article_snippet.sent: (CNN)Geography is, in part, destiny for Italy: The country will always be a bridge between Africa and Europe, as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean so starkly shows.
article_snippet.sent: A surge of refugees this year, usually transported by smugglers on overcrowded vessels, has sought to reach Europe via the Libyan coast.  
article_snippet.sent: Many of the refugees involved in recent disasters come from some of Italy's former colonies in North and East Africa, namely Eritrea (occupied from 1890-1941) and Somalia (1908-1941).
article_snippet.sent: As migrants, Libyans are fewer in number, but Libya (1912-1941) plays a central role in the current crisis as the main departure point for Italy.
article_snippet.sent: Indeed, the migrants traversing the Mediterranean today form part of a century-long chain of migrations, expulsions, and exiles sparked by Italy's imperial ambition and commercial interests, the post-colonial anger of African leaders, and now mass economic desperation and political strife.
article_snippet.sent: Long after the formal end of Italian colonialism, these Eritreans, Somalis, and Libyans have inherited the histories of influence and exploitation that shaped these Eritreans, Somalis, and Libyans home countries.
article_snippet.sent: It also affects the treatment of Africans who settle in Italy.
article_snippet.sent: Some of those people arrived in Italy for the first time, at some of the same ports receiving migrants today.
article_snippet.sent: Since 2004, Italy and Libya have been directly connected by the Greenstream natural gas pipeline, which runs below the Mediterranean, on the same axis as many migrant boats.
article_snippet.sent: Italian rescuers and activists work tirelessly and selflessly, and yet migrants who remain in Italy are often subject to racist attacks.
highlights_snippet.sent: Italy's colonial past plays a key role in the migrant humanitarian disaster in the Mediterranean .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Ruth Ben-Ghiat says African migrants still bound to histories of exploitation that shaped African migrants home countries long after end of Italian rule .