Abstract

The Tunisian independence in 1956 undermined the project of a colonial Mediterranean space in which the migration of European settlers had played a very important role. The gradual decline of the Italian community in Tunisia during the 1950s and 1960s is part of this broader picture. Facing the project of an Arab-Tunisian nation, Italians like other non-native residents found themselves foreigners in the country to which they felt they belonged. They soon had to choose whether to integrate themselves in the social body of the new Tunisia and renounce their nationality and the privileges they had under the former colonial French rule, or to emigrate to the motherland, which for many Ital ians with French education was France rather than Italy. There was a choice in-between: to stay in Tunisia and maintain their specific identity; it was the hardest option and ultimately the less chosen.