This edited collection investigates how Italian emigrant groups imagined, created, experienced and challenged Italianness – or italianità – across time and space. Conceiving of Italianness as a process rather than a ‘reality set in stone’ (p. 6), the editors and contributors of the volume illustrate the contingent nature of Italian identities that were ‘product[s] of immigrant civil society’ and lived ‘day to day by “ordinary” emigrants’ (p. 22). As a result, the collection is a welcome addition to previous studies that have highlighted state policies and programmes aimed at shaping Italian emigrant identity from above.
Paying attention to localised contexts in North America, South America, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, this anthology covers case studies from Italian unification to the decades following the Second World War. To address the breadth of time and location, the editors organised the essays into thematic sections. Part 1 focuses on the impact of migrant travel to and from the peninsula on Italian identity, whereas Part 2 underscores state-supported institutions that promoted italianità and resisted the full integration of Italian emigrants into their new societies. Parts 3 and 4 both centre on manifestations of Italianness, be it strictly through language (Part 3) or through means as diverse as exhibitions, official documents, or the theatre (Part 4).
The essays often speak to each other across the four parts due to parallels in context, source base, or methodology, yet those connections are frequently left up to the reader. Though the editors flag thematic similarities when discussing the four sections in the introduction, the contributors themselves do not refer to each other's work, which is a missed opportunity for deeper conversations about similarities and differences in understanding Italianness. This review will highlight several striking commonalities across the volume's four parts.
Although not explicitly discussed as a central theme, one of the strengths of the collection is an emphasis on how Italian emigrants created or maintained a sense of what it meant to be ‘Italian’ in a multiplicity of contexts. For instance, Marie Bossaert shows how Levantines who emigrated to the Ottoman empire as early as the fifteenth century were ‘convinced they were more Italian than Italy itself’ (p. 198). Other essays show the construction and/or preservation of Italianness through language, schooling or the stage in their new communities. Such subjects drive the contributions by Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro, Gabriele Montalbano, and Virginia de Almeida Bessa.
An additional thematic strand across different sections that could have been further developed in conversation between the contributions is the attempted conflation of Fascism and Italianness from 1922 to 1943. For instance, Laura Fotia and Jessica H. Lee both discuss Fascist efforts to make the party's messages ‘synonymous with Italian ethnic pride’ (p. 109) in Argentina and the United States, respectively. Alongside their essays, João Fábio Bertonha examines the impact of the entry of 120 Fascists into the Italian diplomatic service in 1928 who pursued a ‘parallel diplomacy’ that prioritised Fascist conceptions of italianità while Gaetano Morese considers how two Basilicata-based newspapers ‘used transoceanic networks to spread and legitimise Fascism abroad’ (p. 171).
Another shared line of inquiry is how perceptions of Italianness influenced trans-cultural exchanges between the peninsula and the United States for more than a century. Bénédicte Deschamps analyses the journalistic pursuits of exiled Filippo Manetta, whose time in the American South led him to draw parallels ‘between Confederates’ right to break away from the imposed domination of the union and the Italians’ fight for unification’ during the mid-nineteenth century (p. 150). In contrast, both Manoela Patti and Silvia Cassamagnaghi focus on the Second World War – Patti dissects US state efforts to marshal Italian-Americans as a resource during the war whereas Cassamagnaghi's essay reverses direction to look instead at Catholic agencies who facilitated the adoption of postwar Italian orphans by Italian-American parents.
Researchers interested in the intersections between migration and state administration may find the essays by Thibault Bechini and Melissa Blanchard of interest. Bechini uses case studies from Marseille and Buenos Aires to analyse how paper documents reflected or severed emigrants’ connections to their homeland from 1860 to 1914. Blanchard's piece also relies on official documentation as she examines more contemporary efforts of Italian migrants’ descendants in Argentina to return to Trentino, even if their claims were/are based on a ‘shared cultural identity’ rather than physical connections (pp. 62–63). Moreover, there are several essays with unique source bases that stand out even if they do not fit the themes outlined above – some examples include the influence of Venetian exiles on Greek nationalism, the portrayal of emigrants at the 1906 Milan exhibition and an Italian miner's account of a work disaster in the United States.
In spite of the engaging topics contained within the anthology, some essays only tangentially incorporate the idea of Italianness rather than addressing the collection's main theme directly. For instance, one of the contributions focuses on the journeys of several prominent exiles during the Risorgimento, but it is not clear how their travels shaped or transformed what the exiles thought of as italianità. In addition, the text is rife with errors, such as placing São Paulo in Argentina (p. 21) or using the term ‘abortion’ instead of ‘adoption’ (p. 18). Many errors are those of translation – one example of many is the use of the word ‘retarded’ (p. 173) which has a very different connotation in English than ‘ritardata’ in Italian.
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, scholars from a variety of disciplines will certainly find one or multiple contributions that overlap with their own questions about the construction of italianità. The collection's vast survey across time and place ensures that it will inform future scholarship on migration and identity among Italian emigrant groups.
