Italians in the world

Italians in Australia

In Australian immigration history Italians were categorized as “southern Europeans” and thus differentiated from the preferred British and northern European settlers. All arrivals in the 1950s and 1960s, the peak years of immigration, of whom Italians formed the largest non-English-speaking group, were labeled “new Australians,” reflecting the assimilationist policies of the time. With the advent of multiculturalism in the late 1970s, ethnicity became the focus of identity politics, and the use of hyphenated ethnicity labels, like ItaloAustralian, or Italian-Australians, became common. The Australian born are generally referred to as second-generation Italians and rarely, if ever, as first-generation Australians.

The most common pejorative names specific to Italians were “Dago” and “Eyetie,” with the addition of the term “Ding” peculiar to Western Australia. Italians were also commonly called “wogs” and “wops,” but these terms also referred more generally to southern...

Italians in Great Britain

The emigration of Italians to Great Britain1 has aroused little interest on the part of either British or Italian writers.2 This is understandable, insofar as the immigrants’ numbers have been very small compared with those who arrived in the Americas and in some European countries (notably France, Germany, and Belgium). Yet, the Italian community in Britain deserves more attention if only because it has ancient roots and interesting, even peculiar, features.

An Italian presence in this country can be traced back centuries: monks, bankers, musicians, architects, painters, and various skilled artisans arrived in Britain from the Italian peninsula since medieval times, but a small, settled community of Italian “economic” migrants was first noted in London only in the second decade of the nineteenth century. It mainly consisted of three components: makers and vendors of thermometers and barometers, picture-frame makers, and glass and looking-glass makers,...