Approaches to Folklore Research among Immigrant Groups

Abstract

EAST, CENTRAL, AND SOUTHERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS arriving in America with the so-called new wave of immigration which began in the second half of the nineteenth century were, in fact, no immigrants at all. Bankrupt peasants and landless agricultural laborers of countries in which the feudalistic landowner system anachronically persisted, they never really intended to leave their native lands forever. They wanted instead to make enough money in a foreign land to pay off debts, to buy land and a house in the village of their birth, and to become respectable farmers. This initial purpose determined basically the national character, speed, and degree of acculturation of the first generation of immigrants. Adjustment to the strange foreign world and learning the English language would have been extremely hard tasks for them, but their determination to return to their native land absolved them from the slightest need to do so. This fact has been known by American historians dealing with the history of immigration. Expert researchers, however, less concerned with the initial phase which converted temporary workers into immigrants, were interested mainly in the uprooted peasant masses, their process of gradual adjustment to the already established American culture, and their contribution to it. In view of the deeprooted and traditionally shaped peasant existence, the newcomers could not have desired anything but the satisfaction of their land hunger, which was always the focal point of their interest. In order to establish themselves in their native villages (a hopeless task there within the framework of the existing socio-economical system) they undertook even the desperate adventure in the New World. Folklorists whose interest turned toward ethnic communities in recent years have collected testimonies concerning this first period of peasant immigration, and in the course of my research of this nature conducted among immigrant groups in the area of Northeastern Indiana, and through the use of a field-work guide I prepared, the preceding facts concerning the motivating purposes of the immigrants were confirmed: eighty first-generation informants reacted almost unanimously in the negative to the question Did you originally intend to leave your old