Social Identities

Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture

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An intergenerational conceptualisation of Italian-

Australian ethnic identity through Bourdieu and
Heidegger

Simone Marino

To cite this article: Simone Marino (2020) An intergenerational conceptualisation of Italian-

Australian ethnic identity through Bourdieu and Heidegger, Social Identities, 26:1, 3-15, DOI:
10.1080/13504630.2019.1664286

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SOCIAL IDENTITIES
2020, VOL. 26, NO. 1, 3–15
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2019.1664286

An intergenerational conceptualisation of Italian-Australian

ethnic identity through Bourdieu and Heidegger
Simone Marino
School of Creative Industries, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper provides a phenomenological reconceptualisation of ethnic Received 28 January 2019
identity. Drawing upon a case study of a family originating in Calabria, Accepted 18 July 2019
Italy, and living in Adelaide, South Australia, I consider the way in
KEYWORDS
which the three generations perceive their ‘being ethnic’ across Italian-Australians; migration;
time and space. The first-generation participants were born in Italy ethnic identity; social
and migrated to Australia during the 1950s; the second generation identities; institutional
are their children; and the third generation are the children positionality
of the second generation. The findings show a widespread
intergenerational identification of ethnicity as ‘being Italian’, which,
however, has different meanings across the three generations. This
depends on the participants’ phenomenological perceptions of
being thrown into the world [Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time.
(J. Macquarie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York, NY: Harper]. Some 40
years after Huber’s [(1977). From pasta to Pavlova: A comparative
study of Italian settlers in Sydney and Griffith. St Lucia: University of
Queensland Press] study about the assimilation of Italian-Australians
published in her book From Pasta to Pavlova, the present paper
shows a movement from pavlova to pasta, especially by the third-
generation participants, who experience a sense of ethnic revival.
Essential in such a shift of ethnic identity is what I refer to as
institutional positionality; that is, one’s perceptions of the position of
one’s ‘ethnic being in the world’. This is investigated by combining
with the sociology of migration, including the Bourdieusian
conceptual apparatus of capital [Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of
capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research in the
sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York, NY: Greenwood
Press], a Heideggerian existential theory [Heidegger, 1962]. Such a
juxtaposition provides further reflexivity through a
reconceptualisation that considers the role of ontology in the
sociology of migration.

Introduction
This paper explores ethnic identity and transmission across three generations of Calabrians in
South Australia. Most research on Italian ethnic identity in Australia focuses on the incorpor-
ation of the first and second generations into the host society. Central to the ethnic identity
discourse, is the debate between primordialist approaches, which emphasise the unchanging
nature of ethnic identity, and constructivist approaches, which tend to over-emphasise
agency. This leaves unanswered questions about the intergenerational dynamics of ethnic

CONTACT Simone Marino [email protected]

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
4 S. MARINO

identity relations across the generations, and of how both primordialist and constructivist
approaches can be merged to consider how individuals perform their ethnic identities in con-
trapuntal and sometimes contradictory ways through everyday practices. This paper
addresses these gaps in previous research by focusing on the participants’ experiences, nar-
ratives, and cultural practices across three generations within one regional group.
The following section introduces relevant literature on ethnic identity, from a range of
different disciplines. As background for the case study, a socio-historical overview of
Calabrians and their migration to Australia is then presented. Following more theoretically
focused sections providing the rationale and explanation for the juxtaposition of ontology
with the sociology of migration and Heideggerian theoretical reference points, a section
on the design of the case study sets the scene for the data analysis. The data is then pre-
sented, analysed with the aid of a critical commentary, and discussed.

