Is everywhere nowhere? Nomads, nations, and the immigrant paradigm of United States history

Journal of American History

Volumn 86, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 1115-1132

  Gabaccia, Donna R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0347839700     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568608     Document Type: Review

References (166)

1. Gérard Noiriel, La tyrannie du national: Le droit d'asile en Europe (1793-1993) (The tyranny of the national: The right of refuge in Europe, 1793-1993) (Paris, 1991). Because I assume most readers are historians of the United States, I have limited citations when possible to works in English. Translations from non-English sources are my own.
2. Donna R. Gabaccia, "Do We Still Need Immigration History?," Polish American Studies, 55 (Spring 1998), 54-55.
3. Imre Ferenczi, International Migrations, ed. Walter F. Willcox (2 vols., New York, 1929), I, 811.
4. Emilio Franzina, Gli italiani al nuovo mondo (Italians in the New World) (Milan, 1995), 87-140;
5. John E. Zucchi, The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York (Montreal, 1992).
6. Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, "Stato senza nazione" (State without nation), in La costnizione dello state in Italia e Germania (The construction of the state in Italy and Germany), by L. Ambrosoli et al. (Manduria, 1993).
7. G. E. Rusconi, Se cessassimo di essere una nazione (If we ceased to be a nation) (Bologna, 1993);
8. Giorgio Calcagno, ed., Bianca, rosso, e verde: L'identità degli italiani (White, red, and green: The identity of the Italians) (Rome, 1993).
9. Denis Mack Smith, "Regionalism," in Modern Italy, ed. Edward R. Tannenbaum and Emiliana P. Noether (New York, 1974);
10. Carl Levy, ed., Italian Regionalism: History, Identity, and Politics (Oxford, 1996).
11. Michael Kearney, "The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism," Annual Review of Anthropology, 24 (1995).
12. Nina Click Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, eds., Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York, 1992).
13. Robert Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times (1919; New York, 1968).
14. Vito Teti, "Noti sui comportamenti delle donne sole degli 'americani' durante la prima emigrazione in Calabria" (Notes on the comportment of women left alone by the "Americans" during the first period of emigration from Calabria), Studi emigrazione (Rome), 24 (no. 87, 1987), 13-46;
15. René del Fabbro, Transalpini: Italienische Arbeitswanderung nach Süddeutschland im Kaiserreich 1870-1918 (The transalpinians: Italian labor migration to southern Germany during the reign of the kaisers 1870-1918) (Osnabrück, 1996), 266-67.
16. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, 1987),
17. Ernst Renan cited in Noiriel, Tyrannie du national, 1.
18. See also Ian Tyrrell, "Making Nations/Making States: American Historians in the Context of Empire," Journal of American History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1015-44.
19. Richard White, "The Nationalization of Nature," Journal of American History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 976-86;
20. and Bruno Ramirez, "Clio in Words and in Motion: Practices of Narrating the Past,"
21. Bruno Ramirez, "Clio in Words and in Motion: Practices of Narrating the Past," ibid., 987-1014.
22. Joseph Lopreato, Italian Americans (Austin, 1970);
23. Luciano J. lorizzo and Salvatore Mondello, The Italian-Americans (New York, 1971);
24. Humbert S. Nelli, From Immigrants to Ethnics: The Italian Americans (New York, 1983);
25. Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience (New York, 1992).
26. Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working-Class and Social History (Oxford, 1977).
27. Josef Barton, Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians, and Slovaks in an American City, 1890-1950 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975) ;
28. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930 (Ithaca, 1977);
29. John W. Briggs, An Italian Passage: Immigrants to Three American Cities, 1890-1930 (New Haven, 1978).
30. Ernesto Ragionieri, "Italiani, all'estero ed emigrazione di lavoratori italiani: Una tema di storia movimento operaio" (Italians abroad and the emigration of Italian workers: A theme in the history of the labor movement), Belfagor, Rassegna di Varia Urnanità (Florence), 17 (no. 6, 1962), 640-69;
31. Frank Thistlethwaite, "Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930, ed. Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke (Urbana, 1991).
