Intimacy and Italian Migration Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World

by Baldassar, Loretta; Gabaccia, Donna R.

• ISBN13: 9780823231850
• ISBN10: 0823231852
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-08
• Publisher: Fordham University Press

Summary

This provocative collection of essays adds a new dimension to our understanding of nation-building through its examination of the role of intimate cultural processes. First, by exploring the private lives of migrants from Italy through biography, oral history and ethnography, these essays suggest why and how-across cultures-Italian-ness has come to be associated with a particular kind of femininity and supposedly distinctive elements of domestic life symbolized by long-held stereotypes of the Italian mother. On a larger scale, while the editors and contributors share with previous works on the Italian diaspora a keen interest in the imagining of nations across national borders, here they refocus our attention to the significance of the domestic, particularly the lives of individual men and women, their families, and the communities they loved-and left behind. This fresh approach is especially useful, they show, in describing women's complex relationship to nations, their transformations of identities through migration, and their unique participation in nation-building.

Author Biography

Loretta Baldassar is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia. Donna R. Gabaccia is Director, Immigration History Research Center, Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair of Immigration History Research at the University of Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Home, Family, and the Italian Nation in a Mobile World: The Domestic and the National among Italy's Migrants	p. 1
The National in the Personal through Biography
The Marriage of Giorgina Craufurd and Aurelio Saffi: Mazzinian Nationalism and the Italian Home	p. 25
The Atlantic Valentino: The ôInimitable Loverö as Racialized and Gendered Italian	p. 37
ôGeorge the Queer Danced the Hulaö: Mike Stabile, American Soldier in Hawaii	p. 49
Domesticating the Diaspora: Remembering the Life of Katie DeRorre	p. 69
ôItalianö Motherhood and Marriage through Oral Narratives
Calculating Babies: Changing Accounts of Fertility Decisions among Italians in Melbourne, Australia	p. 85
Mothering Contradictory Diasporas: Negotiation of Traditional Motherhood Roles among Italian Migrant Women in Ireland	p. 101
Love Crossing Borders: Changing Patterns of Courtship and Gender Relations among Italian Migrants in Germany	p. 113
Mothering across Boundaries: Immigrant Domestic Workers and Gender Roles in Italy	p. 127
Ethnographic Studies of Family, Community, and Nation
Between Public and Private: The Transnational Community of Sicilians in Monterey, California	p. 143
State-Imposed Translocalism and the Dream of Returning: Italian Migrants in Switzerland	p. 152
Obligation to People and Place: The National in Cultures of Caregiving	p. 171
Notes	p. 189
List of Contributors	p. 217
Index	p. 221
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