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A Shared Social Identity: Oral Histories of an Urban Community of Italian Market Gardeners in Adelaide 1920s–1970s

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Remembering Migration

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

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Abstract

In the late 1920s unprecedented numbers of Italian migrants arrived in Australia. Among the “white aliens” was a group of 17 men and 1 woman from the Veneto region of Italy who established commercial market gardens in Adelaide. This chapter explores concepts of shared social identity within the context of a migrant community in Australia between the wars. It draws on 46 oral history interviews recorded over ten years, primarily with second-generation family members living in Adelaide and two in Italy. The recordings, disseminated on a website with photos and documents, communicate individual and community memories of families and their experience of migration. The chapter also examines the use of digital technology as a transnational resource to transmit a historical record of a migrant community.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Michael D. Kirby, “Ethnic History in Australia,” Speech, State Library of New South Wales Seminar on Ethnic, Oral and Local History (Sydney, 22 February 1982): 5.

  2. 2.

    Charles A. Price, “Australian Immigration: The Whitlam Government 1972–1975,” in Charles. A. Price and Jean I. Martin eds, Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and Digest, No. 3 (Canberra: Australian National University 1976), A1–A3.

  3. 3.

    Linda Shopes, “Oral History and the Study of Communities: Problems, Paradoxes and Possibilities,” The Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (2002): 588–98.

  4. 4.

    Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Census of the Commonwealth of Australia Taken Between the Night of 3rd and 4th April 1911,” in Part II—Birthplaces, cat. no. 2111.0, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Melbourne, 1921, 45–48.

  5. 5.

    Herbert S. Klein, “The Integration of Italian Immigrants into the United States and Argentina: A Comparative Analysis,” The American Historical Review 88, no. 2 Apr. (1983): 307, 308.

  6. 6.

    Desmond O’Connor, No Need to be Afraid: Italian Settlers in South Australia between 1839 and the Second World War (Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press, 1996), 3.

  7. 7.

    Daniel James. “Listening in the Cold: The Practice of Oral History in an Argentine Working-class Community,” in Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson eds, The Oral History Reader, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 1998), 87.

  8. 8.

    See Shopes, “Oral History and the Study of Communities,” 588–98; Paul Thompson with Joanna Bornat, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 4th edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Alistair Thomson, “Oral History and Community History in Britain: Personal and Critical Reflections on Twenty-five years of Continuity and Change,” Oral History 36, no. 1 (2008): 95–104.

  9. 9.

    Daniela Cosmini-Rose, Caulonia in the Heart: The Settlement in Australia of Migrants from a Southern Italian Town (Adelaide, SA: Lythrum Press, 2008); Don Longo, Terra Lasci, Terra Trovi: From Molinara to Adelaide: The History of a Southern Italian Community in South Australia, 1927–2007 (Adelaide, SA: Molinara Social and Sports Club Inc. in association with Lythrum Press, 2010); Antonio Mercurio and Angela Scarino, We Left: Narratives of the Sangiorgesi in South Australia (Adelaide: San Giorgio la Molara Community Centre, 2004); Michael Peter Corrieri, Italians of Port Pirie: A Social History (Port Pirie, SA: Our Lady of Martyrs, Port Pirie Italian Community, 1992); Sara S. King, “Agriculture in South Australia: The Italian Contribution,” PhD diss., Flinders University, 2007.

  10. 10.

    Ginzburg, Carlo (1993), “Microhistory—Two or Three Things that I Know About It,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 10–35. In Australia Annamaria Davine has used microhistory to study Italians and Swiss Italians on the Walhalla goldfields, Annamaria Davine, “Italian Speakers on the Walhalla Goldfield: A Micro-History Approach,” in Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, no. 7, 2008, https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2008/italian-speakers-walhalla-goldfield.

  11. 11.

    Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 185.

  12. 12.

    Thompson with Bornat, The Voice of the Past, 290.

  13. 13.

    Thomson, “Oral History and Community History in Britain,” 99.

  14. 14.

    Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory, 2nd edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 58–63.

  15. 15.

    Jan Assmann, “Communicative and Cultural Memory,” in Astril Eril and Ansgar Nünning eds, A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter Inc. 2008), 114.

  16. 16.

    Robert Pascoe, “Place and Community: The Construction of an Italo-Australian space,” in Stephen Castles et al., eds, Australia’s Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), 92.

  17. 17.

    Assunta Giovannini nee Tonellato, interviewed by Madeleine Regan, 15 July 2010, Adelaide, South Australia, J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection, State Library of South Australia, OH 872/6.

  18. 18.

    Anne-Marie Fortier, “Re-Membering Places,” Theory, Culture & Society, 45, 46.

  19. 19.

    Gavin J. Andrews et al., “‘Their Finest Hour’: Older People, Oral Histories, and the Historical Geography of Social Life,” Social & Cultural Geography 7, no. 2 (2006): 170–71.

  20. 20.

    Mary Tonellato nee Zoanetti, interviewed by Madeleine Regan, 3 October 2008, Adelaide, South Australia, J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection, State Library of South Australia, OH 872/3.

  21. 21.

    Lino Ballestrin, interviewed by Madeleine Regan, 22 November 2016, Adelaide, South Australia, J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection, State Library of South Australia, OH 872/40.

  22. 22.

    Fortier, “Re-Membering Places,” Theory, Culture & Society, 47.

  23. 23.

    Loretta Baldassar and Ros Pesman, From Paesani to Global Citizens: Veneto Migrants in Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2005), 224, 225.

  24. 24.

    Milva Rebuli, interviewed by Madeleine Regan, 27 March 2016, Adelaide, South Australia, J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection, State Library of South Australia, OH 872/36.

  25. 25.

    See www.venetimarketgardeners1927.net.

  26. 26.

    Alessandro Portelli, “A Dialogical Relationship: An Approach to Oral History,” In Expressions Annual 2005, http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/expressions_portelli.pdf, 5.

  27. 27.

    Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, “Memory and History in Twenty-first Century Australia: A Survey of the Field,” Memory Studies 6, no. 3 (2013): 370–83.

  28. 28.

    Remo Berno, email correspondence with the author, 1 July 2017.

  29. 29.

    Loretta Baldassar et al., “ICT-based Co-presence in Transnational Families and Communities: Challenging the Premise of Face-to-face Proximity in Sustaining Relationships,” Global Networks 16, no. 2 (2016): 133–44.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Flinders Park, SA, Australia

    Madeleine Regan

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  1. Madeleine Regan
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Correspondence to Madeleine Regan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

    Kate Darian-Smith

  2. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Paula Hamilton

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Regan, M. (2019). A Shared Social Identity: Oral Histories of an Urban Community of Italian Market Gardeners in Adelaide 1920s–1970s. In: Darian-Smith, K., Hamilton, P. (eds) Remembering Migration. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17751-5_7

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