32. Dirk Hoerder, ed., American Labor and Immigration History 1877-1920s: Recent European Research (Urbana, 1986).
33. Three projects (in Munich/Berlin, Hamburg, and Bochum) produced Hartmut Keil and John Jentz, eds., German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910: A Comparative Perspective (DeKalb, 1983);
34. Günter Moltmann, Deutsche Amerikaauswanderung im 19. Jahrhundert: sozialgeschicht. Beitr. (German migration to America in the nineteenth century: Social historical contributions) (Stuttgart, 1976);
35. and Wolfgang Helbich, Walter D. Kamphoefner, and Ulrike Sommer, News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home (Ithaca, 1991).
36. From a long list of publications, see Dirk Hoerder and Inge Blank, eds., Roots of the Transplanted (2 vols., Boulder, 1994);
37. Dirk Hoerder, ed., Distant Magnets: Expectations and Realities in the Immigrant Experience, 1840-1930 (New York, 1993);
38. and Christiane Harzig et al., Peasant Maids, City Women: From the European Countryside to Urban America (Ithaca, 1997).
39. Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, 111., 1958);
40. William Muraskin, "The Moral Basis of a Backward Sociologist: Edward Banfield, the Italians, and the Italian-Americans," American Journal of Sociology, 79 (no. 6, 1974), 1484-96.
41. Samuel L. Baily, "The Future of Italian-American Studies: An Historian's Approach to Research in the Coming Decade," in Italian Americans: New Perspectives in Italian Immigration and Ethnicity, ed. Lydio Tomasi (Staten Island, 1985), 193-201.
42. Donna R. Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Albany, 1984);
43. Donna Gabaccia, Militants and Migrants: Rural Sicilians Become Italian Workers (New Brunswick, 1988).
44. Bruno Bezza, ed., GIi italiani fuori d'Italia: Gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d'adozione 1880-1940 (The Italians outside of Italy: Italian emigrants and the labor movements of receiving countries 1880-1940) (Milan, 1983);
45. George E. Pozzetta and Bruno Ramirez, eds., The Italian Diaspora: Migration across the Globe (Toronto, 1992);
46. Lydio F. Tomasi, Piero Gastaldo, and Thomas Row, eds., The Columbus People: Perspectives in Italian Immigration to the Americas and Australia (New York and Turin, 1994).
47. The archive Web address of the project Italian Workers around the World is [http://unccvx.uncc.edu/ -DRGABACC/].
48. Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (Urbana, 1987).
49. Donna Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas: Elites, Exiles, and Workers of the World (Seattle, forthcoming).
50. Tullio De Mauro, "Linguistic Variety and Linguistic Minorities," in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (Oxford, 1996).
51. Gianfausto Rosoli, ed., Un secolo di emigrazione italiana, 1876-1976 (A century of Italian emigration, 1876-1976) (Rome, 1978);
52. Annuario statistico italiana (Italian statistical annual) (Rome, 1927).
53. Antonio Bechelloni, "Anti-Fascist Resistance in France from the 'Phony War' to the Liberation: Identity and Destinies in Question," in "For Us There Are No Frontiers," ed. Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser Ottanelli (manuscript).
54. A second collection of essays from the project Italian Workers around the World is being edited by Donna Gabaccia and Franca lacovctta, "Foreign, Female, and Fighting Back."
55. Franzina, Italtani al nuovo mondo;
56. Ercole Sori, L'emigrazione italiana dall'unità alla seconda guerra mondiale (Italian emigration from unification to the Second World War) (Bologna, 1979);
57. Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, L'emigrazione nella storia d'Italia, 1868-1975: Storia e documenti (Emigration in the history of Italy, 1868-1975: History and documents) (Florence, 1978);
58. Franca Assante, ed., Movimento migratorio italiano dall'unità aigiorni nostri (Italian migratory movements from unification to our own times) (2 vols., Geneva, 1978).
