Southern Europeans Research Articles

Eastern and Southern European Immigrants: Expectations, Reality, and a New Agenda

Throughout the history of their settlement in America, Eastern and Southern European ancestry groups have varied dramatically. Yet there is a logic to combining all these groups into a single analytical category, based on the time of their arrival, their religious and cultural differences from other Americans, and their living memories of gaining freedom from serfdom and peonage. From 1924 to 1964, a national immigration policy of selection and restriction effectively excluded immigrants from these regions of Europe using flawed social scientific rationales that tagged Eastern and Southern Europeans as undesirable and inferior. By 1965, however, a fresh spirit of tolerance and consensus had come to prevail. The 1980 census data on ancestry populations and foreign-born persons from Eastern and Southern Europe sustain the notion that local variations should not be ignored. Finding the convergent issues of various ethnic populations remains on the American agenda of liberty and justice for all. Ancestry groups with recollections of the immigrant experience could become a pivotal force in resolving conflict during the next era of immigration.

Using the Melbourne Family Survey in migration research: Reply to Santow

As Gigi Santow points out, only married women are included in the sample, so younger women are self-selected for earlier marriages. Rather than abandoning the sample for this reason, however, I included ages of women as a continuous covariate in analysis of variance calculations (see table 2 in Carlson 1985a). Similarly, Southern Europeans are more concentrated in more recent migrant marriage cohorts. Again rather than rejecting the sample I included region of origin as one of several factors in table 2. It doesn't seem fair to dismiss the resulting detailed breakdown of factors affecting marriage age (including education, father's occupation, premarital work experience, and family status at arrival, as well as age and region of origin) as a global summary measure. The liabilities of the sample are taken into account by introducing appropriate control variables in the analysis of marriage timing. As noted in the original article, the possibility of significant distorting interaction effects among these variables also was explored. On the other hand, the same objections are perfectly valid with respect to analysis of birth timing-table 3 shows no such controls. The question is, how serious are such biasing factors? I examined this issue and decided such biases would not dispel my results. I demonstrated this by including relevant background factors (age, region of origin, education, family status at arrival, and work experience after marriage) in a detailed study of the likelihood of having a first birth within two years after marriage in the Melbourne sample (Carlson 1985b). Women arriving as childless wives were less than half as likely as other categories of immigrants to become mothers in the first two years of marriage, even after controlling for such factors. The pattern was strongest among women who worked after marriage, and much fainter among immigrant women who did not do so. I believe these patterns show two things. First, important new insights into migration as an influence on family building can be gained by introducing such control factors. Second, such new insights seem to clarify and focus the basic conclusions about disruption of fertility arrived at in my original article, rather than negating them.

The Revealed Influence of Class, Race, and Ethnicity on Local Public- School Expenditures

