Identity and Intergenerational Transmission of Culture: A Study of the Italian Diaspora Across Three Countries

Abstract

Focussing in the first instance on knowledge and understandings of family mobility, settlement and adaptation experiences, the project was designed to contribute to the scholarship of construction of a sense of being or feeling Italian or of italianità [Italianness], and the ongoing transformation of cultural and national (host country) identification. Second, the study captures the significance or otherwise of the transmission of culture intergenerationally for the group of descendants living as part of an Italian diasporic community away from ‘home’. The third component reveals how participants manage the tensions between national and cultural identities given that most participants were not born in Italy, generally not fluent in Italian, and few renewed or had acquired Italian citizenship, yet many used the term Italian to describe themselves, all asserting a cogent belief in their own italianità. The project centres on descendants of Italians who emigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy, arrived and made their home in one of three major settlements. Melbourne, Australia; Toronto, Canada and Pittsburgh, United States of America. It draws on a data set of seventy-nine personal narratives, across four generations, to provide insight into identity and how Italian culture has been maintained and/or transmitted across these generations and sites.

One of the key aspects of the qualitative process in this study was the place of emotion. This was apparent from the outset where participants were very keen, excited in fact, to contribute to the research. Ongoing emotion was potently galvanised through the interview where nostalgia garnered memories of experiences and of people. Extracts of participant interviews included in the analysis (and throughout the thesis) elucidate this factor. Collectively, the participant cohort overwhelmingly identified in ways that demonstrated an enduring power of some type of Italian belonging which is explained as having an acute awareness of the significance of intergenerational transmission of cultural heritage, evincing themselves as vigorous collaborators in ensuring it is maintained.