Reasons for Migration to America

        More Italians have migrated to the United States than any other Europeans. Poverty, overpopulation, and natural disaster all spurred Italian emigration. Beginning in the 1870s, Italian birthrates rose and death rates fell. Population pressure became severe, especially in Il Messogiorno, the southern and poorest provinces of Italy.  Southern Italians were also hurt by high taxes and high protective tariffs on northern industrial goods. Southerners also suffered from a scarcity of cultivatable land, soil erosion and deforestation, and a lack of coal and iron ore needed by industry.

Customs and Practices

        Italian customs and traditions are rooted in the family, whether nuclear or extended, as well as in institutions and organizations in the community.  Customary practices and traditions involve not only the nuclear family but also the paesani [townspeople].  In an effort to cushion the shocks of life in the new country, Italian immigrants planted fig trees in their greenhouses and grapevines in their backyards, played favorite folk songs at social gatherings, cooked traditional foods and visited friends and family on weekends.

        The motivation for the gatherings were secular, sacred or both.  The celebration of marriages, births, name days, anniversaries and birthdays provided a reason to get together.  Food was the vehicle for social interaction.  Many of the customs and traditions of the Italian community revolve around seasonal religious festivals all of which had their prescribed foods and rituals.  Whether families are church-going or not, if they connect with their Italian roots, then, they make foods associated with these festivals.  

Foods,  Products, and other Contributions

        The immigrant period - from 1880 to 1920 - was a fascinating era, with one out of every four immigrants coming from Southern Italy and settling in the eastern cities like New York, Boston, Providence, and Baltimore, where many of them set up "Little Italys" and opened mamma-and-papa storefront eateries and pizzerias (the first was G. Lombardi on Spring Street in New York). Restaurants have always been one of the easiest points of cultural assimilation for immigrants because they are cheap to operate for a family brings in a steady income and attracts others into their neighborhoods.  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that dishes like pizza, fettuccine Alfredo, pasta primavera, carpaccio, spaghetti carbonara and tiramisu, while originating in Italy, are far better known and loved here than in Italy itself.

        However, the Italian influence is not limited only to the myth of its cuisine; it also involves many cultural fields.   Italians introduced Americans to Opera.  Many well known American actors can trace their roots to Italian immigrants.  For instance, none would doubt the impact on show-business of such well-known actors, such as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, not to mention some directors like Frank Capra and Francis Ford Coppola who all have Italian roots.

 

 

 

 

        Many Italian immigrants never planned to stay in the United States permanently. The proportion returning to Italy varied between 11 percent and 73 percent. Unlike most earlier immigrants to America, they did not want to farm, which implied a permanence that did not figure in their plans.   Instead, they headed for cities, where labor was needed and wages were relatively high. Expecting their stay in America to be brief, Italian immigrants lived as inexpensively as possible under conditions that native-born families considered intolerable.