The narrow and mountainous peninsula of Italy, surrounded by the Mediterranean and located at the southern opening of multiple alpine passes, has long both forced and facilitated the departure of its inhabitants. Once the birthplace of peripatetic empire builders, merchants, sea-men and explorers, missionaries, scholars, artists, and musicians, Italy after 1800 contributed substantially to worker and refugee movements of such vast proportions that scholars have termed them the “proletarian mass migrations” (Hoerder, 1985, pp. 6–7). State making in Europe, the abolition of slavery in the Americas, the industrialization of Europe and North America, and the recruitment of settlers by new states to replace indigenous populations in the Americas and Australia drew residents of Italy into a world market for labor that eventually stretched across Europe, the Atlantic, and the Pacific. Almost 27 million persons—mainly unskilled men from rural districts—left Italy over the course of two...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Armstrong, J. A. (1976). Mobilized and proletarian diasporas. American Political Science Review, 70, 2, 393–408.
Audenino, P. (1990). Un mestiere per partire. Milan: Franco Angeli.
Baily, S. L. (1999). Immigrants in the lands of promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870 to 1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Baily, S. L., & Miguez, E. J. (Eds.). (2003). Mass migration to modern Latin America. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.
Baldassar, L. (2001). Visits home: Migration experiences between Italy and Australia. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press.
Bevilacqua, P., DeClementi, A., & Franzina, E. (Eds.). (2001–2002). Storia deli’emigrazione Italiana. Rome: Donzelli Editore.
Carpi, L. (1874). Delle colonie e dell’emigrazione d’italiani all’estero sotto l’aspetto deIl’industria, commercio ed agricoltura. Milan: Lombarda, già D. Salvi.
Castles, S., & Kosack, G. (1973). Immigrant workers and class structure in Western Europe. London: Oxford University Press.
Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Current Anthropology, 9, 302–338.
Cohen, R. (1997). Global diasporas: An introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
D’Agostino, E (2004). Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the risorgimento to fascism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Del Fabbro, R. (1996). Transalpini: Italienische Arbeitswanderung nach Süddeutschland im Kaiserreich 1870–1918. Osnabrück: Universitäitsvedag Rasch.
Franzina, E. (1995). Gli italiani al nuovo mondo. Milan: Teti Editore.
Gabaccia, D. R. (1997). The “Yellow Peril” and the “Chinese of Europe”: Global perspectives on race and labor, 1815–1930. In J. Lucassen & L. Lucassen (Eds.), Migrations, migration history, history: Old paradigms and new perspectives (pp. 177–196). Bern: Peter Lang.
Gabaccia, D. R. (2000). Italy’s many diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Gabaccia, D. R., & Iacovetta, F. (Eds.). (2002). Women, gender and transnational lives: Italian workers of the world. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Gabaccia, D. R., & Ottanelli, F. M. (Eds.). (2001). Italian workers of the world: Labor, migration, and the making of multi-ethnic nations. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ginsborg, E (1990). A history of contemporary Italy, society and politics, 1943–1988. London: Penguin.
Ginsborg, P. (2003). Italy and its discontents: Family, civil society, state, 1980–2001. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Guglielmo, J., & Salerno, S. (2003). Are Italians white? New York: Routledge
Harney, R. E (1978). Men without women: Italian migrants in Canada, 1885–1930. In B. B. Caroli, R. F. Harney, & L. F. Tomasi (Eds.), The Italian immigrant woman in North America (pp. 79–101). Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario.
Harney, R. F. (1985). Italophobia: An English-speaking malady? Polyphony, 7.
Herbert, U. (1984). A history of foreign labor in Germany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Hoerder, D. (Ed.). (1985). Labor migration in the Atlantic economies: The European and North American working classes during the period of industrialization. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Holmes, M. (1988). Forgotten migrants, foreign workers in Switzerland before World War L Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Iacovetta, E (1992). Such hard-working people: Italians in postwar Toronto. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Pozzetta, G. E., Ramirez, B. (Eds.). (1992). The Italian diaspora: Migration across the globe. Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario.
Reeder, L. (2003). Widows in white: Migration and the transformation of rural Italian women, Sicily, 1880–1920. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Rosoli, G. (Ed.). (1976). Un secolo di emigrazione italiana, 1876–1976. Rome: Centro Studi Emigrazione.
Rosoli, G. (1989). Le popolazione di origine italiana oltreoceano. Altreitalie, 2, 3–35.
Vecoli, R. J. (1995). The Italian diaspora, 1876–1976. In R. Cohen (Ed.), The Cambridge survey of world migrations (pp. 114–122). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Gabaccia, D.R. (2005). Italian Diaspora. In: Ember, M., Ember, C.R., Skoggard, I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-306-48321-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-29904-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law