Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-01T19:29:29.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The redefinition of gender roles and family structures among Istrian peasant families in Trieste, 1954–64

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Gloria Nemec
Gloria Nemec*
Affiliation:
Istituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione, Salita di Gretta, 38-34136 Trieste. Dipartimento di Storia, Università di Trieste, v. Economo, 4-34124 Trieste, Italy. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

From 1942 to the late 1950s, about 240,000 Italians fled from Istria and Dalmatia, territories included in the new Yugoslav Federal Republic. The last movement of population took place after the London Memorandum in 1954, when the portion of territory closest to Italy (‘Zone B’) was given to Yugoslavia. About 40,000 Italians took part in this last exodus, and most of them were peasants wishing to settle in Trieste. The article describes the adaptation of social behaviours and gender roles among Istrian peasants as they faced new urban realities and modernization in the exodus. Oral sources, personal memoirs, literature and other documents are used to reconstruct the process by which rural communities moved from pre-war stability to change and transformation as they integrated within urban society in Trieste. In this process, gender and familial roles were significantly affected and redefined.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 9 , Issue 1: Special Issue: gender and the private sphere in Italy since 1945 , May 2004 , pp. 35 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Colummi, Cristiana, Ferrari, Liliana, Nassisi, Gianna and Trani, Germano, Storia di un esodo. Istria 1945–1956 , Istituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia (IRSML), Trieste, 1980; Pupo, Raoul, Guerra e dopoguerra al confine orientale d'Italia (1938–1956), Del Bianco, Udine 1999; Pupo, , ‘L'esodo degli italiani da Zara, da Fiume e dall'Istria (1943–1946)’ in Passato e presente, 15, 40, 1997, pp. 55–81; Cattaruzza, Marina, Dogo, Marco and Pupo, Raoul (eds), Esodi. Trasferimenti forzati di popolazione nel Novecento europeo, Istituto regionale per la cultura istriana di Trieste (IRCI), ESI, Naples, 2000; Ballinger, Pamela, History in Exile. Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2003; Various authors, Friuli e Venezia Giulia. Storia del ‘900, IRSML, LEG, Gorizia, 1997, pp. 413–580.Google Scholar

2. Nemec, Gloria, Un paese perfetto. Storia e memoria di una comunità in esilio: Grisignana d'Istria 1930–1960 , IRCI LEG, Gorizia, 1998.Google Scholar

3. Questions such as the formation of the urban proletariat, national and class conflicts and the controversial legitimization of the ruling elites have all been fundamental issues in the historiography about Venezia Giulia in this period. See, e.g., Apih, Elio, Trieste , Laterza, Rome–Bari, 1988; Cattaruzza, Marina, La formazione del proletariato urbano. Immigrati, operai di mestiere, donne a Trieste dalla metà del secolo XIX alla prima guerra mondiale, Ed. Musolini, Turin, 1979; Novak, Bogdan, Trieste 1941–1954. La lotta politica, etnica e ideologica, Mursia, Milan, 1973; Millo, Anna, L'élite del potere a Trieste. Una biografia collettiva 1891–1938, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1989; Sapelli, Giulio, Trieste italiana. Mito e destino economico, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1990; Sestan, Ernesto, Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di una storia etnica e culturale, Ed. Italiane, Rome 1947; Schiffrer, Carlo, La questione etnica ai confini orientali d'Italia, Anthology edited by Fulvia Verani and Italo Svevo, Trieste, 1990; Vivante, Angelo, Irredentismo adriatico, Italo Svevo, Trieste, 1984.Google Scholar

4. Given the fragmentary nature of the data, estimates about the size of the exodus have suffered from the political use made of statistics in the past. For some time, the most reliable estimate has been of between 240,000 and 250,000 people. This coincides with the most important statistic regarding the exodus: that it involved 90 per cent of the Italian population in the territories ceded to Yugoslavia. See Pupo, Raoul, ‘L'esodo degli italiani da Zara, da Fiume e dall'Istria: un quadro fattuale,’ in Cattaruzza, Dogo and Pupo, (eds), Esodi , pp. 183–208; Colella, Amedeo, L'esodo dalle terre adriatiche. Rilevazioni statistiche, Tipografia di Stato, Rome, 1958.Google Scholar