Over the past decades, there has been considerable interest in how the ethnic, racial, and class composition of a community affects its behavior. There have been numerous discussions of how the ethnic background of immigrants interacted with conditions they faced in urban or rural America to produce group behavior and community choices that contributed to the relative performance of those groups (e.g., see Sowell, 1981; Glazer and Moynihan, 1963; Glazer, 1983; Lieberson, 1980). One choice has received particular emphasis: a group's commitment to increased education for its own members and others. Most of this scholarly work has relied on historical and survey methods to analyze differences in various groups' commitments to educational improvement. In this article, we use a new technique and Michigan schooldistrict data from 1970 to identify how the ethnic, racial, andclass composition of heterogeneous communities systematically affects levels of local public educational expenditures. The literature on school spending contains three types of hypotheses that need to be distinguished. The first hypothesis is that the demand for school spending varies with income and that the relationship is probably not monotonic but instead U-shaped-i.e., the rich and the poor favor larger expenditures. While that sounds straightforward, it is in fact one of the most confusing areas of debate. One favored explanation is that the poor want large school budgets because they do not pay very much of the cost and the rich want large budgets because they are public-regarding persons who are glad to pay for the betterment of the community (Wilson and Banfield, 1964). This explanation, however, illustrates a possible confusion between a price effect and an income effect. According to this logic, if the poor pay a smaller share of.a publicly provided good, they will demand more because they face a lower price. But we also expect that if prices are held constant while income is varied, expenditures on any commodity will begin at some subsistence or threshold level, rise as income increases, and eventually level off as demand for the commodity is sated.' Therefore, the rich may demand more despite having to pay a higher share of the cost (or price). It is also possible that the very poor, seeing education as a path to a better life for their children, are willing to pay a disproportionate share of their income for schooling (again, holding price constant). If this hypothesis about spending is correct, a typical family's demand function for schooling will have a nonmonotonic relation to income. As Figure 1 shows, demand as a function of family income (Yf) (other things, including price, held constant) falls to point A then rises to a peak. at B. If public-regardingness is extremely important, it will push the point where that curve reaches a maximum out. to extremely high income levels. A second set of hypotheses concerns the effects of race and ethnicity on public expenditures. In the early versions of their theory, Wilson and Banfield (1964) suggested that Northern and Southern Europeans brought quite different values with them to America and that these imported tastes determined the political choices such groups made. In later versions (Wilson and Banfield, 1971) they retreated from identifying a particular ethos with a particular country of origin. But they still maintained that members of an ethnic or racial group fit predominantly into one of two opposing world views about 'the role of government: a public-regarding, or unitary, ethos and a private-regarding, or individualistic, ethos. These views could manifest themselves either directly in attitudinal survey data or indirectly through ethnic variations in voting patterns or (with long and variable lags) through variations in political institutions. The local school system is an especially good place The authors contributed equally to this article. They wish to thank several anonymous referees for Sociology of Education for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Address all correspondence to Professor Daniel H. Saks, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203. I There have been many studies of these relationships, called Engel curves. For a discussion, see Ramsey (1974).

Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910-1918

Sources of opposition and support for woman suffrage are analyzed with the use of the responses of male voters to constitutional referenda held in six key states during the Progressive era. Traditional axes of opposition and support for suffrage are examined, establishing that stable sources of suffrage support originate most often from Protestant and northern European constituencies (with the exception of Germans), whereas southern Europeans and Catholics (except for Germans) generally show no consistent patterns. Opposition to suffrage is most constant from Germans—both Catholic and Protestant—and from urban constituencies. A structural model indicating the greater importance of prohibition as an intervening variable compared to partisanship or turnout at the grass-roots level of voting behavior explicates the sources of direct and indirect support for suffrage while it also demonstrates the influence of educational commitment in determining suffrage voting patterns. Except in the West, opposition to suffrage was intense and greater at the grass-roots level than among legislative elites. The ultimate success of the federal amendment is discussed in the context of state referenda, the changed political climate after American entry into World War I, and the innovative efforts of state legislatures to grant “presidential” suffrage, thereby circumventing what proved to be the difficult referenda route.

Italian miners and the second‐generation ‘Britishers’ at Kalgoorlie, Australia∗

This article studies the 1934 Kalgoorlie riot in Western Australia by placing the event in the wider social context of the period. The immediate cause of the riot was the killing of a local sports hero by an Italian barman. The rioters were descendants of English colonists and the object of their violence were the people of Southern European descent. They burned Southern European business. The government of Wester Australia acted in such a way that for the Southern Europeans they think it was biased against them. Most of the people in Kalgoorlie works in mines. The mining sector was entangled with the social unrest.

New Methodologies for Studying the Relationship of Bilingualism and Cognitive Flexibility

