate bond between their families.
Rocco and Lina’s story is a journey through memories, emotions and deep roots that connect them to Tunisia and Sicily, creating a complex and nuanced identity. These multiple, even conflicting, identities depend on which genealogical line or cultural and territorial affiliation prevails over others (Russo Reference Russo2020: 140). Identity thus reveals its performative nature, a narrative fiction that is unfinished and always open to interpretation. For this reason, in many of these accounts, a Mediterranean identity condenses the polysemy of subjective and collective identities. As Alfonso Campisi told me during our encounter in the city centre of La Marsa, ‘Between the blood and the land, there is the sea.’Footnote 7
I feel profoundly connected to Mediterranean cultures, embracing their virtues and flaws. Sicily and Tunisia share a rich history and many similarities. Although part of my family resides in Sicily, my connection to Tunisia feels stronger. I was born in Italy to an Italian family that has lived in La Goulette for five generations. Thus, my identity is intricate. I often prefer to identify as Mediterranean, relishing the experiences of both shores.Footnote 8
As Campisi recalls, awareness of his family’s past in Tunisia enhances his sense of belonging to a diasporic community, one that transcends nationalities and bloodlines. Silvia Finzi supported this interpretation.Footnote 9
I do not resonate with the metaphors of blood or land. I recognize my roots in my family’s history. I connect more deeply with my family’s past and the diaspora in Tunisia. I have not traced my family’s genealogical origins, which do not interest me. I find my identity more in our journey than in bloodlines. Identity is narrative, not absolute truth, which can also depend on scientific evidence. Exploring history is fascinating.Footnote 10
Meanwhile, Tunisia transformed from a physical place into a mystical one, where a sense of cohesion and collective identity was strengthened through the memorial narratives of the diaspora – an identity woven and relived far from one’s socio-cultural territory, occupying a symbolic and de-territorialized space, re-materialized by the narratives of relatives, friends and family members.
Hammamet: postcolonial drifts of a ‘vacation colony’
During the French Protectorate, the presence of Italians in Tunisia resembled that of a settlement colonization, without political colonialism, resulting in a ‘lost colony’. However, the situation changed in the 1980s. Initially, the Italian community evolved to include economic enterprises (Speziale Reference Speziale and Faranda2016). This presence suggests a reciprocal endorsement between Italy and Tunisia, rather than a mutual cohesion between autochthones and allochthones (Cordova Reference Cordova and Finzi2016b). In Tunisia, these immigrants are seen as a new community without ties to the historical one (Speziale Reference Speziale and Faranda2016: 40). In line with this significant historical change, the migratory flows of Italian retirees to the Tunisian coast have developed over the past two decades. Through substantial fiscal benefits – known as ‘de-taxation’ (defiscalizzazione) – resulting from the bilateral convention signed between Italy and Tunisia in 1987 (Faranda Reference Faranda and Faranda2016: 143),Footnote 11 Italian retirees receive their full pension amount, enabling them to enjoy a high standard of living and considerable savings guarantees. Additionally, a mild climate attracts retirees to seaside cities, exemplifying the international phenomenon of ‘sun migration’ (King et al. Reference King, Warnes and Williams2000; Benson and O’Reilly Reference Benson and O’Reilly2016).
