Italian migration history is a core aspect of Italyās national history, and is essential to understanding Italyās lack of a strong national identity , its complex presence in the wider world, and many key futures of its fragile and contradictory relationship with modernity.1 It is also a history that goes well beyond the Italian national frame, contributing to the development of more complex and accurate national and transnational histories all over the world. In most of the countries affected by Italian mass migration, it has become apparent that the countriesā own national histories cannot confine the experiences and contributions of Italians to tokenistic celebrations of nation-building or multiculturalism . In Australia, where almost half of the population is either born abroad or has at least one parent who was born abroad, migration is graduallyāand perhaps still too slowlyābecoming an important facet of academic and public history. Globalisation and the development of multicultural societies have provided fertile ground for this kind of research, and the elaboration of new historiographical paradigms in world, global, and transnational histories have also played a central role in the process. In the last thirty years, these developments have resulted in an exponential growth in the scholarly literature on Italian migration (Sanfilippo 2015). This has been mirrored by the development of solid and innovative research in Australia (see Iuliano and Baldassar 2008; Pretelli 2009; Sanfilippo 2015).
The notions of diaspora and transnationalism , so central to scholarly literature about migration over the past thirty years, have likewise been significant in the debate about Italian migration to Australia. Such debate has centred around disciplinary tensions (traditional historiographical approaches versus multidisciplinary ones), gendered frames (with many female and some male scholars asking for a renewed attention to migrant women), and theoretical concerns (in particular a more or less prescriptive use of the concept of transnationalism and its applicability to the Italian-Australian context).2 In this book, I adopt a broad and multidisciplinary definition of transnationalism, but also acknowledge the fundamental role of accurate historical research. I thus suggest that there is a need to complicate and enrich the transnational approach through a critical use of decolonial , transcultural , and intersectional frames.
Transnationalism focuses on the links between the country of origin and that of migration (Basch et al. 1994, 7), and on āsocial fields that cross national boundariesā (Basch et al. 1994, 22). This approach recognises that migrantsā lives and identities are impacted by āhegemonic categories, such as race and ethnicity , that are deeply embedded in the nation building processā (Basch et al. 1994, 22). Transnationalism also focuses on migrantsā connections across nations and continents, the often non-linear progression of their migratory paths, the frequency of return or temporary migration , and the strongly gendered nature of processes of migration and settlement. These are all essential aspects of Italian migration to Australia. However, such an open and multidisciplinary approach to migration studies can tend to lose sight of the centrality of locality and emplacement in migrant lives. The need to reterritorialise the study of transnational migrations has become a central concern in the recent scholarly literature (see for instance Cingolani 2009). This is where a strong reliance on historical research, and an innovative focus on transculturation might prove particularly helpful.
Vince Marottaās (2014) theorisation of the multicultural, intercultural, and transcultural subject, and Ilaria Vanniās (2016) theorisation of āthe transcultural edgeā, provide some essential boundaries to a proper understanding of transculturation, a term first used by anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1940, 1947). Ortiz used transculturation to describe the complexity of social and cultural exchanges, and reciprocal influences, between the colonisers, the slaves, and the Indigenous population in Cuba. Transculturationās substantial and significant contribution to subsequent Latin American studies has been its critical insistence on the importance of analysing cultural interactions in colonial and migratory contexts by taking into consideration multiple perspectives and speaking positions, multiple zones and modes of contact, and reciprocal influences (see Allatson 2007; Vanni 2016). Transculturation provides a good tool for complicating and challenging simplistic and essentialist theories of acculturation . With regards to public attitudes and policies about migrants in the specific Australian context, public and academic discourse still privileges a narrative of gradual evolution: from the complete rejection of migrants by Australian society, to a push towards assimilation first, integration later, and finally multiculturalism . Conversely, transculturation shifts the focus to the reciprocity of cultural exchanges and influences between Indigenous , settler colonial , and migrant groups throughout Australian settler colonial history. From this perspective, when referring to the ātranscultural ā in this book, I am not conceptualising transculturalism as the next step in the evolution of Australian society, following on from multiculturalism. Instead, I am interested in transculturation as an alternative and more fruitful way of studying and conceptualising Australian society throughout its settler colonial history and up to the present day.
This also means that transculturation itself must not be essentialised or idealised. In particular, one must recognise āthe dark sideā of transculturation (Marotta 2014, 95), that is, the power imbalance always inherent in the processes of reciprocal transculturation. Transculturation must then be intersected with matters of race , class , gender , sexuality , and age . The migrant subject, from this perspective, is a transnational and transcultural subjectānot an abstract and at times poetic entity, free-floating in between different cultures, but a historical subject deeply immersed in the prejudices, values, attitudes, traditions, and habits of specific communities and localities. Thus, transculturation is not a process of cultural or even intellectual transcendence, but a process of orientation and emplacement within specific social, cultural, and historical contexts. At the same time, the transcultural edge between different environments is also a potentially fertile ground for the development of innovative ecosystems (Vanni 2016). This is also true for the Italian-Australian community , which should be reconceptualised beyond the usual stereotypes as a space of deep, flexible, and reciprocal exchanges and influences between many transcultural communities; a space which has not only produced new urban, rural, and ānaturalā environments, but which has also prompted profound changes in culture and society.
Ethnic identities that provide migrants with social, cultural, political, and financial capital are often imagined within a specific, essentialised understanding of a given culture. Yet they become efficient cultural and social tools only insofar as they adapt to both different and changing social contexts, and to the needs of the specific individuals that come to embody and promote such identities. For instance, as it will be argued in the Chapter 5, the idea that family values are central to Italian migrantsā lives and communities has often been used by migrants as a marker of difference and moral superiority (Ricatti 2011); and the idea itself is the result of a simplified, essentialised, dehistoricised, and often inaccurate understanding of Italian culture and society. Yet that same idea can be given profoundly different meaningsādepending on who employs it and for what purposeāand it is part of the broader processes of interrelation and negotiation migrants develop within their own family , their own community , and the wider society.
In other words, even when migrants employ apparently fixed identities, they do so with a significant degree of variation, flexibility, and multiplicity. As argued by Marotta (2000, 645ā46), terms such as āfamily-oriented cultureā and ācommunity ā imply homogeneity and sameness. At the same time, such terms are inherently open to an array of different uses by migrants. Moreover, these markers of identity cannot be considered in isolation from broader processes of transculturation , such as translocal and transnational net...