U The turn of the century saw the introduction of psychometric tests of intelligence to the United States, mostly due to the efforts of H. Goddard and L. Terman. Both of these psychologists were hereditarians, who believed that the genetic composition of individuals was the primary determinant of performance on these tests. A major thrust of work in those dark days was directed toward showing that individuals from certain racial groups (primarily Southern and Eastern Europeans) were of inferior intelligence; together with the assumption that this was due to their genes, certain social policies such as the restriction of immigration were effected (see Gould 1981). There was, however, a major stumbling block in reaching these conclusions from the data that existed (mostly results of massive IQ testing of World War I recruits): many of the testees were not native speakers of English, yet they were tested in English. Thus, whether these individuals were suffering from a handicap in testing became a major issue. Hereditarians, such as Terman's student Kimball Young, argued that there was no language handicap. Those in favor of environmental determinants of IQ stressed the language handicap. The social context in which this early research on bilingualism and intelligence was conducted is radically different from the context of the more recent studies of the matter, basically modeled after Peal and Lambert's (1962) well-known study. These different contexts are primarily responsible for the differences in the focus of the research and the methodologies adopted. From our current perspective, the methodology of the earlier research was wildly deficient, failing to control for a variety of obvious variables such as socio-economic status (SES). But the earlier researchers assumed that low SES was the result, not the cause, of inferior performance on IQ tests, so this questionable methodology passed the inspection lines of science (a review of this history will appear in Hakuta, forthcoming). We contemporary researchers are not, however, so objective either. I think

The classic risk factors for coronary heart disease: Experience in Europe

This article is based on the follow-up of 9,182 men from 13 cohorts of five European countries (Finland, Greece, Italy, Holland, and Yugoslavia). Its purpose is to explore the associations of known risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD). A significant positive association was found between age and 10-year mortality from CHD (10-MCHD), between systolic blood pressure (SBP) and 10-MCHD (steeper for the Finns than for men from Mediterranean countries), and between serum cholesterol and 10-MCHD (more pronounced in northern than southern European men). Age-standardized 10-MCHD was found to increase with degree of smoking; the regression slope of this correlation was steeper for men from northern than from southern Europe. Although death from all causes tended to be inversely related to relative body weight, no consistent evidence of a relation between relative body weight or body fatness and CHD was found. Incidence rate of CHD was not consistently related to physical activity characteristics of the groups. Resting pulse rate was an important risk factor for all causes of death in 10 years, but of less consequence for MCHD. Regression slopes were steeper for northern than for southern Europeans. Vital capacity was a significant risk factor for MCHD for Italian but not for Finnish, Greek, or Serbian men. The 10-year adjusted MCHD was correlated with total fat in the diet; the correlation with saturated fatty acids was much more significant.

The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921

This history of the 'new immigration' weighs the many factors that prompted the decision to leave the old world. Though the designation 'new immigrant' generally refers to southern and eastern Europeans only, this volume also includes the Chinese and Japanese who arrived in the period from 1880-1921. Kraut argues that immigration to America was but one of the many choices available to the immigrants, and that individual aptitude and desires were just as influential as cultural, social, and familial pressures to find a better life. The immigrants' impact on America and their new countrymen is also considered. Includes a very good, 32-page photographic essay

Strangers to These Shores: Race and Ethnic Relations in the United States.

