The unyielding way in which the mayor of Riace, a village in the Calabria region of south Italy, generously took in refugees was long viewed as a success story. In one fell swoop, he solved the village’s two-fold problem of an aging population and the exodus of young people. It had been looking like Riace would go the same way as many other small rural communities and become a ghost town. But the newcomers really livened things up—until, that is, the political tide turned and the subsidies for Riace’s refugee policy dried up. The result was chaos and confusion.