Ethnic identity research literature

There exists an extensive literature on the study of identity in its various forms. As Snow
(2001) has argued, social identities are ‘the identities attributed or imputed to others in
an attempt to situate them in social space’ (p. 36). Among other social identities, which
are usually grounded in establishing social roles, is ethnic identity (Phinney, 1990). There
is no universal definition of the concept of ethnic identity in literature, instead, there is an
abundance of diverging approaches to understanding the concept. It has been researched
in the disciplines of history, development studies, and historical archaeology (e.g. Galkina,
2000; Hall, 1991; Nora, 1989; Okamura, 1981; Ratcliffe, 2004). Psychologists and educators
consider its formation during early childhood and attempt to explore the self-identification
of immigrant groups (e.g. Di Carlo, 1986; Phinney, 1989, 1990; Phinney & Ong, 2007; Tajfel,
1978, 2010). Political, racial, and cultural studies highlight nationalism and focus on conflicts
between ethnic groups (e.g. Anderson, 2006; Bulmer & Solomos, 1996; Chandra, 2007; Craw-
ford, 2011; Fanon, 1968; Hale, 2004; Snow, 2001). Sociology observes ethnic identity in the
diasporic experiences of transnational migrants, attempting to identify the fluctuating ideo-
logical orientations – with different degree of fluidity – of minority groups and eventually
draw models of cultural types (e.g. Bauman, 2001, 2007; Castles, 1995; Chiro, 2003;
Giddens, 1991; Sayad & Bourdieu, 1991; Vasta, 1993; Vertovec, 2001; Znaniecki, 1968).
From a linguistic perspective, researchers have examined strategies for constructing
ethnic identity via social interaction (e.g. Giampapa, 2004; Goffman, 1959); and anthropol-
ogists consider ethnic identity a socially defined category based on a perceived shared
social experience (Geertz, 1973) and have highlighted the propensity to elaborate a positive
idea of the self in a society, which, conversely, defines the ‘others’ as non-humans, different,
and diverse in pejorative terms. According to Evans, Forney, Guido, Patton, and Renn (2010,
p. 44), ethnic identity is ‘the culture, religion, geography, language, and practices shared by
individuals connected by loyalty and kinship’. Anthropologists do not consider ethnic iden-
tity to be universal or an essential attribute inherent in human groups, but a cultural product
of specific kinds of intergroup interactions (Epstein, 1978). Therefore, the sense of belonging
to a particular group is symbolic, rather than innate.
Both earlier and more recent studies on ethnic identity advocate two prevalent and confl-
icting modes of analysis: primordialist and constructivist (Hale, 2004). The former has its roots
in an earlier generation of anthropologists (Bulmer & Solomos, 1996) who highlighted the
 SOCIAL IDENTITIES 5

‘primary factors’ of ethnic groups: fundamental elements such as language, religion, blood-
lines, and territory. Such an approach considers ethnic identity an essential human consti-
tution that precedes and is unchanged by any human social interaction (Crawford, 2011).
Geertz (1973), who is considered a primordialist, described ethnic identity as based on senti-
ments and memories of a shared past: people feel a sense of belonging through a perceived
shared history. Primordialism, with its claim of the existence of markers of collective exclusiv-
ity, has been criticised by approaches that completely reject the so-called ‘primordial fea-
tures’, which could easily lead to xenophobia.
The constructivist approach to analysis, on the other hand, views ethnic identity as a
dynamic social construct, rather than as intrinsic and fixed (Crawford, 2011). Ethnic identity
is invoked in some contexts but not in others (Okamura, 1981). According to Galkina
(2000), ethnic identity is a rational resource adopted by ethnic groups or individuals as
a strategy for pursuing political, social, or economic goals (Galkina, 2000). Constructivist
theorists consider ethnic identity a dynamic and fluid tool of interaction. In a game
played face-to-face during social interaction, individuals may assume a number of
ethnic identities, which vary with the social context (Appadurai, 1996; Bauman, 2001).
Research on Italian-Americans has highlighted the concept of a bicultural or integrated
identity: the feeling that individuals are both parts of their ethnic group and part of main-
stream society (Berry & Sam, 1997). In a general sense, such acculturation literature has
shown that most immigrants prefer integration. On the other hand, Phinney, Horenczyk,
Liebkind, and Vedder’s (2001) model of ethnic identity development asserts that inte-
gration is not necessarily the dominant identity pattern. They describe four possible iden-
tity categories (assimilated, separated, marginalised, and integrated) that are important in
some groups and in some countries. Such a thesis envisages a two-dimensional model of
ethnic identity and endorses the interpretation that acculturation does not automatically
result in a straightforward change from separation to assimilation.
Recently, Alessandria, Kopacz, Goodkin, Valerio, and Lappi (2016) have investigated ethnic
identity among second- and fourth-generation Italian-Americans and claimed that Italian
ethnic identity persists and evolves with distance from the immigrant generation. Such iden-
tity is relationally dynamic and shaped by various factors, including family ethnic socialisation
and exposure to Italian culture, peer relationships, and ethnic pride. Previously, Waters (1990)
had highlighted the reinvention of ethnicity in the lives of the grandchildren of European
immigrants, asking how their ethnic heritage is lived, maintained, and celebrated. Her inves-
tigation focused particularly on what she referred to as ‘middle-class whites’ as opposed to
mainstream society and the ‘option-less’ ethnicity of non-white Americans.
However, none of these theories offers a holistic interpretation of ethnic identity and it
is unlikely that ethnic identity could be reduced to dichotomies: static–dynamic, rational–
irrational, conscious–unconscious (Marino, 2018b). Ethnic identity, being both broad and
particular, is a multifaceted subject that is difficult to unpack, since it relates to both an
individual’s collective social fields and his or her personal ones. Further, it deals with
the individual’s objectivity and subjectivity, as well as with practices and emotions.

