Migration Monuments in Italy and Australia: Contesting Histories and Transforming Identities

Abstract

Rather than focusing on how Italians share the neighbourhood with other groups, this paper examines some of the intra-group processes (i.e. relations between Italians themselves) that produced various monuments to Italian migration in Australia, Brazil and Italy. Through their distinct styles and formulations, the monuments reflect diverse and often competing elaborations of the migrant experience by different generations at local, national and transnational levels. The recent increase in the construction of such monuments in Australia is linked to the gradual disappearance of ‘visibly’ Italian neighbourhoods. These commemorations effectively transform Italian migrants into Australian pioneers and, thus, resolve moral and cultural ambiguities about belonging and identity by de-emphasizing difference (ethnic diversity) and concealing intergenerational tensions about appropriate ways of expressing Italianness. Similarly, the appearance of monuments in Italy is linked to an emergent ‘diasporic’ consciousness fuelled by Italian emigrants’ growing ability to travel to Italy, but also to the attempt to obscure potentially destabilizing dual identities by emphasizing (one, Italian) ‘homeland’.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge and thank Bridget Curran and Jacqui Wells for their research assistance in the preparation of this paper. Many thanks go also to Terri-ann White, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia, and to the participants in the European Symposium ‘Italians Share the Neighbourhood’, held there in July 2003, and, in particular, Richard Bosworth and Susanna Iuliano. Finally, special thanks go to the two anonymous reviewers and to Nicholas Harney for their work in bringing this Special Issue together.

Notes

Notes

[1] Of course, as Krase's reference in this issue to the emergence of ‘ethnic’/immigrant neighbourhoods in Italy makes clear, such hostilities are, by no means, confined to Anglo societies; see e.g. King and Andall (1999); Krase (2004).

[2] One second-generation Italo-Australian friend delighted in telling me the joke: ‘What do lions have outside their houses?’ Answer: ‘Statues of little Italian men.’

[3] For a fuller description of this and the following monuments see Baldassar (2001, pp. 44–73).

[4] The high rates of repatriation inspired a government inquiry; see Price (1971, pp. A9–A10); IACCSP (1973); Martin (1978, p. 31).

[5] By the end of the war, over 4700 Italians had experienced internment, approximately 15% of Australia's Italians, of whom 1009 were Australian-born or had become British subjects. Queensland interned the greatest proportion of Italians of all the states; see Bosworth and Ugolini (1992).

[6] This mentality was largely due to RSL members feeling threatened by the considerable success of Italians in the sugar-cane industry; see Australia. House of Representatives (1991, p. 4326).

[7] It is also worth noting that on my most recent field trip to the Veneto, in 2002, locals were complaining about ‘troppo benessere’, ‘il declino’, and the negative excesses of the ‘good life’. Indeed, although few in number, those Italian migrants to Australia who have arrived in the last 10 years cite a better lifestyle as a major reason for their decision to migrate.

[8] Seasonal migration from the Veneto continues today, although in significantly reduced numbers, and mainly comprises the movement of gelati, or ice-cream vendors, to Germany.

[9] For a discussion of the factors influencing female migration see Sharma (1986).

[10] The sculptor was Professor Evandro Carpeggiani. The marble and the bronze came from Verona.

[11] There were apparently plans to build a sister-monument in São Paolo featuring this happy family but I have not been able to confirm this.

[12] For a discussion of transnational connections between migrant families, including Italians, see Baldassar et al. (2006).

[13] Minutes of the meeting, 30 July 1996, Comitato promotore del monumneto agli emigranti Valtellinesi e Valchiavennaschi nel mondo, Museo Etnografico Tirano (committee for promotion of the monument to the Emigrants from Valtellina and Valchiavenna in the world, Ethnographic Museum, Tirano).

[14] See e.g. Thompson (1980, p. 230).

[15] The fact that most emigrants intended to return is well documented in the literature, as are the high rates of repatriation; for the American context see di Leonardo (1984), and for Australia, Price (1963, p. 102, 1966).