Alcides Beretta Curi, Emigración italiana y modernización en la periferia uruguaya. Los italianos en la creación del sector industrial (1870/1930)

This essay is part of an extended historical research done in Uruguay from 1985 to 2002. After a brief outline on the evolution of Uruguayan industries, the author analyses the characteristics of the Italian entrepreneur community in Uruguay. The research draws from a range of sources: industrial newspapers, private collections, file documents and a database collecting information on 300 Europeans entrepreneurs. The major items examined, among others, are: regions of origin, previous qualification in the country of origin, labor insertion according to the worker’s qualification and expertise, savings, self-employment and entrepreneurship; continuity in the business.

Michele Petochi, Storici loro malgrado: i coloni italiani di Pedrinhas Paulista

The article discusses the historical and political context of post WWII Italian emigration to Brazil, focusing on the case of Pedrinhas, an agricultural community established in 1951 in the State of São Paulo. After WWII, the United States and Italy were looking at rural migration as a safety valve for particularly turbulent areas. In this context, however, Pedrinhas remained the first and only significant result of a colonization program funded by the Economic Cooperation Administration in Latin America. At the end of the 1950’s, the Korean war and diminished fears of a socialist revolution in rural Italy shifted attention and funds to new international priorities. Between 1951 and 1960, about 300 families were selected – a most uncommon occurrence – from various Italian rural areas, and disembarked in Pedrinhas, to be turned gradually into small land owners. Particularly interesting is the interaction of these families with the former fascist administration of the colony and, above all, with an awkward and conservative parish priest from San Donà di Piave. The Author spent several months in Pedrinhas during the year 2000, doing research on the colony’s official and unofficial documents and interviewing a number of residents. The methodology is strongly based upon the strong interaction between the basis provided by the essential context of written sources and the remarkable spin and spirit provided by oral evidence.

Riccardo Ponti, Le colonie agricole valdesi in Uruguay e Argentina (1856-1914)

This article examines the particular history of the Valdese migration within Italian rural colonisation in the Americas, focusing on the settlement in the regions of Rio de la Plata of the Italian Valdese community coming from the three valleys of Germanasca, Perosa and Pellice in the Piedmont region, which is now part of the Province of Turin. Unlike the overwhelming Catholic majority of the remaining inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, this community was Protestant. In 1856, these migrants created the first rural colonies on the Southern coast of Uruguay, and, about fifteen years later, they moved to nearby Argentina, where they spread out over the boundless territories of the Provinces of Cordoba, Santa Fe, Entre Rios and, later, Buenos Aires.

Bénédicte Deschamps, The Italian-American Press and the "Woman Question", 1915-1930

Following World War I, as the 19^th amendment helped redefine the role of American women in the public arena, a new model of womanhood, inspired by the "flappers", challenged the traditional approach to femininity. This article aims at analyzing how Il Progresso Italo- Americano and other Italian-American newspapers reacted to such changes in American society. Defending the old patriarchal values, which still prevailed among Southern European immigrants, most Italian-American journalists expressed their disapproval of the suffrage movement, attacked the "flappers", and ridiculed the feminists. In the name of their cultural heritage, they fiercely opposed the American model, and presented the Italian woman as an exemplary alternative. Even when Mussolini introduced in Italy an electoral reform which allowed a certain category of women to vote at the local level, the Italian-American press supported the project on the very ground that the Italian woman was above all a mother and a wife who was not given to erroneous idea of her place in society and who would therefore be reliable as a voter. By omitting to mention the struggle led by the existing feminist organizations in Italy, the Italian-American press thus purposely associated emancipation with Americanism, and transformed the debate over feminism into an ethnic debate.

Matteo Pretelli, Tra estremismo e moderazione. Il ruolo dei circoli fascisti italo-americani nella politica estera italiana degli anni Trenta

This essay studies the role of the Italian-American fascist circles within Italy’s foreign policy in the 1930’s. The article depicts the social composition of these circles and explains how they were led into changing their extremist views into a more "moderate" propaganda, which Rome imposed with regards to the United States, following the dissolution of the Italian fasci in the late 1920’s. In spite of this, the fascist government’s ambiguous position towards these organizations underscores the lack of a consistent political line and a feeble propaganda attempt in the American immigration context. Finally, the poor effectiveness of the Italian-American fascist clubs’ activities ceases after Pearl Harbor, when a number of fascist militants are taken into custody by US authorities and the Italian organizations are silenced.

Michele Colucci, Chiamati, partiti e respinti: minatori italiani nella Gran Bretagna del II dopoguerra

The article retraces the migration of about 2,500 Italian mine workers to Great Britain from 1951 to 1952. The mine workers’ migration was part of the Collective Recruiting Plan, an agreement between Italy and Great Britain signed soon after the end of WW II. The mine workers’ ability to be employed, however, was doomed from the start, due to hostility against the foreigners’ presence from the unions and from part of the local population. Within a few months, things worsened and a number of workers were repatriated, while others were employed elsewhere or even sent to other countries of destination. Thus, those who were against Italian immigration won an important battle, destined to leave a deep mark in the Italian community in Great Britain.

Marcelo J. Borges, Many Americas: Patterns of Transatlantic Migration and Choice of Destination in Southern Portugal (19^th - 20^th Centuries)

This article combines regional and local perspectives to analyze the factors that influenced the selection of destination among transatlantic migrants from the Algarve, in southern Portugal. During the late 19^th and early 20^th century, the majority of Algarvian migrants left for Argentina. However, a closer look at the intra-regional variations reveals a more complex pattern. The article makes a comparison among the migration flows to Argentina, Brazil, and the United States. The Algarvian case shows that migrants’ choice of destination was influenced by a combination of micro and macro factors, including socio-demographic characteristics, local origin, social and occupational networks, labor markets, and migration policies. The combination of these factors produced distinctive flows of transatlantic migration.