An overview of rural Calabrians and their migration to Australia

Before reconceptualising the ethnic identities of the participants of the present study (a
nuclear family whom I will call the Reggio Calabria family), it is important to give a
6 S. MARINO

socio-historical overview of southern Italy and the migration of an underprivileged group

to Australia.
‘Largely forgotten by God’ is a metaphor that Levi (1963) used to describe the state of
abandon of Calabria, a region among the most underprivileged of Italy, far from the state
institutions. Rural Calabrians, living near Aspromonte, a small area of the southern Calab-
rian Apennines were even more affected during mid-twentieth century by poor nutrition,
unemployment, and isolation due to a period of floods and epidemics. Brøgger (1971) con-
sidered the Aspromonte villages as the most technologically deprived region of the
peninsula.
As illustrated in Table 1, the number of migrants from Calabria to Australia began with a
trickle, insignificant numbers compared to Calabrian migration towards South and North
America during the same period. During the post-war period, an agreement signed by the
Italian and the Australian governments triggered a Calabrian migration to Australia; and
the Italian economic miracle between the 1950s and 1970s, while it benefited central
and northern cities, excluded Calabria.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, approximately 70,000 Calabrians have
moved to Australia (Sergi, 2014), and the migrants were primarily employed as shepherds,
miners, or farmers (Baggio & Sanfilippo, 2011). It was the province of Reggio Calabria that
provided the most substantial share of regional migration to Australia (Marino & Chiro,
2014). After World War II and until 1953, Calabria became the most represented Italian
region in Australia, with most of the migrants being peasants who originated from a
small number of underprivileged rural villages adjacent to the Aspromonte hinterland,
such as San Luca, Platì, Sinopoli, Taurianova, Benestare, and Careri. Those villages have pro-
vided a constant flow of migrants to Australia, nurtured by chain migration.
In order to respond to their migratory conditions and their feelings of nostalgia, of not
being ‘at home’, Calabrian migrants in Australia re-created a community in the host
country similar to the ones in Calabria (Marino, 2018a, 2018b). Such a cultural response
created Calabrian communities in the two major Australian cities, Sydney and Melbourne,
but also in suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, such as Midland, Balcatta, Stirling, and
Osborne Park. In Adelaide, South Australia, Calabrians established themselves in areas
like Salisbury, Lockleys, Kidman Park, and Seaton (Marino & Chiro, 2014).
The presence of certain markers – including poor English language skills, olive-coloured
skin, and attitudes associated with peasantry (Marino, 2018a, 2018b) – meant that Calab-
rians were perceived as undesirable by the Anglo-Australian dominant group, still
influenced by the White Australia Policy that, although it ceased in 1973, continued to
deliberately prefer migrants from certain European countries, especially Britain. Due to

Table 1. Migration from Calabria to Australia.

Year No. Destination Source
1876–1925 1903 Oceania Vernassa (2003)
1876–1900 14 Australia Vernassa (2003)
1901 35 Vernassa (2003)
1910 150 Vernassa (2003)
1922 860 Vernassa (2003)
Post-World War II – 1953 14,000 Marino and Chiro (2014)
1970s 47,400 Marino (2018a, 2018b)
1900– 70,000 Sergi (2014)
 SOCIAL IDENTITIES 7

such white supremacy fantasies (Hage, 2012), the assimilation of Calabrians was particu-
larly challenging.