Estimates indicate that, as of 2023, 4,000 Italian retirees were living in Hammamet, the preferred choice for Italians living in Tunisia (Todaro Reference Todaro2024). This number increased to 7,500 within a single year, with 6,000 residing in Hammamet in 2024 (Lombardo Reference Lombardo2025). Among the attractions of Hammamet is its proximity to Italy, facilitating a circular residential project that necessitates living in Tunisia for only the required length of time to maintain the right to tax exemption. After the critical ‘six months and one day’, people can return to Italy, visit children abroad, or pursue interests and passions worldwide. Tunisia could be one of many stops in these transnational life paths, taking advantage of the considerable freedom to live between Italy and many other places. Adamo, a seventy-seven-year-old economist and former university professor, provides an example of this:
I’m not here because I particularly love Tunisia. I spend six months here and the rest in Italy or elsewhere. I have two daughters – one in Brussels and one in Washington – and I visit them. Since 2000, I’ve gone annually to Poland to teach at the University of Lublin, and I’ll go again this May. Afterwards, I’ll return to Italy for the European elections.Footnote 12
Undeniably, Italian retirees in Hammamet enjoy considerable agency, which translates into high transnational mobility (Faranda Reference Faranda and Faranda2016: 152). A series of formal rights – to pensions, tax exemption, mobility and healthcare – represents substantial privileges against a backdrop of global disparities in the contemporary world. This retirement migration is part of a worldwide phenomenon of voluntary expatriation, representing a form of financial exile. Defining Italian retirees as expatriates in postcolonial Tunisia involves recognizing that Western elderly migrants constitute a minority of ‘privileged migrants’ (Croucher Reference Croucher2012) who enjoy high social status and a hegemonic role over the host majority. However, this interpretation neglects how contemporary disparities arise from a colonial legacy (Cohen Reference Cohen1977: 19). After all, many Italians who arrived in Tunisia in the late nineteenth century, including numerous parents and grandparents of the descendants I encountered in the field, benefited economically from business activities partly through the activity of Tunisian fishermen, builders, carpenters and farmers, establishing patronage relationships with them (Melfa Reference Melfa2008; Finzi Reference Finzi2003). Indeed, unlike other heuristic categories such as ‘lifestyle migration’, expatriation or tax exile, which describe people moving from the global North to the global South as ‘privileged migrants’, I prefer the expression ‘vacation colony’.Footnote 13
First, discussing the vacation colony enables us to situate the current diaspora of Italians within a more extended history of settlement analysis (Gianturco and Zaccai Reference Gianturco and Zaccai2004), framing it within the context of power relations that continue a colonial legacy. Franco’s life history offers a good illustration of the conjunction between the ‘lost’ and ‘vacation’ colonies. He was born in Tunis in 1946. His Sicilian grandparents emigrated to Tunisia around 1880. His grandfather, who opposed French colonialism, cultivated vineyards on land that was requisitioned in 1940. Franco’s carpenter father worked at a vocational school but refused a teaching position that required French citizenship, insisting that the family would never sell their identity. Franco attended rigorous French schools in La Goulette, where teachers punished students for speaking Italian. At thirteen, he left school to work in a tailor’s shop, where he honed his skills. He also pursued theatre and sports, performing in a local theatre. After years spent in Italy, France and Spain, Franco returned to Tunisia, where he maintained his linguistic skills in Italian, French, Sicilian, Tunisian Arabic and Spanish. Despite frequent travels, he raised two sons – one in Paris and the other in Nice – sharing his passion for theatre and magic. Today, he lives in Hammamet in a large three-storey home that he shares with his young Tunisian wife, who cares for him in his old age.
Moreover, the concept of a vacation colony also enables me to explore the connection between tourism and migration, particularly among Italian retirees in Hammamet. This connection harms the local economy, society and the urban environment. Tourism typically makes areas overly reliant on foreign presence (Aime Reference Aime2003: 31–3), and, in Hammamet, the influx of retired Italians leads to a ‘consumer monoculture’ with a homogeneous socio-cultural and economic profile. This results in economic activities tailored to Italian tastes. The growing population has saturated the tourism industry, necessitating the development of new hotels. The dwindling availability of homes, renovations of seaside villas and facility upgrades to meet Italian standards (kitchens, services, gardens, pools) lead to a rise in housing costs. This tourism-driven inflation fosters significant gentrification, particularly in Yasmine-Hammamet, which was developed by Ben Ali’s government in the 1980s for luxury tourism and is now undergoing private redevelopment. The link between tourism, transmigration and gentrification is widely discussed in the literature (Hayes and Zaban Reference Hayes and Zaban2020). Transnational gentrification is a contemporary urban process where higher-income migrants (lifestyle migrants, investors, tourists) displace lower-income locals from areas they have cultivated, which later become regarded as desirable. In Hammamet, the focus on tourism drains resources from other local activities, negatively impacting poorer classes.
