From Italy to San Francisco: the immigrant experience

Cinel, Dino

Book

From Italy to San Francisco: the immigrant experience

Stanford University Press • Stanford, California • Published In 1982 • Pages:

By: Cinel, Dino.

Abstract
This is a study of the local social history of Italians who immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and of the many cultural changes they had to endure as the result of this migration. The document is divided into two parts. Part 1 explores why emigration was common in some provinces of Italy and not in others. Here Cinel deals with the number of emigrants and how the number varied over time. This part of the study also follows the course of return migration, and assesses the significance of this movement in the light of the broad socioeconomic dynamics of Italian society. In the second part, Cinel deals with changes that the Italian immigrants '…underwent in San Francisco, both in a quantitative analysis of certain aspects of their lives and in a more general study of community organization and development' (pp. 2-3). Nearly 2,000 family histories were examined for this study, extending over a period of three generations.

Subjects

History and culture change

Information sources listed in other works

Theoretical orientation in research and its results

External migration

Acculturation and culture contact

Sociocultural trends

Cultural identity and pride

Settlement patterns

Occupational specialization

Labor supply and employment

Household