Why Juxtapose ontology with the sociology of migration?

This paper attempts to reconceptualise ethnic identity via what could be seen as a socio-
existentialist approach that bypasses a dichotomy primordialism-constructivism in litera-
ture and merges sociological and ontological theories, primarily the conceptual apparatus
of capital (Bourdieu, 1977) and Heidegger (1962) care structure. While Bourdieu (1977) will
be instrumental in understanding the function of an individual’s accumulation and mani-
festation of markers of Italian culture (e.g. material objects, or symbolic ones such as
language or practices), Heidegger (1962)’s theoretical reference points, explained in the
following section, are fundamental to analyse phenomenologically the participants’ per-
ceptions of their ‘presence’, whether desirable or undesirable, exposed as a result of its
‘thrownness into the world’ (Heidegger, 1962, 2013). An individual’s presence (in the
present case, an ‘ethnic’ presence) is subjected to their thrownness into the world in a
specific time and space. The position of such thrownness at a specific time and in a
specific space will play a part in the perception of ethnic identity.
The conceptual apparatus of capital, in which capital is defined as ‘the sum of valued
knowledge, styles and practical behavioural dispositions’ (Bourdieu, 1986), is a theory
that implies a competitive struggle for individuals to compete in society, a ‘quest of dis-
tinction-making’ aimed at improving one’s position within the field. Individuals compete
by accumulating cultural capital in its material or immaterial form; in order words, individ-
uals can possess and rely on forms of cultural goods (e.g. pictures, books, instruments, or
machines) or they can embody cultural capital as knowledge, skill, experience, gained via
socialisation; the process may be either intentional or unconscious. Individuals do not
simply accumulate cultural capital mechanically: its possession allows them to convert it
into other forms of capital (symbolic, prestige), in order to improve their position in any
field of interaction. For example, individuals can rely on certain objects or languages
that recall a specific ethnicity to manifest ethnic empathy towards it, and this process
enables them to interact as ‘fish in water’ within the social space (Bourdieu, 1977).
This element of Bourdieu’s theory needs to be combined with ontology and its focus on
‘presence’ (in this case, an ethnic presence) to understand why individuals might ‘struggle
to’ accumulate cultural capital (and why others do not) and to manifest ethnic identity.

Heideggerian theoretical reference points

Aspects of Heidegger (1962)’s conceptualisations gravitate to the notion of thrownness,
which in turn depends on one’s facticity, that is, the ‘givens of the past’, and the urge
for individuals to live authentically in ‘the now’, instead of conforming to ‘the others’. In
other words, for Heidegger (1962), ‘being in the world’ is a ‘matter of care’. The ‘care struc-
ture’ is characterised by three connected dimensions: facticity, fallenness, and authenticity
(in German, Faktizität, Geworfenheit, and Eigentlichkeit respectively). Depending on one’s
facticity, and therefore on all the given characteristics (e.g. physical, social, historical)
with which individuals are born – including social class and ethnicity – individuals will
have their own specific thrownness, in terms of the ways that they perceive themselves
8 S. MARINO

as being ‘in the world’, whether desirable or undesirable. This line seems to be sympathetic
to primordialist approaches, if it was not from the fact that further, subject to one’s facticity
and its throwness is fallenness, which consists of the ways individuals experience, perform,
and live their lives. Heidegger (1962)’s idea of fallenness, instead, seems related to con-
structivism and performative aspects. Fallenness is basically a life lived inauthentically,
in which people conform unthinkingly to others, by emulating the ‘they-self’ (Heidegger,
2013). In such a dimension of fallenness, the individual ‘falls’ from their very presence, or
Dasein, which Heidegger (2013) defines as one’s very ‘destiny and potential in life’. By
doing so, they not only compromise their authenticity but they also conform to inauthentic
behaviours and avoid any confrontation with reality (Heidegger, 1962). Instead, Heidegger
(1962, 2013) advocates nurturing the potential inherent in our being, our very presence, in
the present moment of ‘the now’ where individuals are truly and powerfully alive.

