Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States

Abstract

In their introduction, Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli state that roughly twenty million people left Italy between the French Revolution and World War II. About half found work in Europe, almost a third traveled to North America, and a quarter went to South America. Together they accounted for 10 percent of the world's migrants. This diaspora constitutes an ideal case study for anyone interested in how migration can transform identities and influence other historical processes, such as the rise of multiethnic states and the formation of social classes. These are the central concerns of this well-integrated collection of essays. Drawing liberally on one another's scholarship, the contributors and translators nimbly explore the consequences of Italians' epochal comings and goings on both a grand and a human scale. Gabaccia's lead essay in part 1 sketches the interactions of upper-class political exiles and lower-class economic migrants before and after Italy's unification in 1861 to argue that nationalist and republican ideals originated in those far-flung communities. Fernando Devoto next dissects the conflict between monarchists and republicans in Buenos Aires to expose how the two factions vied for cultural authority through the construction of hospitals, mutual aid societies, and newspapers. Several essays in the volume, notably Mirta Zaida Lobato's study of La Patria, Argentina's Italian-language daily, illustrate the importance of the immigrant press in shaping readers' sense of themselves as workers and citizens.