59. Spencer Di Scala, Italy: From Revolution to Republic, 1700 to the Present (Boulder, 1995);
60. Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti, coord., Storia d'Italia (History of Italy) (Turin, 1972-1976);
61. Giuseppe Galasso, dir., Storia d'Italia (History of Italy) (Turin, 1979).
62. Robert Lumley and Jonathan Morris, eds., The New History of the Italian South: The Mezzogiomo Revisited (Exeter, U.K., 1997).
63. Giuseppe Galasso and Rosario Romeo, Storia del mezzogiorno (History of southern Italy) (Rome, 1991);
64. Storia d'Italia: Le regioni dall'unità a oggi (History of Italy: The regions from unification to the present) (Turin, 1989- ).
65. Donna Gabaccia, "Two Great Migrations: American and Italian Southerners in Comparative Perspective," in The American South and the Italian Mezzogiomo: Essays in Comparative History, ed. Rick Halpern and Enrico del Lago (New York, forthcoming).
66. Donna Gabaccia, "Italian history and Gli italiani nel mondo, Part I," Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2 (no. 1, 1997), 45-66;
67. and Donna Gabaccia, "Italian History and Gli italiani nel mondo, Part II," Journal of Modern Italian Studies, ibid., 3 (no. 1, 1998), 73-97.
68. Gilles Pécout, Naissance de l'Italie contemporaine (1770-1922) (The birth of contemporary Italy, 1770-1922) (Paris, 1997);
69. Richard Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World (New York, 1996).
70. Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany (Ann Arbor, 1984);
71. Madelyn Holmes, Forgotten Migrants: Foreign Workers in Switzerland before World War I (Rutherford, 1988).
72. Gérard Noiriel, "Immigration and National Memory in the Current French Historiography," IMS-Beiträge, 10 (1999), 39-55.
73. Gino Germani, "Mass Immigration and Modernization in Argentina," in Race and Ethnicity in Latin America, ed. Jorge Dominguez (New York, 1994);
74. Arnd Schneider, "Discours sur l'altérité dans l'Argentine moderne" (Discourse on otherness in modern Argentina), Cahiers internationaux de Sociologie (Paris), 105 (1992), 341-60.
75. Besides works cited in n. 10 above, see Bruno Ramirez, The Italians in Canada (Ottawa, 1990);
76. Neil Bissondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto, 1994);
77. Stephen Castles, ed., Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society (Sydney, 1992);
78. and George M. Fredrickson, "America's Diversity in Comparative Perspective," Journal of American History, 85 (Dec. 1998), 868-69.
79. Janet Abu-Lughod, "Going beyond Global Babble," in Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, ed. Anthony D. King (Minneapolis, 1997).
80. Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli, "Diaspora or International Proletariat? Italian Labor, Labor Migration, and the Making of Multiethnic States, 1815-1939," Diaspora, 6 (Spring 1997), 51-84.
81. James Clifford, "Diasporas," Cultural Anthropology, 9 (Aug. 1994), 302-38;
82. Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle, 1997).
83. Glick-Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton, eds., Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration.
84. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993);
85. Khachig Tölölyan, "Rethinking Diasporas: Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment," Diaspora, 5 (Spring 1996).
86. Linda Basch, Nina Click Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Amsterdam, 1994).
87. Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, ch. 4.
88. Leone Carpi, Della colonie e dell'emigrazione d'italiani all'estero sotto l'aspetto dell'industria, commercio, ed agricoltura (About colonies and Italian emigration abroad with regard to industry, commerce, and agriculture) (4 vols., Milan, 1874), I, II;
89. Gerolamo Boccardo, L'emigrazione e le colonie (Emigration and colonies) (Florence, 1871).
90. Franzina, Italiani al nuovo mondo, 15.
91. Silvano M. Tomasi, "Scalabriniani e mondo cattolico di fronte all'emigrazione italiana (1880-1940)" (Scalabrinians and the Catholic world confront Italian emigration, 1880-1940), in Italiani fuori d'Italia, ed. Bezza, 145-62;
92. Ronald S. Cunsoli, "Enrico Corradini and the Italian Version of Proletarian Nationalism," Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism (Charlottetown), 12 (no. 1, 1985), 47-63 .
