Contagious Prejudice: The Marocchinate

Riccardo Ghidoni and David Schindler

No 12376, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: During World War II, French Moroccan troops performed numerous acts of (sexual) violence against the Italian population, known in Italy as the Marocchinate. We demonstrate that these events led to contagion in prejudice: They triggered a pronounced shift to the far right following the recent mass influx of migrants from Syria, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Survey results provide no evidence of intergenerational transmission of attitudes but identify selective recall of collective memory as a likely channel.

Keywords: collective memory; contagion; WWII; associative recall (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D91 N34 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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