Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | The French-speaking minority within the Italian part of the Alpine region has been politically mobilized since the beginning of the twentieth century. The party politics of the Aosta Valley region have been traditionally shaped on the ethno-linguistic, rural-urban and centre-periphery cleavages. The main minority nationalist party claiming to represent the French-speaking community of the region is the Union Valdôtaine (UV). This paper aims to explore the role of the main political actor of this Alpine region, the UV. The UV's ideological positions will be analysed, and also its responses to the external pressures that the party is currently facing: gaining political representation, immigration, and the processes of European integration and of regionalization of the Italian state. On the basis of an analysis of party manifestos, this paper will argue that the UV has strategically employed identity issues to secure its political survival. © 2012 Copyright The Editor of Ethnopolitics. |