Methodological premise and study design

The present paper is the result of a three-year period of fieldwork (February 2013–February
2016) among members of the Calabrian community of Adelaide. During the first three
months, I contacted the presidents of the five Calabrian clubs of Adelaide, which organise
a plethora of community and religious events. I introduced myself and the research, and I
asked permission to attend meetings and events. I was then involved as a volunteer in the
clubs, offering my services as a folkloric musician with knowledge of traditional Calabrian
musical repertoire and musical instruments. The methods used to collect the data were
participant observation and open-ended, in-depth interviews.
To reduce the distance between interviewer and interviewed (as a researcher who
cannot make himself disappear), I made myself more visible. I conducted an ethnographic
study in which I highlighted, among my multiple identities, the habitus closer to the par-
ticipants (Bourdieu, 1977). This is an unusual approach because this is a method commonly
used among ethnographers but rarely within sociology. By highlighting my identity of tra-
ditional musician (u sonaturi), I entered the field of the participants, the paesano (that is,
the immigrant), in order to share the emic worldview and reduce the participant–
researcher distance. After establishing an empathetic relationship with the participants,
I was able to attend specific domains of social lives and accept invitations for social
occasions (e.g. Christmas, Easter, birthdays, engagements, weddings, and funerals) in
order to witness and share (intimate) details of participants’ family lives (e.g. food prep-
aration, conversations, gossiping, arguments, and jokes). This served as a triangulation
approach providing important insight, allowing me to cross-check data and evaluate
the findings through a more complete view and position as an observer.

Case study: The Reggio Calabria family – intergenerational perceptions of

‘Being Italian’
This section is devoted to the perceptions of ethnicity of three generations of participants
from the same nuclear family: the Reggio Calabria family.1 Figure 1 sets out the family tree
through those generations.
Salvatore, the youngest of nine children, migrated from Reggio Calabria to Australia in
1959, when he was 20 years old. He met Rosa, who had migrated from a village near
 SOCIAL IDENTITIES 9

Figure 1. The Reggio Calabria Family (Source: Marino, 2018a). Note: Participants are represented in
black.

Reggio Calabria, in Adelaide. The couple settled in Seaton, South Australia. Salvatore
found a job at General Motors Holden of Adelaide, in Salisbury, where he worked for
more than 30 years, before retiring. During the 1970s, he experienced racism from his Aus-
tralian supervisors, who used to call him ‘blackie’. Rosa has always been a housewife In
1980, 20 years after they migrated, the couple returned to Reggio Calabria for a month-
long visit.
Joe was brought up within the values and practices of his Calabrian family. Like many
other second-generation children, he realised how different he was from the majority of
his (Anglo-Australian) classmates on his first day of school. He claims to have been ‘the
only ethnic’. During an informal conversation, he told me about his embarrassment
when mamma Rosa picked him up from school. Then he confessed to me that, even
today, when all the family is gathered, he still cannot stand his father’s public jokes
about the non-authenticity of his Italian-ness:
For my dad, I am a cancaruni [Skippy]. Everything I do, is wrong. When I cut the salami, dad
says, I do it wrongly. When I make the satizzi [sausages] Dad says that I waste too much meat.

Rosemary, Joe’s wife, was also a second-generation Italian-Australian originating from

Calabria. Like her husband, she shared the experience of cultural racism at school. There
was a period (see Table 1) in which her antipathy towards her ethnicity, as a sort of Italo-
phobia (or anti-Italianism), led her to change her name to from Rosa to Rosemary.
Matt, their son, told me during an interview that he is proud of ‘being Italian’. In the
early 2000s nonna Rosa used to pick him up from school (Nazareth Catholic College in Flin-
ders Park). He could not wait to have his merenda (snack) at nonna’s place. Matt has never
experienced racism because of his ethnicity. At school, he used to dress in Italian clothes
and sell his lunches (if made by his nonna) to his schoolmates. He has a passion for Italian
10 S. MARINO

cars. His first car was a Fiat Punto; at the time of the case study, he owned an Alfa Romeo
Giulietta that had a little sticker of the Italian flag on it.