Each chapter concludes with Retrospect, Key Terms, Review Questions, and Suggested Readings. Foreword by Ruben Rumbaut. Preface. I.SOCIOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK. 1.The Study of Minorities. The Stranger as a Social Phenomenon. A Sociological Perspective. Minority Groups. Racial and Ethnic Groups. Ethnocentrism. Objectivity. The Dillingham Flaw. Personal Troubles and Public Issues. The Dynamics of Intergroup Relations. 2.Culture and Social Structure. The Concept of Culture. Cultural Change. Structural Conditions. Stratification. Social Class. Intergroup Conflict. Theories of Minority Integration. 3.Prejudice and Discrimination. Prejudice. Discrimination. 4.Dominant-Minority Relations. Minority-Group Responses. Consequences of Minority-Group Status. Dominant-Group Responses. Exploitation. II.EUROPEAN AMERICANS. 5.Northern and Western Europeans. Sociohistorical Perspective. The English. The Dutch. The French. The Germans. The Irish. The Scandinavians and Finns The Scots. The Welsh. Sociological Analysis. 6.Southern, Central, and Eastern Europeans. Sociohistorical Perspective. The Slavic Peoples. The Poles. The Russians. The Ukrainians. The Hungarians. The Gypsies. The Italians. The Greeks. The Portuguese. The Armenians. Sociological Analysis. III.PEOPLE OF COLOR. 7.The Native Americans. Sociohistorical Perspective. Values and Social Structure. Stereotyping of Native Americans. Changes in Government Policy. Present-Day Native American Life. Natural Resources. Red Power. The Courts. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Urban Native Americans. Cultural Impact. Sociological Analysis. 8.East and Southeast Asian Americans. Sociohistorical Perspective. Cultural Attributes. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Filipinos. The Koreans. The Vietnamese. Other Southeast Asians. Ethnoviolence. The Model Minority Stereotype. Sociological Analysis. 9.Other Asian and Middle Eastern Americans. Sociohistorical Perspective. The Asian Indians. Arab Americans. The Syrian-Lebanese. The Palestinians. The Iranians. The Iraqis. The Turks. The Pakistanis. Sociological Analysis. 10.African Americans. Sociohistorical Perspective. Institutionalized Racism. The Winds of Change. Urban Unrest. The Bell-Curve Debate. Language as Prejudice. Social Indicators of Black Progress. Race or Class? The Africans. Sociological Analysis. 11.Hispanic and Caribbean Americans. Sociohistorical Perspective. Social Indicators of Hispanic Progress. The Mexicans. The Puerto Ricans. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans: A Comparison. The Cubans. Caribbean, Central and South Americans. Non-Hispanic Caribbean Peoples. Sociological Analysis. IV.OTHER MINORITIES. 12.Religious Minorities. Sociohistorical Perspective. Catholic Americans. Jewish Americans. The Mormons. Muslim Americans. The Amish. The Rastafarians. The Santerians. Hindu Americans. Religion and U.S. Society. Sociological Perspectives. 13.Women as a Minority Group. Sociohistorical Perspective. The Reality of Sexual Differences. Immigrant and Minority Women. Social Indicators of Women's Status. Sexual Harassment. Sexism and the Law. Women and Politics. Sociological Analysis. V.TRENDS AND POSSIBILITIES. 14.The Ever-Changing U.S. Mosaic. Ethnic Consciousness. The Changing Face of Ethnicity. Current Ethnic Issues. Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Future. Glossary. Notes. Appendix. Index. Credits.

Australian, Greek and Italian Parents: Differentials in the Value and Cost of Children

The claim that children are valued greatly, but in , somewhat different ways by parents in various socio-economic and cultural groups was examined with a sample of Australian, Greek and Italian parents. Present results generally support earlier finding that husbands and wives have similar perceptions of childrearing, and for Australians in particular, higher socioeconomic status groups are less concerned about economic costs, and more sensitive to the restrictions of children. In contrast to the Australian-born, Southern European immigrants indicate somewhat more the Adult Status and Social Indentity benefits in having a family. While the cultural back ground of Southern Europeans appears instrumental in structuring the values of children, their lower socio-economic status appears to be a more significant explanation of differences between Southern Europeans and the native-born population in the costs of children and awareness of alternative sources of satisfaction to children.

Ethnic discrimination in a 19th-century mining district: Michigan copper mines, 1888

The fate of nearly 34 million immigrants who entered this country between 1840 and 1920 continues to intrigue American historians. Recent attention, focused on the labor market experience of America’s immigrants, has generated considerable controversy over the role of ethnic discrimination. A vast historical literature holds that wage and/or occupational discrimination so limited the immigrants’ (especially Southern and Eastern Europeans) opportunities for advancement that the task of economic assimilation was passed on to the second-generation children of immigrants.’ This traditional view has been challenged by a revisionist literature which suggests that earnings differentials between native and foreign-born workers and variations in earnings by ethnic groups can be fully explained by differences in the skills possessed by these groups. Over time each immigrant group had ample opportunity to learn new skills and catch up with their native born counterparts. Using aggregate data from the Immigration Commission’s Report of 1911, Higgs (1971) finds that two measures of skills-literacy and the ability to speak English-can explain almost four-fifths of the variance in average earnings among ethnic groups. Hill (1975), drawing on earnings data from the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighteenth Annual Reports of the U.S. Commissioner of Labor and on aggregate occupational data from the Censuses of 1870-1920, has argued that there is little or no difference observed in the economic status of native and foreign-born workers. Recent work by McGouldrick and Tannen (1977) and by Blau (1980), however, supports the more traditional view. Interestingly, these authors draw on the same data sources as did Hill and Higgs, but they take a

