Italy (with its 1,500,000 legal immigrants) is the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first immigration country of the Mediterranean basin. However Italy has not yet defined a clear attitude towards its immigrants, which might be linked with its peculiar political culture. The Italian immigration policy is discussed in this article with reference to this political culture and, especially, with the Italian idea of nation, which is weak, but original, as a mediation between the German kind and the French kind. A comparison is also made with France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the three main European countries of immigration.

Italy - Europe - Immigration - Nation - Political Culture - Integration

Umberto MELOTTI is a Professor of Political Sociology at La Sapienza University, Rome, and an editor-in-chief of the quarterly Terzo Mondo. He has published widely on immigration in Italy and Europe. His works in English include Marx and the Third World (1980, also available in Italian, Spanish and Chinese), and his contributions to Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism (1987) and to The Politics of Multiculturalism (1997).

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