Enemy aliens, citizenship and the home front experience in Italy during the First World War

The paper explored the change in the notion of citizen and citizenship during, and immediately after, the First World War. The issue has been addressed from the particular perspective of the way in which the Italian government, public opinion, and popular movements 'racialized' citizenship, built the image of the internal and the external enemy, treated aliens and minorities and, largely shaken by a wave of irrational hysteria, fuelled by false rumours and legend, transformed aliens and minorities into a potentially very dangerous enemy.