Studenti palestinesi in Italia: mobilità, reti, attivismo (1965-1995)

This dissertation examines the presence and political, social, and affective trajectories of Palestinian students in Italy from the 1960s to the 1990s. By combining archival, documentary, and oral sources, it reconstructs the networks, spaces, and experiences through which these students engaged with Italian universities, cities, and political movements. Drawing on materials from state and university archives, as well as from movement collections and in-depth interviews, the research situates the Palestinian students within a broader history of postwar student mobility and transnational political activism. The study adopts an interdisciplinary yet historically grounded approach, at the crossroads of social history, migration studies, and memory studies. It analyses Palestinian students not only as political actors within the global anti-imperialist movement, but also as migrants, friends, and interlocutors embedded in everyday life. Through the lenses of masculinity, mobility, and memory, it explores how their presence contributed to redefining urban and academic spaces, and how the Italian context, in turn, shaped their political formation and self-representation. The dissertation traces the evolution of the Palestinian students’ political and cultural engagement across three decades. It highlights how the revolutionary and “heroic” imagery of the 1970s gave way, during the 1980s, to new discourses of peace, victimhood, and transnational solidarity. Ultimately, the research reveals how the experience of Palestinian students in Italy exemplifies a situated form of exile and mediation, in which transnational mobility generated new practices of translation, solidarity, and political imagination. It also calls attention to the relational and conflictual nature of internationalist encounters, and to the enduring traces—material, symbolic, and mnemonic—left by this shared history.