Finally, the concept of the vacation colony reveals how the ‘relative privilege’ (Benson Reference Benson2013; Croucher Reference Croucher, Janoschka and Haas2014) of Italian retirees in Hammamet is peculiarly connected to a form of protest migration against Italy, primarily aimed at the tax system (Faranda Reference Faranda and Faranda2016: 142). This protest has expanded since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Among those who arrived in Tunisia during the pandemic, a significant portion identified as anti-vaxxers. Many of my interlocutors predicted the arrival of a dark, intolerant, dogmatic society, one that is obedient. They described a presupposed ‘dystopic’ society, where people conformed to standards imposed by ‘others’ (politicians), a society of ‘gullible people’ who inform themselves ‘only through television’ (i.e. through official information channels). Regardless of socio-economic background, many retired Italians living in Tunisia adhere to a conspiratorial logic, some declaring themselves anti-American and anti-European. They are the same people who have re-evaluated the figure of Bettino Craxi both as politically persecuted and as a precursor to their libertarian and anti-establishment exile. Given the numerous ‘pilgrimages’ to his famous tomb, Craxi seems to have taken on the role of a totemic ancestor, according a shared imagination among Italians in the diaspora and native inhabitants.
One of the oldest reasons for being here is the Craxi affair. Hammamet would have been just another place if it hadn’t been for that incident. Thanks to Craxi, Tunisians have developed a special regard for Italians. Regardless of the legal troubles he was involved in, Craxi did a great deal for the local population and is greatly loved by Tunisians. There was even a man who tended to Craxi’s grave because his parents were the fishermen who sold fish to him. He said he learned Italian from Craxi, who taught him many things.Footnote 14
Many of my interviewees describe the Craxi episode as the beginning of a downward spiral in Italian society, now culminating in the final disillusionment of the economic boom. Angela, aged sixty-one, from Catania, recounts running away from Italy, which, she says, ‘has become an illiberal country since Tangentopoli’.
It is because of all this that we finally chose Tunisia. I am not here for de-taxation like all the other Italians. I am here to reclaim my freedom. Craxi was here, which means it was a good thing. The positive contributions Craxi made here are remarkable. Even in Tunisian stores, there are photographs of him and the chair where he sits. Tunisians admire him. He accomplished so many wonderful things; he brought immense wealth. Say Italian to them: you say Craxi, and they treat you with kid gloves.Footnote 15
If the development of the tourism industry can result in a type of residential tourism (Van Noorloos Reference Van Noorloos2011), the opposition between insiders and outsiders (Boissevain Reference Boissevain1996; Reference Boissevain and Boissevain2013) is complicated by Hammamet’s Italian retirees; they are not tourists but resident foreigners (Salvati and Benassi Reference Salvati and Benassi2021), who, in this specific context, live as retired settlers perpetually on vacation. ‘Hammamet has the same characteristics as any Italian coastal town,’ said Donato Ladik, president of the Association of Italians in Tunisia (AIT) and himself a pensioner from Hammamet. For my interlocutors, living in Hammamet isn’t like traditional retirement, which is seen as a dull decline. Instead, it resembles a tourist experience that feels like a continuous holiday.
However, as holiday settlers residing in Tunisia, retirees do not consider themselves tourists or outsiders but rather ‘responsible explorers’ (Aime Reference Aime2003). They are resident foreigners seeking experiences that promote a naturalistic and cultural understanding of Tunisia. For example, my interlocutors enjoy taking excursions to Berber villages and embarking on extended trips into the desert of Douz and Tozeur. Through these explorations, they seek a ‘staged authenticity’ (MacCannell Reference MacCannell1973), one that stages a stereotypical social, economic and cultural reality (Urry Reference Urry1990). The more what they observe corresponds to the image of Tunisia they had before leaving, the more they feel that they have discovered the ‘real Tunisia’. Based on this preconception, Hammamet, precisely because of its urban and social transformation assimilated to Western models, does not represent the ‘real Tunisia’, but a sufficiently familiar and comfortable place to establish a home base from which to set out to more exotic and enticing destinations. This is the point of view of Danilo, a sixty-eight-year-old former diplomat and army officer.