Henry Blake Fuller and the "New Immigrant"

IKE MIANY of his contemporaries, Henry Blake Fuller (I857-I929) J.L frequently paired his ideas and his fears of the new with the spectre of a declining or dispossessed native American stock. Much like Henry James in The American Scene, he pondered what it meant, and what it would mean, share the sanctity of his American consciousness, the intimacy of his American patriotism, with the inconceivable alien.... Though those words belong to James, the sense of dispossession they express belonged to Fuller too.' Over the course of his long career as a writer he shifted between the view that the immigrant might be assimilated into a homogeneous American race and a set of beliefs close to those that marked the strenuous of his time. He feared the unmeltable and alien influence of the new (Eastern and Southern Europeans) and, on occasion, exaggerated the virtues of the old (the descendants of a vaguely defined or American race). Some of the typology of race and character historians have come to call the nativism of the American I89os, then, flows into his first city novels. Present in crowds, in gangs, or swarming hordes, immigrants in these novels seem to possess but a half-life, a virtually nameless, subterranean existence. Their speech and manners mark them, in the eyes of many Anglo-Saxon characters, as unclassifiable foreigners. They are almost uniformly associated with the

Language Policies in American Education

This paper outlines the historical evolution of language policies in American education. It traces the multilingual history of the United States, citing several cases where children were taught in their native language, thus belying the myth that bilingual education is a new phenomenon in this country. While multilingual education and cultural diversity were accepted during the 19th century, the massive immigration of Eastern and Southern Europeans from the 1880's until the first World War created a sharp reaction on the part of educational policymakers, and the trend turned sharply in favor of assimilation and against cultural and linguistic pluralism. From the end of the 19th century until the 1950's, English was strictly imposed as the national language and the mandatory language of instruction. It is only in the last two decades that linguistic minorities have asserted their right to cultural and linguistic maintenance. The paper further discusses the important state and federal court cases which have had an effect on present bilingual education legislation, and the enforcement of that legislation. It points out some of the major questions which need to be addressed in the development of a national language policy. The case made for introducing literacy in the native language for linguistic minority children should serve as a guideline for future language policy in the United States.

The Value and Cost of Children

Between May 1977 and February 1978, 717 Australian, Greek, and Italian parents were interviewed in Sydney, Australia, concerning their attitudes to having children. Open-ended questions related to the advantages and disadvantages of having children provided measures of the economic and social-psychological values and costs of children to parents. Analysis of responses to these questions showed that Southern Europeans were more likely to mention the benefits of children in completing the marriage and in establishing the family unit. The major costs of children to all groups were reported as economic, concerns about the care of children, and restrictions to parents. A number of multiple regression analyses revealed that the psychological variables for Southern European parents provided substantial explanatory power in the prediction of the number of children wanted by them. The variance explained for Australians, however, was considerably smaller. It is suggested that measures which take into account changes in attitudes to having children with the experience of child rearing might improve upon the percentage of variance explained by social-psychological indices.

Fertility of migrant women in Australia.

This paper examines the current fertility (1971-2) of migrant women in Australia in order to compare the fertility levels and patterns prevalent among migrants from 9 selected countries with those of Australian-born women. Birth registration data have been mainly used in the analysis. 3 main points emerge: Among the married women there were few differences in fertility regardless of the country of birth. A major exception was the somewhat higher fertility levels among the southern Eugopean migrants. Extramarital fertility seemed to vary substantially between different migrant groups: New Zealanders had the highest and the Italians and Greeks had the lowest levels. There were major differences in the proportion of women married among the various migrant groups with southern Europeans having the highest proportions married. Comparison of the reproductive behavior of migrants with their counterparts in the countries of origin showed that the southern European migrants in Australia had higher fertility rates than those prevalent in their countries or origin. (Authors)

