Social and cultural rituals and rites of passage are under scrutiny in this jointly edited book by Kevin Kenny and Maddalena Marinari, bringing together case studies of two prominent, and similar, ethnic groups who migrated to America: the Italians and the Irish. Over nine chapters, authors reflect on a rich variety of rituals used mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to give meaning to, or reflect the meaning of, migration from Europe to America. As much migration was from rural to urban places, many rituals described in the book can be traced back to folk traditions or reflect those particular regional cultures from which the migrants came. This gives the book many examples to illustrate the connections between two cultures dominated by Catholicism, rurality, and poverty in their journeys towards new lives. Gatherings that mimicked the rites observed in funerals can be observed in both countries, although they possibly had more resonance in Ireland, which saw less return migration overall.
Kenny and Marinari’s introduction strikes a careful balance between comparing and contrasting the two immigrant communities. One of the interesting differences highlighted is whether or not such immigrants returned to their homelands. The authors detail that while naturalization rates among the Irish were high, with many never returning to their homeland, the opposite is true for Italians. The predominantly male cohort were drawn back to Fascist Italy in the 1930s, for example, by the regime’s need for agricultural workers. Not so in Ireland, where the government of the era was discouraging of migration from a nationalist point of view and pursued aggressive economic policies to advance independence from Britain, which kept the economy depressed and people un- or under-employed throughout the “hungry thirties”. A similarity that Kenny and Marinari highlight is the tendency towards retaining a regional sense of identity as opposed to a national one, with the authors claiming that Italians were even more prone to this than the Irish. Furthermore, the sense of being “Irish” or “Italian” emerged or was heightened only after migration, the authors claim, a contention worthy of further investigation. These are all great insights the interested reader could follow up on in numerous comparative studies of Irish and Italian migrants in different parts of America. The focus on the individual stories, objects, and celebrations, as opposed to meta studies of statistics and trends, is what this book aims to explore, so each chapter is like a case study for a micro approach to a vast body of immigrants who all experienced this rite of passage as it was for many immigrants to America in this era.
The Introduction highlights a wonderful array of objects associated with migration designed to convey love, fidelity, care, tradition, and superstitions. Charms to ward off bad luck, protect infants, and withstand illness are all documented, from the “frog bread” carried by some Irish immigrants (literally a frog ground up with oats to make a bread that could allegedly stave off illness) to cards printed with images of Italian patron saints, all designed to ensure safe passage and good luck. The potential for danger en route was high, so these objects, imbued with so much hope, are eminently understandable and familiar. Less familiar, to me anyway, were more unusual objects such as “pubic hair stitched into clothing or a drop of menstrual blood soaked in linen and sewn into the man’s clothes to symbolize faithfulness” (p. 17). Clearly, there is much still to learn about popular beliefs around luck and prosperity, customs that invoke folk knowledge, and migration journeys.
The book has a tripartite structure to examine the different stages at which rituals can be traced. The first section covers pre-migration packing and departure (Whelan, Reeder, and Gabbacia and Saverino), with one chapter on Irish history and two on Italian case studies. The pre-migration phase is an important, and sometimes neglected, aspect of migration histories to many parts of the world, not just America. The farewell rituals of the Irish, for example, drew on both folk and religious beliefs and were hugely significant to communities across the country. As Whelan states, paying attention to the rituals of Irish migration reveals the personal, communal, and wider cultural values and beliefs that provided comfort to those contemplating never seeing their loved ones again. Reeder’s work also draws out important gendered differences and norms for southern Italian emigrants participating in funereal rituals as women were posited as being left bereft and vulnerable by migration. Reeder argues that emigration “marked the death of the family” in such communities (p. 49), playing on wider fears of depopulation and the breakdown of rural communities, which undoubtedly influenced the higher return rates of Italian immigrants. It is interesting to ponder why this narrative was not more prominent in Ireland where extended family members were often used to help raise children while one or more parents were migrants. Gabbacia and Saverino bring attention to the material culture of migration by linking it to another rite of passage – the marriage trousseau (corredo in Italian), which contained useful and desirable objects for marriage. This chapter examines transnational pathways from Italy to America through copriletti or bed coverlets from Toscana and Calabria. Household linens would not necessarily be thought of today as an essential travelling item, but their addition highlights the ritualistic importance of carrying such objects, beyond their utility. This is an example that could be traced to other immigrant groups of the same era, each object capable of telling at least part of the story of migration.