Participant perspective and critical commentary

Table 2 sets out some of the Reggio Calabria family’s perceptions of their ethnicity. The
critical commentary in the third column reveals that there is an ethnic intergenerational
association of ‘being Italian’; however, this is perceived differently by each generation.

Discussion
Table 2 draws out the participants’ perceptions of their ethnicities. We can consider these
through the lens of Heidegger’s (1962) ideas in order to interpret the participants’ ethnic
identities.
While Salvatore, in the first generation, manifests an apparently twofold condition of
‘feeling absent’ (from Italy and from Australia), the second generation (Joe and Rosemary)
occupy a position of in-between-ness, being educated by immigrant parents in Australia.
Rather differently, the third generation (Matt) shows an ethnic sympathy towards having
Italian origins.
Salvatore’s interviews reveal a position of being ethnically displaced – or spaesato in
Italian, the idea of being physically and metaphorically ‘out of one’s own town’ (Baldassar,
2001) – that generates a feeling of absence, a perceived ‘non-presence’. Such a condition
and the risk of losing one’s cultural presence seem to be put aside by Salvatore when he
plays his traditional music (Marino, 2018a, 2018b). Focusing authentically on folklore could
be considered to be the application of a cultural response to annihilation (De Martino,
1961); in Heideggerain terms, the ‘presence’ is preserved from the fallenness and main-
tained in-history (Heidegger, 1962).
The modus operandi that Salvatore and his wife use to nurture their presence can be
interpreted through Bourdieu’s (1986) theory and in particular his notion of cultural and
social capital. The couple constantly attend regional clubs and have an active social life
within the Calabrian community of Adelaide which, due to the chain migration of the
1950s and 1960s, seems to have preserved its regional characteristics.
In relation to the second-generation, Joe and Rosemary’s facticity of being born in Ade-
laide of immigrants parents who have relied on tradition to ‘keep their presence alive’,
combined with the racism they experienced at school, has resulted in ambivalent out-
comes. From a Bourdieusian perspective, like their parents, they relied on social capital
generated by other second-generation schoolmates. From a Heideggerian viewpoint, on
the other hand, being perceived as unwanted in the now at school shaped their ethnic
identity and has contributed, at times, to antipathy towards their own ethnic background.
Emblematic of this is Rosemary’s experience, where her thrownness at school led to her
remaining silent in class for more than a year until she decided to change her name
from Rosa to Rosemary and to colour her hair, thereby ‘falling’ to conformity with the
‘they’.
The behaviour of second-generation Rosemary, retreating from her Italianness, is con-
gruent with Phinney et al.’s (2001) model of ethnic identity, specifically with what they
refer to as an ethnic identity ‘moratorium’, a temporary prohibition or rejection of an
 SOCIAL IDENTITIES 11

Table 2. Participant perspective and critical commentary (Source: Marino, 2018a).