5. See Valdevit, Giampaolo, La questione di Trieste, 1941–1954. Politica internazionale e contesto locale , Franco Angeli, Milan, 1987; Valdevit, , ‘La crisi di Trieste, maggio-giugno 1945. Una revisione storiografica’, IRSML Quaderni, 9, 1995; Ballinger, , History in Exile, pp. 76–96.Google Scholar

6. Cattaruzza, Dogo and Pupo, (eds), Esodi. Google Scholar

7. See Ballinger, , History in Exile , p. 80.Google Scholar

8. An ‘Archivio della memoria dell'esodo’ (‘Memory Archive of the Exodus’) was formed in the early 1990s at the Istituto regionale per la cultura istriana di Trieste (Regional Institute of Istrian Culture in Trieste). Ballinger, Pamela, Coslovich, Marco, Laura Oretti and the author of this article have all worked at this project at different times. Around fifty people, most of them from the territories of the former Zone B (Piemonte, Grisignana, Buie), were interviewed between 1993 and 1997. The original recordings were in dialect and were fully transcribed. In this article, the page numbers refer to pages in the interview transcriptions. The narrators selected for this article were obviously not the only ones to have discussed the topics examined here, but rather were those who recounted them best. The findings on many questions in my Un paese perfetto tally with those in Ballinger, , History in Exile , pp. 186, 193, 201, 270.Google Scholar

9. From a statistical point of view, this is in line with large migratory movements elsewhere in Italy, of which the most intensive was during the decade 1955–65. See Gabaccia, Donna R., Emigranti. Le diaspore degli italiani dal Medioevo a oggi , Einaudi, Turin, 2003; Reyneri, Emilio, La catena migratoria. Il ruolo dell'emigrazione nel mercato del lavoro di arrivo e di esodo, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1979; Romero, Federico, L'emigrazione e integrazione europea 1945–1973, Ed. Lavoro, Rome, 1991; Mantovani, Simone, Ascoli, Ugo, ‘Riflessi dell'emigrazione sullo sviluppo economico italiano 1945–1970’, in L'emigrazione dal bacino del mediterraneo verso l'Europa industrializzata, Istituto di demografia dell'Università di Roma, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1976, pp. 391–524.Google Scholar

10. The description of young male migrants is from Ginsborg, Paul, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988 , Penguin, London, 1990, p. 222.Google Scholar

11. Report by Dr Donini, Director of the Ospedale psichiatrico provinciale (Provincial Psychiatric Hospital), 1965, Archivio di Stato di Trieste, busta 56, fasc. 953.Google Scholar

12. , Maria and D., Stefano were interviewed on 9 and 14 December, 1993.Google Scholar

13. Cresciani, Gianfranco, ‘Storia e caratteristiche dell'emigrazione giuliana, istriana e dalmata in Australia’, in Qualestoria , 24, 2, 1996, pp. 35–65; Donato, Carlo, ‘Un caso singolare di mobilità geografica: l'emigrazione giuliana’, in Various authors, Friuli e Venezia Giulia. Storia del ‘900, pp. 561–580.Google Scholar

14. See Colella, , L'esodo dalle terre adriatiche; Furio Bednarz, ‘Il mercato del lavoro nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Contraddizioni e dilemmi di uno sviluppo’, in Various authors, Friuli e Venezia Giulia. Storia del ‘900 , pp. 477–490.Google Scholar

15. See Gabaccia, , Emigranti , p.122.Google Scholar

16. See Coslovich, Marco, ‘La classe operaia dell'Ilva-Italsider di Trieste nel secondo dopoguerra’, in Ganapini, Luigi (ed.), … anche l'uomo doveva essere di ferro. Classe e movimento operaio a Trieste nel secondo dopoguerra , IRSML, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1986, pp. 115–161; Ramani, Nicolò, ‘Tra solidarietà e incomprensione. Un protagonista ricorda e riflette sull'arrivo in Italia dei profughi’, in Il Territorio, XII, 25, 1989, pp. 209–222.Google Scholar