Knowing how, where, and when to go are all important tools in the emigrants’ suite of knowledge and helped to mark the successful from the unsuccessful migrant. The second section outlines the rituals performed en route, including religious rites, the regulation and monitoring of assisted migrants, and rituals of inspection (McMahon, Bender, and Braun-Strumfels and Zaccagnini), with two Irish case studies and one Italian. Again, the journeys themselves are important to analyse for a better understanding of the experience, sometimes a harsh one, that marked migration journeys from Europe to North America. McMahon’s chapter focuses on the practice of religion, a uniting concept for the majority of both Italian and Irish immigrants; and the ritual of prayer, though not always documented or analysed, surely played a role in millions of journeys across the ocean. Bender’s focus on Irish women workhouse emigrants is a welcome addition to the literature, adding to our knowledge of the ways in which incarceration, and then enforced migration, was often a tool to “deal with” women who did not fit the conservative gendered norms of the nineteenth century in Ireland. Braun-Strumfels and Zaccagnini introduce us to a lesser known history of Italian labour immigrants recruited by cotton growers in the Arkansas Delta. Such arrangements, where passages were paid for in exchange for signed labour contracts, were illegal, and this chapter reveals, through personal letters, the detailed instructions given to an intending immigrant to evade the suspicions of the authorities. The chapter deals with these arrangements as rituals of passage, inspection, and confinement, as would-be emigrants conveyed the rehearsed narratives and presented the “evidence” of their independent immigration. This is an interesting angle on the concept of rituals, and the chapter overall brings welcome attention to the role of shipping agents in facilitating mass migration, important actors that are sometimes difficult to research given the paucity of records for some companies.
The third and final section includes chapters that reflect on rituals associated with returning emigrants, a feature more of Italian migration than Irish, with chapters on deportation, literary representations of the returned Irish emigrant, and visual culture (Hirota, McEvoy, and Sciorra), with two chapters featuring Irish themes and one Italian. Hirota’s chapter on deportation due to destitution in the Irish community makes for heartbreaking reading, touching as it does upon poverty, mental illness, and state systems that had little sympathy for either. Hirota rightly makes comparisons between the deportation of Irish paupers in Britain and those in America, which in both cases drew negative commentary in the Irish press. Notably, this was not from a sympathetic standpoint, but rather irritation that such “problematic” migrants were being sent back. McEvoy’s chapter looks at literary representations of ambivalence towards return migration, marking this chapter as more within Irish cultural studies than the historical focus of other chapters. The many examples given by McEvoy attest to the frequency of this theme. Sciorra's chapter on the visual culture associated with Italian return migration is the last in the book. It is amply illustrated with photographs and may provide some tools for the analysis of the other images that are scattered throughout the chapters. The overall response to this return migration, in contrast to McEvoy’s chapter, is joy, although some of the images discussed are touristic in nature, drawing upon short visits home from Italian diasporic communities, which lends a different view on the phenomenon of return.
Broadly, this is a balanced book with roughly equal representation of both cultures, rounded out by an Introduction and a brief Epilogue by the editors, both noted experts in their field. The collective findings of these varied studies are invoked in the Introduction. The answer as to who creates the rituals and rights associated with migration is threefold: the emigrants and their communities, their descendants in their destinations, and the bureaucrats and officials who oversaw their border crossings. This is an interesting matrix to ponder, demonstrating that efforts were often asynchronous, intergenerational, and determined by different power dynamics. The focus on the journey itself is also a welcome addition to the literature – so often migration studies focus simply on the departure or the arrival of immigrants. The journey, the part in between that can be dangerous, exciting, joyous, or excruciating (or a blend of all of these), is of great interest to those with both a scholarly and general, or genealogical, interest in these migration communities.
If I have one critique of this collection, it is that the chapter titles do not, in all cases, clearly guide the reader in what to expect in the body of the chapter, which might detract from the attractiveness and accomplishment of the volume. For example, “On the Border in New Orleans”, the chapter by Lauren Braun-Strumfels and Clara Zaccagnini, reveals little of the contents. The chapter recounts the rituals of entry and exclusion practised by and against Italian immigrants to America, including coaching in false narratives to gain entry, exploitative labour contracts, profiteering capitalists and agents, and the strategies used by individuals to successfully immigrate and work in the American south. Similarly, Hidetaka Hirota’s chapter deals with poverty, destitution, and mental health issues, but the title, “Strangers in the Homeland: The Aftermath of Deportation from the United States”, does not convey the richly sensitive treatment in the chapter of the sick and destitute poor, many of whom had fled the Great Irish Famine and suffered poor mental health in later years.
This book will be useful to the large body of scholars interested in migration flows and experiences in the modern world. Although there is no list of figures, the book does contain a number of illustrations including photographs, maps, plans of ships, and etchings, which means it could also appeal to the general reader interested in tracing their family roots or experiences of migration.
