Transnational Italians and the Culture of Everyday Life

Departing from conventional community-based histories, this innovative work examines how immigrant identities are transformed into transnational ones. Focusing on families from the Campania region of Italy who settled in Toronto, Ontario, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, after 1945, Transnational Italians and the Culture of Everyday Life demonstrates why ethnic identity is best understood as a transnational construct – shaped by migrants’ mobility and the global dispersal of extended families and kin networks. Drawing from more than two dozen oral histories, Abril Liberatori places migrants’ narratives at the centre of her book. They are complemented by a range of archival materials – including song lyrics, recipes, and advertisements – to show how transnationalism is articulated through everyday cultural practices around food, music, gender, and language. Foodways shaped identity through importing goods from Campania and mixing those with local foods and traditional methods; Neapolitan song culture, canzone napoletana, indisputably fostered a common group identity across borders; and the lignée de femmes (a private network of bonds with fellow women) was used by Campani women to ease the hardship of migration. Sites of everyday life became rich arenas of cultural entanglements that brought together families and strangers from across Europe, the Americas, and beyond. Transnational Italians and the Culture of Everyday Life will engage not only historians but also those interested in local community histories and the connection to Italian diasporas across the globe.