I know all of Tunisia – from Bizerte to Djerba, to Gabès, Madhia, Kelibia, Monastir, Tunis and La Marsa – and I can say that Hammamet is not the real Tunisia. To me, stopping in Hammamet without knowing the real Tunisia is a waste. Some places are lovely. Sidi Bou Said is fantastic. And then there’s the hinterland, the real Tunisia, which is very poor, as seen in places like Gafsa and Sfax. Gafsa is very poor. Gafsa is the real Tunisia. Hammamet is not; it’s Westernized, touristy, etc.Footnote 16
The ‘real Tunisia’ is perceived as a landscape stripped of humanity and close to a ‘state of nature’. The stereotype of Africa as a wild land inhabited by degraded humanity is widely accepted. The frantic quest to approach a supposed cultural authenticity also involves the locals (Hall and Williams Reference Hall and Williams2002; Benson Reference Benson, Benson and O’Reilly2009: 123; Reference Benson2011: 63). A sort of primitive fascination struck many Italians, who label Tunisians as ‘wonderful’ yet ‘lazy’, overlooking the complexity of their culture. While some Italians seek genuine connections, their need for socialization is hindered by stereotypes, which reinforce a distorted view of the other and result in missed connections. Tonino, seventy-two, from Palermo, expresses this feeling:
Staying only with Tunisians would have been difficult; bonding was not possible. Although some interactions took place, I didn’t have informal meetings, such as going out to eat. Tunisians live differently from Italians. Besides language, there were few opportunities for us to connect. Maybe in time … but typically, men sit outside at the bar while their wives work inside.Footnote 17
Like Tonino, many other Italians experience a cultural distance from Tunisian social practices, resulting in a lack of reciprocity and social cohesion. If in the lost colony of La Goulette the social composition of Italians consisted of merchants, entrepreneurs, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, tailors, printers, blacksmiths, carpenters, miners, railway workers, farmers, bricklayers and fishermen (Finzi Reference Finzi2003), in the vacation colony of Hammamet we find Italians who, although they come from different professional backgrounds, all belong to the middle class (former teachers, civil servants, small traders) and upper-middle class (army officers, civil servants, entrepreneurs, university professors). The role played by age should not be forgotten either: as they are an elderly and retired population, they participate in the economic life of Tunisia only as consumers.
The result is a functional interdependence between two parallel societies – one of outsiders and the other of insiders – which intersect only when the former, driven by instrumental needs, requests the intervention of the latter from a hegemonic position, incorporating it into its realm of social action through patronage-like exchanges that reinforce and exacerbate hierarchical disparities. This subtle caesura, this imperceptible disconnect between a hegemonic minority and a subordinate majority, is masked by a mutual cordiality encompassing sporadic and contingent economic exchanges. Among the various professional figures solicited – upholsterers, electricians, mechanics and servers – a unique role is played by female servants, Tunisian women employed as domestic workers by the Italian upper-middle class. In this case, the functional interdependence is overridden by more substantial access to the intimate, domestic and family spheres. The relationship with the female servant hybridizes elements of familiarity and instrumentality into an indistinct amalgam. A relationship of mutual intimacy often emerges, promoting symbiotic–affective solidarity from which deep cross-cultural exchange can arise. ‘My Tunisian domestic helper has spiritually enriched me.’ This is Piera’s story, a seventy-one-year-old widow who lives at Yasmine with her second companion. ‘She learned about my religion and even accompanied me to church. We discuss God, sharing insights about our faiths – one named Christ, the other Muhammad.’Footnote 18
But, at the same time, many elderly Italian men in Hammamet arrive alone in search of companionship. After his separation, Alfio, a sixty-year-old former policeman, frequents trendy discos every night, where Italians socialize as young Tunisian women pass by. This interaction reflects a unique pattern of interdependence and separation. Most mixed couples are intergenerational, primarily consisting of Italian retirees and young Tunisian women. Similar examples of the intimate economy are widespread in the anthropological literature. In Kenya, as George Paul Meiu (Reference Meiu2017) notes, during the 1980s tourism boom, young local men, known as ‘Mombasa morans’, travelled to coastal resorts to earn money. They formed relationships with white female tourists and embodied the physical stereotype of the ‘Maasai warrior’ tied to neocolonial sex tourism and economic inequalities. Moral criticism of these men became a symbol for constructing new body images about masculinity, racial belonging and generational identities. Instead, following the overall pattern of intimate economy in Hammamet, sexual–affective relationships between older Italian women and younger Tunisian men are rare. When it happens, as with Gilda, a former police officer, it tends to cause complications and is kept secret. The image of economic and racial hegemony makes women fear being judged as promiscuous or opportunistic, and they feel ashamed of being ‘duped’. Gifts and financial support are often viewed negatively, as they do not conform to traditional gender norms. These relationships usually lead to conflicts and emotional distress. Gilda felt deeply hurt when she discovered that her young Tunisian partner viewed the relationship as merely a means to gain financially and as entertainment.