Generation Participant perspective Critical commentary
Gen. 1 Salvatore
Cca, non mi sentu a casa. Non mi sentu comu nto These extracts for the first generation are taken from
paisi meu. Se non era pe i figghi, mi ndi tornava a conversation between Salvatore and Rosa at
all’Italia. lunch. In 1980, Salvatore and Rosa returned to
Almeno vaiu ‘nte cclubs ogni settimana. Sugnu Reggio Calabria after 20 years, for a visit of one
member di quattru o cincu clubs, tutti calabbrisi, i month. For two weeks, Salvatore was unable to
ipaiesani! sleep because people from Sinopoli called him
[Here (in Australia) I don’t feel home. I don’t feel ‘stranger’. Salvatore’s absence (besides the fact he
what I feel when I am in my village. If it wasn’t for had left his village) and the nostalgia which he has
my children, I would go back to Italy. maintained an apparently unchanged memory,
At least I attend the clubs every week. I am a explains his sense of guilt because having left (and
member of four or five clubs. All of them are according to him, betrayed) ‘his’ people.
Calabrian, paesani]
Rosa
Non e’ veru! Ricordi quandu tornammu all’Italia dopu
vent’anni pe cattari a terra a Joe? Tu non dormisti
pe du settimani pecchi tutti ndi criticavanu! I
parenti, i paesani, puru u previti ndi criticava! Tutti
ndi ngiuriau ‘stranieri’! Ti paria cent’anni pemmu
torni all’Australia, l’Australia ti mancava pecchi a
Reggio Calabria non ti sentivi a casa! Ma quandu si
all’Australia, poi vai ‘nte clubs I paisani! Si stranu tu!
[That’s not true! Do you remember when we
returned to Italy after 20 years, to buy the land for
Joe? You did not sleep for two weeks because
everyone criticised us! The relatives, the paesani,
even the priest criticised us! Everyone called us
‘stranger’! You couldn’t wait to return to Australia!
You missed Australia, because at Reggio Calabria
you did not feel at home!
However, when you are in Australia, then you go to
the Calabrian clubs. How strange you are!]
Gen. 2 Rosemary
We consider ourselves here [in Australia], the lost In this extract for the second generation, Rosemary
generation! Yeah, we are lost! I am not Italian like identifies herself as one of a ‘lost generation’. Her
my mum but, for Poms [meaning Anglo- feeling of being neither Italian nor Australian could
Australians], I am very Italian. Here, for them, you be explained through her perception of lacking
are Italian, no matter if you were born here like me some elements (blood, face) that are essential to
or my sister. Our face, or blood are Italian. Even if Anglo-Australians in order to be classified ‘pure
you do look like them, or act like them, you will Aussie’.
never be considered a pure Aussie!
My first language was Italian until my first day of Rosemary’s first language was the Calabrian dialect
school. That first day, I still remember I was teased spoken by her parents, until she went to school.
in class and I stopped talking for one year! Then she realised how different she was from the
rest of her Anglo-Australian classmates. She also
reported that for one year she did not speak in
class.
I was always embarrassed about being Italian. I did Rosemary’s comment expresses the fear of being
not want to speak Italian nor to greet family criticised about her Calabrian origin. In order to be
friends in public places. I still don’t do that. I knew accepted by her Australian peers, she reported
that they would raise the volume of their voice, often deliberately avoiding public situations where
use clumsy words. I did not want my classmates to she needed to ‘act’ Italian.
see me talking in Italian.
My first years at school I could not speak English. For Until she went to school, Rosemary spoke mainly the
one year I did not speak at all. No one understood Calabrian dialect, and was called Rosa by almost
me, I did not understand them, it was like I was everyone in the neighbourhood. When she
invisible. Then I became like them, I got blonde, I attended school, from the first day she was teased
dressed like them, and I gave up with all the Italian because of her appearance, language, lunch, and
peasant stuff. clothes. Rosemary felt like a ‘fish out of water’; and,
as the years passed, due to the routine teasing at
school, Rosa developed an aversion towards her