Fertility of Migrant Women in Australia

SummaryThis paper examines the current fertility (1971–72) of migrant women in Australia, in order to compare the fertility levels and patterns prevalent among migrants from nine selected countries with those of the Australian born women. Birth registration data have been mainly used in the analysis.Three main points emerge. Among the married women there were few differences in fertility regardless of the country of birth. A major exception was the somewhat higher fertility levels among the southern European migrants. Extramarital fertility seemed to vary substantially between different migrant groups: New Zealanders had the highest and the Italians and Greeks had the lowest levels. There were major differences in the proportion of women married among the various migrant groups; again the southern Europeans had highest proportions married. Comparison of the reproductive behaviour of migrants with their counterparts in the countries of origin showed that the southern European migrants in Australia had higher fertility rates than those prevalent in their countries of origin.

A Comparative Study of the Assimilation of the Chinese in New York City and Lima, Peru

A comparative study of assimilation like the present one has shown that the structural or environmental factors in the larger society are principally responsible for the differential rates of assimilation. Historically, the United States has been racist in its treatment of nearly all immigrants. Eastern and Southern Europeans were judged inferior along ethnic/racist lines (Gordon 1964), let alone those with more pronounced physical characteristics such as blacks, Latins or Asians. The legal structure erected in the United States, which includes the historical anti-ethnic legisla- tion, discriminatory immigration policies and racist miscegenation laws, reflects the attitudes and perceptions of the host society. The long years of unfair policies and discriminatory practices implemented against the Chinese produced feelings of rejection among them. In Lima, by contrast, the Hispanic cultural tradition does not emphasize racial differences. Although therere is a subtle racism in Lima, there is no miscegenation law, and children born of marriages between Chinese and Peruvians become important factors in the assimilation of the Chinese.

Postwar settlement of Southern Europeans in Australian rural areas: the case of Renmark, South Australia

Postwar settlement of Southern Europeans in Australian rural areas: the case of Renmark, South Australia

Ethnicity, Americanization, and Religious Attendance

Two trends in the pattern of Americanization of immigrant groups are noted, one involving decreased second-generation religious interest due to alienation from the ethnic tradition and the other showing an increase in attendance at worship services from first to second generation due to the prominence of religion in American culture. It is suggested, upon a review of the literature, that the pattern of second generation attendance depends on the extent of difference between the ethnic culture and the dominant American culture. In a secondary analysis of data on New York City Catholics, the respondents are grouped into western, eastern, and southern European categories based on country of origin. There are no meaningful differences in religious attendance among first-generation Catholics; among second-generation respondents there are substantial differences. Western Europeans show an increase in attendance from first to second generation, while southern Europeans show a decrease. It is concluded that the m...

MEDICAL CARE IN WESTERN SYDNEY: A REPORT ON THE UTILIZATION OF HEALTH SERVICES BY A DEFINED POPULATION

A household survey of a representative sample of the population of five local government areas in western Sydney revealed a high rate of utilization of hospital and medical services. The very old and the very young place the greatest demands on these services, and utilization rates are higher for women than for men. General practitioners form the major source of primary medical, antenatal and obstetric care and undertake a quarter of all surgical operations. Nearly half the admissions to hospital take place in hospitals well beyond the area of residence of the population. This demonstrates clearly the failure of hospital planners to provide sufficient specialized hospital services in a region of rapid growth. Over one-quarter of hospital admissions occur in small private hospitals, in which significantly more general practitioner surgery is performed. Overall, utilization of, and attitudes towards, medical services do not vary with educational or occupational status. However, very definite differences are noted between various ethnic groups. The Australian-born are the most general practitionerorientated, while the British and Northern Europeans tend to expect more specialist attention. A quarter of the Southern Europeans had no health Insurance at the time of the survey, and this group nominated public hospitals as a source of primary medical care more than any other group. With few exceptions, the population appears to be satisfied with the present services and demonstrates considerable faith in its general practitioners. Future planning must consider the central role of the general practitioner, and also cannot afford to ignore the contribution (desirable or otherwise) being made at present by private hospitals.