93. Lucio Fabi, "La riforma della legge sulla cittadinanza italiana" (Reform of the Italian citizenship law) Gli italiani net mondo (Rome), 21 (March 1965).
94. Philip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy: Italian Americans and Fascism, 1921-1929 (West Lafayette, 1999);
95. Alan Cassels, "Fascism for Export: Italy and the United States in the Twenties," American Historical Review, 69 (April 1964), 707-12.
96. Nadia Venturini, "'Over the Years People Don't Know': Italian Americans and African Americans in Harlem in the 1930s," in "For Us There Are No Frontiers," ed. Gabaccia and Ottanelli;
97. Fraser M. Ottanelli, "'If fascism comes to America we will push it back into the ocean': Italian-American Antifascism during the 1920s and 1930s,"
98. Fraser M. Ottanelli, "'If fascism comes to America we will push it back into the ocean': Italian-American Antifascism during the 1920s and 1930s," ibid.
99. Carlo Morandi, "Per una storia degli italiani fuori d'Italia (A proposito di alcune note di A. Gramsci)" (Toward a history of Italians living outside Italy, referring to some notes by A. Gramsci), Rivista storica italiana, 3 (1949), 379-84;
100. Varo Varanini, "Gli Italiani nel mondo" (Italians around the world), in Cento anni di vita italiana 1848-1948 (One hundred years of Italian life 1848-1948), ed. Corrado Barbagallo (2 vols., Milan, 1948), I, 495-536.
101. Italiani nel mondo (Rome), 31 (March 1975);
102. Italiani nel mondo (ibid. (April 1975);
103. Italiani nel mondo (ibid. (Oct. 1975);
104. Italiani nel mondo (ibid., 36 (Jan. 1980).
105. Gabaccia and Ottanelli, "Diaspora or International Proletariat?"
106. Robert Harney, "Men without Women: Italian Migrants in Canada, 1885-1930," in The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America, ed. Betty Boyd Caroli, Robert F. Harney, and Lydio F. Tomasi (Toronto, 1978), 79-101;
107. Caroline Brettell, The Men Who Migrate and the Women Who Wait: Population and History in a Portuguese Parish (Princeton, 1986).
108. Donna Gabaccia and Franca lacovetta, "Work, Women, and Protest in the Italian Diaspora: An International Research Agenda," LabourlLe Travail (Toronto), 42 (Fall 1998), 161-82.
109. Donna Gabaccia, "Worker Internationalism and Italian Labor Migration, 1870-1914," International Labor and Working-Class History, 45 (Spring 1994), 63-79.
110. Angelo Trento, "'Wherever We Work, That Land Is Ours': Italian Anarchists and Working-Class Solidarity in São Paulo," in "For Us There Are No Frontiers," ed. Gabaccia and Ottanelli;
111. Carina Silberstein, "Labor and Migration in an Agricultural Economy. Italians in Argentina,"
112. Carina Silberstein, "Labor and Migration in an Agricultural Economy. Italians in Argentina," ibid.;
113. Michael MillerTopp, "The Lawrence Strike and the Defense Campaign for Ettor and Giovannitti: The Possibilities and Limitations of Italian American Syndicalism," Labor and Migration in an Agricultural Economy. Italians in Argentina," ibid.
114. Gabaccia, "Worker Internationalism and Italian Labor Migration."
115. George J. Sanchez, "Race, Nation, and Culture in Recent Immigration Studies," Journal of American Ethnic History, 18 (Summer 1999), 66-84.
116. Early and later criticisms of the paradigm are Robert Blauner, "Colonized and Immigrant Minorities," in A Nation of Nations, ed. Peter I. Rose (New York, 1972), 243-58;
117. and Michael Omi and Howard Wynant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s (New York, 1986).
118. See Gary Gerstle, "Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism," Journal of American History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1280-1307.
119. John Gjerde, "New Growth on Old Vines: The State of the Field of the Social History of Immigration to and Ethnicity in the United States," Journal of American Ethnic History, 18 (Summer 1999), 40-65;
120. Donna Gabaccia, "Ins and Outs: Who Is an Immigration Historian?," " Journal of American Ethnic History, ibid, 126-35.
