This volume, as the author himself declares, is positioned within prevailing historiographical debates in current Italian migration history, thus drawing particular attention to the concept of transnationalism. The six chapters and concluding remarks offer a fresh re-examination of the dynamics and characteristics of the phenomenon, ‘at times contradictory’ (p. 121), of Australia's Italian immigration. They focus on the topics of work, class exploitation, family, language, religion, racism, sexism, and politics. Ricatti suggests some key theoretical frames which challenge previous research and provide ‘an opportunity to rethink the past more effectively’ (p. 12).
The novel approach is discussed in Chapter 1, ‘Mapping Complexity: A Transcultural Approach’. The author claims there is a need to enrich the transnational approach through a critical use of the following perspectives: the decolonial (the need to research the settler colonial character of many of the countries to which Italians have migrated and the roles those migrants have had in the dispossession of indigenous land); the transcultural (the importance of analysing cultural interactions in colonial and migratory contexts); and the intersectional (the need to study and understand the complex intertwining of different forms of discrimination, oppression and exploitation). These frameworks have, in the author's view, remained largely overlooked by scholars. The migrant as a transnational and transcultural subject takes on an element of importance. Indeed, markers of the migrant's identity, such as core cultural values and beliefs, are often crucial in migrants’ attempts to reject, resist, negotiate, and embody complex processes of transculturation.
The second chapter (‘Historical Outline’) offers a historical summary of the broader history of Italian mass migration and Italian migration to Australia. The first part is structured around three coordinates: the persistence of Italian migratory networks, strategies, and paths (a longue durée perspective); the ‘quasi-colonial’ nature of Italy's unification and the enduring disequilibrium between northern and southern Italy; and the specificity of Italian migration. The second part emphasises the centrality of the postwar period in the development of a large Italian community in Australia, and suggests considering the recent increase in migration as a sign of the reactivation of dormant migratory strategies.
Chapter 3, ‘Work and Socio-Economic Mobility’, discusses matters of labour, class exploitation and socio-economic upward mobility. According to the author, even if the migration experience of Italians in Australia did not always result in upward socio-economic mobility, migrants demonstrated agency and the ability to adjust to evolving working conditions. Many of them succeeded in their main socio-economic objectives of saving money, buying a home, supporting their families financially, and providing better opportunities for their children. Italian migrants deployed effective self-employment strategies, especially in relation to small ‘ethnic’ businesses. Within this context Ricatti, who warns against representing Italian migrant women ‘as passive victims of powers beyond their control’ (p. 48), demonstrates how their agency in flexible and informal work was paramount in making a success of migration.
An original exploration of the decolonial perspective is presented in Chapter 4 (‘Racism and Racial Ambiguity in a Settler Colonial Context’). An analysis of the strategies adopted by Italian migrants in response to Australian racist and xenophobic attitudes, policies and practices comprises the main part of the chapter. The author strongly emphasises ‘the settler colonial and profoundly racist nature of the Australian nation, which since its foundation has established whiteness as a core aspect of its democracy, identity, and class structure’ (p. 52) – a structural racism which, according to the author, continues to the present day. This hegemonic racialisation located Italian migrants at the bottom of the hierarchy of whiteness, in an intermediate position between the colonisers and the colonised or other subaltern groups such as slaves, indentured labourers, and darker migrants. Some of the responses that Italian migrants put in place to contest the racism they endured are the development of ethnic solidarity and a sense of shared identity, while northern Italians also differentiate themselves by their ‘whiteness’ from more subaltern people (including southern Italians). However, the author observes that in turn, both southern and northern Italians have applied the same strategy to Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander people, Pacific Islanders, and other ethnic groups. Ricatti also notes the crucial colonial role Italian migrants have played in the expropriation of indigenous land and in the violence against and repression of First Nation peoples and their cultures. The many cultural encounters, respectful friendships, political solidarities and intimate relationships between Italian migrants and First Nations people are not downplayed by the author, but are restricted to personal stories and anecdotes and beg more in-depth analysis.
In the fifth chapter (‘Family and Generational Negotiations’) the author further explores women's role in the migration experience, emphasising the centrality of the family in the lives of Italian migrants and their children, and recognising the cultural complexities of Italian-Australian families. This is especially the case in intergenerational and transcultural negotiations between migrants and their children (with regards to matters of gender and sexuality), and in familial, community, and transnational management of health issues, care of the aged, and death.
The final chapter (‘Transnational Ideologies and Transcultural Practices’) explores how transcultural skills and practices (in language, religious, and political fields) are influenced by ideology, and vice-versa. Ricatti argues that migration has been for Italians a response to illiteracy as much as a response to poverty. The importance of reinterpreting key aspects of Italian migration history through a transcultural approach, stressed in the concluding remarks of this chapter, represents one of the most valuable contributions offered by the book. Following Ricatti, the starting point of this task should probably be the recognition that Italian migrant individuals, families, and communities in Australia have been mobile, transcultural, transnational, connected, and in constant evolution.