Beyond the differences with the example of Kenyan young men with female, older, Western tourists, both ethnographic cases demonstrate how intimacy and ethnicity shape global and local trade paths, including stereotypes about gender, race and age. As with the female servant, there is a mixture of affective–domestic ties and material dimensions. This is clear in the account of Remo, a former high school teacher from Catania who was in his late sixties at the time of our interview. According to him, Italian older people associate intangible resources with the female role – attitudes of care, emotional support, assistance, companionship, affection, sexuality and tenderness. In such relationships, material goods – with broader and mutually recognized symbolic values – are offered to the young partner and their family as a guarantee of economic support and protection, increased social prestige, self-legitimation and self-determination, thereby building family ties and kinship networks coagulated by stable relationships and marital unions.
We could incorporate this phenomenon into the theoretical framework of the ‘sex–economic exchange’ (Tabet Reference Tabet2004). On the one hand, intangible goods are offered (care skills associated with the female figure, emotional support, assistance, companionship, affection, sexuality, etc.). On the other hand, material goods are offered (not only money, but also economic support, prestige, self-legitimization and self-determination, as well as the creation of family ties and kinship). The latter can be laden with symbolic content, generating stable or marital relationships (intercultural and intergenerational).
Conversely, sex–economic exchange becomes mere prostitution when material goods offered in return for affection are stripped of their symbolic value. As a result, intangible goods also lose their inherent worth and are devoid of the meaning and care linked to positive female figures. Italians fear being grabbed by seductive and devilish women who are ‘only interested in money and documents’. In both cases, the image of Tunisian young women is conditioned by a racial and gendered prejudice, fluctuating between the submissive Muslim girl and the bitter Black woman (Fanon Reference Fanon1952). According to an ideology currently widespread in Tunisia and elsewhere in the Maghreb (Mahmood Reference Mahmood2005; Menin Reference Menin and Mattalucci2012), romantic relationships are viewed as the pinnacle of gratuity connections. The intimate relationships that form between some Italian pensioners and young Tunisian women generate oral narratives in Tunisian and Italian clubs, leading to public ridicule and the stigmatization of both the ‘lousy old Italian’ and the ‘alluring young Tunisian’.
If sexuality is a central dimension to constructing colonial power (Barrera Reference Barrera2002; Brivio Reference Brivio2013b), in the vacation colony, Italians and Tunisians live together in a functional interdependence that also conditions sexual and affectionate relationships. These forms of intimacy build on a historical malaise with exogamic unions that, as detailed above, were strongly discouraged by Italian families, at a time when the rhetoric of peaceful coexistence encountered strict limits in the domains of sexuality, marriage, and – eventually – mixed offspring. The history of Italian settlements and diasporas in Tunisia shifts from the ‘lost colony’ to the ‘vacation colony’, each representing different forms of colonization without colonialism.
Conclusion: a long path from the lost colony to the vacation colony
One of the aims of this article has been to highlight the continuities and discontinuities between past and present forms of Italian settlement in Tunisia. Rather than a radical divide from past intercultural coexistence to current mutual indifference, my study of the Italian diaspora in Tunisia shows fundamental similarities between the two models of colonization without colonialism: the ‘lost colony’ of La Goulette and the ‘vacation colony’ of Hammamet. The lost colony of La Goulette was characterized by a fusion of different nationalities, including Tunisians, French, Italians and other Europeans, as well as North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans. From this cultural diversity arose an equivalent religious pluralism, founded on coexistence among Muslims, Catholics and Jews (Russo Reference Russo2020: 137). The memories and testimonies of celebrated Italian descendants, such as Silvia Finzi, Alfonso Campisi and Marcello Bivona, as well as those of ordinary people encountered in the field, including Bea, Rosalia and Franco, emphasize the leitmotif of Mediterranean multiculturalism. They reproduce nostalgic references to a golden age in which belonging to the Mediterranean peoples served as a unifying force among different ethnic and religious communities.
In contrast, scholars have argued that the Mediterranean as a homogeneous cultural area is an artificial construct (Bromberger Reference Bromberger2007) and that the strategic function of this cultural diversity that characterized Ottoman commercial hubs such as Tunis was based on commercial issues (Largueche et al. Reference Largueche, Clancy-Smith and Audet2001).
