Migrants, refugees, and the right to social assistance in postwar Italy and France (1945-1961)

This chapter focuses on the difference between migrants’ and refugees’ entitlements to social assistance in post-war Italy and France in a comparative and transnational perspective. Historiography has dealt much more with social insurance than with social assistance. However, the latter sheds light on the foundations of social rights, on the place of international negotiations in the building of post-war welfare states and on the limits of European social policy integration. The chapter will first analyse the separation of the welfare regimes for “national” and “foreign” refugees in the aftermath of World War II, then the interactions between the French and Italian governments, the ILO and the Economic and Social Council of the UN regarding the right to social assistance of migrants and refugees. The failure of the Naples conference in 1951 led to separated paths for intra-European migrants and refugees. During the 1950s, the former were gradually equated to nationals through the extension of bilateral treaties on a multilateral scale in the context of the European integration process. For refugees, the reservations with which both governments had initially signed the Geneva Refugee Convention were removed. Finally, the transformations of social assistance, originally linked to citizenship, had significant effects on the protection of both refugees and migrants.