121. These authors may not be familiar to historians outside of immigration history - a telling reminder of their fate in American historiography. See Carl Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (Cleveland, 1939);
122. Theodore Biegen, Norwegian Migration to America, 1825-1860 (Northfield, Minn., 1931);
123. Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration (Cambridge, Mass., 1940).
124. For a discussion of their works, see Gjerde, "New Growth on Old Vines."
125. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migration that Made the American People (Boston, 1951).
126. The works of these historians, by contrast, will be well known to many Americanists, and all are still in print in recent editions. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835, 1840, in French; New York, 1999);
127. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782; New York, 1997);
128. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1894; Madison, 1984);
129. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution (1955; San Diego, 1991).
130. For a more recent discussion of these issues, see David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multicultualism (New York, 1995);
131. and Gary Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans," Journal of American History, 84 (Sept. 1997), 524-58.
132. Rudolph J. Vecoli, "Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted," Journal of American History, 51 (Dec. 1964), 404-17.
133. John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, 1985).
134. Ewa Morawska, "In Defense of the Assimilation Model," Journal of American Ethnic History, 13 (Winter 1994), 76-87;
135. Elliott R. Barkan, "Race, Religion, and Nationality in American Society: A Model of Ethnicity: From Contact to Assimilation," " Journal of American Ethnic History, ibid., 14 (Winter 1995), 38-74;
136. Russell A. Kazal, "Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in Ethnic History," American Historical Review, 100 (April 1995), 437-71;
137. James R. Barrett, "Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880-1930," Journal of American History, 79 (Dec. 1992), 996-1020.
138. Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914 (Bloomington, 1992);
139. Leslie Page Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington, 1992), 147-53.
140. Foerster, Italian Emigration of Our Times;
141. Samuel L. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870-1914 (Ithaca, 1999).
142. Donna Gabaccia, "Class, Exile, and Nationalism at Home and Abroad: The Italian Risorgimento," in "For Us There Are No Frontiers," ed. Gabaccia and Ottanelli.
143. M. Triaca, Amelia: A Long Journey (Richmond, 1985), 35,
144. quoted in Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World, 134.
145. Gabriella Gribaudi, "Images of the South: The Mezzogiorno as Seen by Insiders and Outsiders," in Lumley and Morris, eds., New History of the Italian South;
146. John Dickie, "Stereotypes of the Italian South, 1860-1900,New History of the Italian South; " ibid.
147. Gabaccia, "Two Great Migrations."
148. Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, ch. 4.
149. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise, 63, 159.
150. Del Fabbro, Transalpini, 4;
151. Gabaccia, Militants ana Migrants, 155-63.
152. Rosoli, ed., Secolo di emigrazione italiana, table XX;
153. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise, table 3.4;
154. Betty Boyd Caroli, Italian Repatriation from the United States, 1900-1914 (New York, 1973), 49-50.
155. Dino Cinel, National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 1870-1929 (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), 233.
156. Herbert Gans, "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America," Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2 (1979), 1-10;
157. Mary Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, 1990);
158. Richard Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New Haven, 1990);
159. a sensible response is George E. Pozzetta, "What Then Is the European American, This New Man? Ethnicity in Contemporary America," Altreitalie (Turin), 3 (Nov. 1991), 114-17.
160. Richard Alba, Italian Americans: Into the Twilight of Ethnicity (Englewood Cliffs, 1985).
161. Robert F. Harney, "Italophobia: An English-speaking Malady?," Polyphony, 7 (March 1985).
162. Marshall Pilsudski cited in E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 44-45.
163. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism (New York, 1965).
164. A. C. Palfreeman, The Administration of the White Australia Policy (Melbourne, 1967);
165. Donald H. Avery, Reluctant Host: Canada's Response to Immigrant Workers, 1896-1994 (Toronto, 1995).
166. Nancy L. Green, "Le Melting-Pot: Made in America, Produced in France," Journal of American History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1188-1208.