In modern Tunisia, debates on pluralism are functional to political discourses (Bond and Melfa Reference Bond and Melfa2010). Nora Lafi (Reference Lafi2013), for example, challenges the myth of Ottoman Mediterranean cosmopolitanism, thereby fulfilling contemporary Eurocentric nostalgia for a lost era. She notes that, while Muslims, Jews, Turks and Greeks coexist territorially, they do not have equal access to civic governance. This view echoes the narrative of Tunisie mosaïque – a narrative trope that during and after the French Protectorate described Tunisia as a virtuous example of peaceful coexistence and social cohesion, in which different religious communities and ethnic identities that we today tend to consider in conflict shared food, celebrations, lifestyles and social practices, forging both formal and informal relationships. This dominant account has been conveyed in biographical and historical reports (Alexandropoulos and Cabanel Reference Alexandropoulos and Cabanel2000; Russo Reference Russo2020). As Carmelo Russo states, it is a mosaic with a pyramidal shape within the hierarchical structure of the protectorate, in which the ‘power dynamics were perpetuated in the asymmetries’ (Reference Russo2020: 138). Moreover, this mosaic was not devoid of conflict (Lewis Reference Lewis2014). The myth of plural Tunisia – or Tunisie mosaïque – faded for good. With the independence of the Tunisian state in 1956, restrictive policies encouraged Europeans to abandon their homes and flee as refugees to countries of origin they often did not even know (Finzi Reference Finzi and Faranda2016: 56; Russo Reference Russo2020: 137)
While a dichotomous reading of a glorious past of coexistence versus a present marked by conflict and fracture is often favoured, this article has aimed to demonstrate that the transition from the ancient lost colony of La Goulette to the current vacation colony of Hammamet displays certain continuities within an overarching frame of discontinuity. These two forms of Italian settlement in Tunisia’s different historical periods and geographical locations are linked together by a fluid process of transformation that, in some ways, we are still witnessing today.
Overall, elderly members of the Italian diaspora in Tunisia perceive themselves as holding a higher social and cultural status than local Tunisians. More importantly, Italy and Tunisia have longstanding close diplomatic, commercial and institutional ties. French colonial and postcolonial authority was limited but did not prevent the privileged relationship between Tunisia and Italy, confirmed by treaties and agreements supported by Italians in Tunisia. The long history of the Italian diaspora in Tunisia, from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present day, but with an interruption between the Second World War and the new migratory era inaugurated in the 1980s with Craxi’s exile, confirms a suggestion made by postcolonial and de-colonial scholars: that ‘colonial’ does not refer only to ‘classical colonialism’ or ‘internal colonialism’, nor can it be reduced to the presence of a ‘colonial administration’ (Grosfoguel Reference Grosfoguel2011: 14). In both of the Italian settlements in Tunisia examined here – La Goulette and Hammamet – stereotypical images and hierarchical disparities shaped economic, affective, sentimental and sexual relationships.
In La Goulette’s lost colony, a pattern of clientelist patronage shaped interactions within communities: Tunisians worked for Italians, who, in turn, worked for the French, with Italians holding higher hierarchical positions than Tunisians. A selective cohesion based on ethnicity and religious boundaries restricted intimate relationships. Bea faced bureaucratic, legal, cultural and familial obstacles to marrying a Tunisian man, while Rocco and Lia chose an endogamous marriage. In the Hammamet vacation colony, however, a functional interdependence exists between the upper class of outsiders (the retired Italians) and the lower class of insiders (the local Tunisians), transforming all relations – economic, social and romantic – through instrumental exchange.
Historically and in the present, Italians have maintained a selective coexistence with local communities, based on ‘schismogenetic’ forms of mutual identification and disidentification (cf. Bateson Reference Bateson1958). Consequently, (post)colonial patterns are continually reproduced, revived and reiterated.
Gloria Frisone was awarded a PhD in Social Anthropology (EHESS, Paris) in September 2019. She is a postdoctoral research fellow and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Pavia. She has been an Adjunct Professor of Cultural and Medical Anthropology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Udine, and Milan from 2021 to 2023. From 2020 to 2021, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Fondation Croix-Rouge Française, where she worked on social and medical inequalities faced by elderly North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans living in Seine-Saint-Denis (France). She is the author of national and international articles and the book Face à l’Alzheimer: L’expérience de la perte (CNRS Éditions, 2024), an anthropological research study on Alzheimer’s disease. Her ethnographic work concerns diasporic ageing across Italy, France and Tunisia, as well as the contemporary definition of dementia in diagnostic and common-sense terms.
Open access