(Continued )
12 S. MARINO

Table 2. Continued.
Generation Participant perspective Critical commentary
ethnic background that lasted for years. She
changed her name from Rosa to Rosemary, she
dyed her hair, and, as she claimed, ‘became like
them’.
For more than 10 years I were sick of all the woggy Rosemary reports that for more than a decade she
stuff. developed a strong and durable antipathy towards
the Italian world associated, at that time, with
illiteracy and peasantry.
Joe
I cannot say I am Italian, nor am I completely In the second extract Joe describes being in the
Australian, I am in the middle, or neither one nor middle.
another.
Joe
When I first attended school, I could not speak In the third extract, an excess of ethnic cultural
English, but only Italian. I felt excluded. […] I got capital (Joe’s lunch and Italian shoes) and a lack of
teased because of the sandwiches my mum used dominant cultural capital in class (being unable to
to prepare […] and because of my stupid shoes I speak English) contributed to his marginalisation.
wore the first day. I was uncomfortable when my
mum picked me up from school.
Joe
Once I got married with Rose, we planned to go to In the fourth extract, it was a lack of ‘Calabrian’
Italy. One of Dad’s friends asked me to bring a cultural capital which contributed to Joe’s absence.
small sealed package to his relatives in Calabria. I By refusing to take a package to Italy, by distrusting
refused, I did not know what was inside. He said an Italian family friend, according to his father, Joe
there were bonbonnières. I did not trust him is not Italian enough; he is a cancaruni or Skippy.
because he did not want to unseal the package. Joe’s absence lies in the fact that he has not
Don’t you read the newspapers? Many people incorporated enough Calabrian cultural capital (or,
traffic drugs […]. My dad got really pissed off with conversely, he has incorporated ‘too much’
me, he called me cancaruni [kangaroo] because I dominant cultural capital, from his father’s
do not trust people, I act as an Australian and I do perspective).
not make favours to paesani.
Gen. 3 Matt
I am proud of being Italian. It’s cool! I can cook, I got Matt’s perceptions of ethnic identity differ from those
style, I got an Alfa Romeo, you know? I think like of his parents. By mentioning specific markers of
Italians. identity (the style, the ability to cook) it seems he is
voluntarily accumulating something, while he
expresses enthusiasm towards his ethnicity. He
enjoys going shopping with his grandmother, he
uses Calabrian words such as compà [literally
‘godparent’, but in this context it means ‘mate’].
My Italian friends got a Vespa Piaggio, a new Fiat It seems that Matt and his ‘Italian friends’ (i.e.
500, Alfa Romeo cars … we all got rosary beads in Australians of Italian descent) rely on certain
it. My friends and cousins got ‘SAUCE’ and ‘BELLA’ objects or perform certain practices thought to be
as a personalised number plate. Italian. Apart from the use of the Italian language,
Calabrian dialect, gesticulations, and mannerisms, a
number of objects are often employed to express
ethnic membership. These can vary from
possessing a Vespa, to having a personalised Italian
number-plate.
I go grocery shopping every Saturday morning with Compared to his parents, Matt seems to have more
nonna. It’s such a cool thing shopping with her, freedom to affirm and to choose his ethnicity. Such
greeting her friends in Italian: ‘Eh compà!’, buying freedom seems to have given him the audacity to
wog food, talking with the hands! Before we get use the word ‘wog’ which was a very derogative
home we have a cappuccino. I am proud of being term for his parents and the previous generations.
Italian.

ethnic activity. Influenced by Erikson (1968), they highlight the importance of a sense of
belonging in the development of ethnic identity, claiming the existence of three stages:
unexamined ethnic identity, ethnic identity search or moratorium, and ethnic identity
 SOCIAL IDENTITIES 13

achievement. However, while they focuses appropriately on the relationship between

ethnic identity and self-esteem, their model, which interprets ethnic identity according
to development stages, seems less pertinent to the present study. An in-depth phenom-
enological approach to the participants’ perceptions of ‘being ethnic in the world’ seems
necessary in order to understand the ontological factors that may have led the reverse
shift in ethnic identity of the third-generation participants, from pavlova back to pasta.
A pivotal role seems to be played by their institutional positionality; that is, their percep-
tion of their ethnic position within the world. An individual’s institutional positionality is
related to the Heideggerian care structure – I have coined this term to attempt to
capture the temporal, subjective, and spatial ethnic being based on its ethnic presence,
in the here and now. Differently from his parents, Matt’s facticity of having an Italian back-
ground at school in the ‘now’ brought him to openly manifest his ethnic identity. Being
thrown into a world in which being Italian is apparently no longer a stigma brought
this young, third-generation man to perceive his ethnicity positively and to possess and
display objects that recall Italy. Following Bourdieu’s (1986) theory, Matt accumulates cul-
tural capital that he displays and utilises in his ‘quest of distinction-making’ (Bourdieu,
1986). The act of displaying an Alfa Romeo to his friends or his use of certain Italian
words are practical manifestations of his own Heideggerian fallenness that makes him
proud of being Italian.
Some forty years after Huber’s (1977) study about the assimilation of Italian-Australians
the present paper demonstrates a different direction – from pavlova to pasta – taken
especially by the third-generation participants who are experiencing a sense of ethnic
revival. This was investigated by combining the sociology of migration, the Bourdieusian
conceptual apparatus of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), and Heideggerian existential theory (Hei-
degger, 1962). The shift of ethnic identity is what I refer to as institutional positionality; that
is, one’s perception of the position of one’s ‘ethnic being in the world’. This provides
further reflexivity through a reconceptualisation that considers the role of ontology in
the sociology of migration and is theoretically significant to its attempts to bridge the
dichotomous approaches of constructivism and primordialism.

Note
1. Participants are given pseudonyms.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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