Editing Xenophobia (section)

==== Italy ====
{{Main|Racism in Italy}}

A new party emerged in the 1980s, [[Lega Nord]]. According to Gilda Zazzara, it started with identity-based claims and secessionist proposals for the north to break away from southern Italy. It shifted to xenophobia and the demand that job priority be accorded to native Italian workers.<ref>Gilda Zazzara, " 'Italians First': Workers on the Right Amidst Old and New Populisms" ''International Labor & Working-Class History'' (2018) Vol. 93, p101-112.</ref>

[[Anti-Romani sentiment]] in Italy takes the form of hostility, prejudice, discrimination or racism directed at Romani people. There's no reliable data for the total number of Roma people living in Italy, but estimates put it between 140,000 and 170,000. Many national and local political leaders engaged in rhetoric during 2007 and 2008 that maintained that the extraordinary rise in crime at the time was mainly a result of uncontrolled immigration of people of Roma origin from recent European Union member state Romania.<ref>Thomas Hammarberg, "Memorandum following the visit to Italy on 19–20 June 2008," the [[Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights]], CommDH(2008)18, para. 26, 28 July 2008</ref> National and local leaders declared their plans to expel Roma from settlements in and around major cities and to deport illegal immigrants. The mayors of Rome and Milan signed "Security Pacts" in May 2007 that "envisaged the forced eviction of up to 10,000 Romani people".<ref>[[Amnesty International]], The State of the World's Human Rights 2008: Italy, POL 10/001/2008, June 2008, pp. 171–172</ref>

According to a May 2008 poll 68% of Italians, wanted to see all of the country's approximately 150,000 Gypsies, many of them Italian citizens, expelled.<ref name=Guardian>[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/17/italy 68% of Italians want Roma expelled – poll], ''[[The Guardian]]'', Tom Kington, Rome, 17 May 2008</ref> The survey, published as mobs in Naples burned down Gypsy camps that month, revealed that the majority also wanted all Gypsy camps in Italy to be demolished.<ref name=Guardian />