17. Parati, Graziella, ‘Looking through Non-Western Eyes: Immigrant Women's Autobiographical Narratives in Italian’, in Brinker-Gabler, Gisela and Smith, Sidonie (eds), Writing New Identities. Gender, Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Europe , University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1997 pp. 118–142; Orsini-Jones, Marina and Gattullo, Francesca, ‘Migrant Women in Italy: National Trends and Local Perspectives’, in Anthias, Floya and Lazaridis, Gabriella (eds), Gender and Migration in Southern Europe. Women on the Move, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2000, pp. 125–144; Tyree, Andrea and Donato, Katharine M., ‘A Demographic Overview of the International Migration of Women,’ in Simon, Rita and Brettell, Caroline (eds), International Migration: The Female Experience, Rowman & Allenheld, Totowa, NJ, 1986, pp. 21–41; Campani, Giovanna, Genere, etnia e classe. Migrazioni al femminile tra esclusione e identità, ETS, Pisa, 1999.Google Scholar

18. Berto, P. was born in Grisignana in 1930 into a family who were builders by tradition. He left the town in the summer of 1955 after which he spent several years in a refugee camp in Trieste. He married a woman from his home town and, after initially working as a builder, he was hired by the state railway company in 1960. The quote is taken from page 23 of an interview conducted on 11 April 1994.Google Scholar

19. There are no studies of prostitution in the zone. For related themes, see Sluga, Glenda, ‘No-Man's Land: The Gendered Boundaries of Post-War Trieste’, Gender and History , 6, 2, 1994, pp. 184–201; Sluga, Glenda, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Jugoslav Border: Difference. Identity and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century Europe, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2001.Google Scholar

20. Madieri, Marisa, Verde acqua , Einaudi, Turin, 1987.Google Scholar

21. The quotation is taken from pages 33 and 52 of the transcript of the interview with Maria, D. and Stefano, D. on 14 December 1993.Google Scholar

22. On the refusal of unemployed fathers to look after their children, see Morris, Lydia ‘Strategie familiari e crisi domestica’, in Bonazzi, Giuseppe, Saraceno, Chiara and Beccalli, Bianca (eds), ‘Donne e uomini nella divisione del lavoro. Le tematiche di genere nella sociologia economica’, Sociologia del lavoro , 42, numero unico 1991, p. 172; See also Saraceno, Chiara, ‘La famiglia come soggetto economico e il patrimonio familiare’, in Bonazzi, Saraceno and Beccalli, ‘Donne e uomini’, p. 157. On the division of labour between the sexes and its consequences for both men and women, see ibid. ; Saraceno, , Il lavoro maldiviso, De Donato, Bari, 1980; Saraceno, , Sociologia della famiglia, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1988; Paci, Massimo (ed.), Famiglia e mercato del lavoro in un'economia periferica, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1978.Google Scholar

23. Baldi, Gianni, ‘Per i profughi la guerra continua’, Epoca , 227, 1956, p. 24.Google Scholar

24. Virginia, R. was born in Tribano (Buie) in 1928 into a family of landholding peasants with nine children. She got married and moved to Grosseto in 1955. She was employed by a cleaning firm in Trieste in 1960. Her husband worked first as a builder and then in the state railway company. This excerpt is taken from page 15 of an interview conducted on 20 April 1994.Google Scholar

25. Many of these were run by Catholic organizations. Don Edoardo Marzari was a key figure in Trieste at this time. In addition to helping set up the Lega Nazionale, the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti, the Sindacati Liberi Giuliani and the local ACLI branch, he was also president of the CLN and an aide to De Gasperi. From as early as 1945, he had been helping hundreds of young people arriving from Istria and Dalmatia in the ‘Famiglia Giovanile Auxilium’, the most important of a series of projects which then merged to form ‘Opera Figli del Popolo’ in 1947. Stopper, Nereo, Monsignor Edoardo Marzari , Tipografia Villaggio del Fanciullo, Trieste, 1976.Google Scholar

26. Sivini, Giordano, Ceti sociali ed origini etniche , Marsilio, Padua, 1970.Google Scholar