Why were waves of Italian immigration to Canada and Australia later than those to the United States? (how much, unemployment)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
According to the stats, many more Italian immigrants seem first-generation in either Canada or Australia than the USA. It seems that speaking Italian among those having the ancestry is proportionally higher in Canada and Australia too.
Did the waves of Italian immigration to the United States start earlier and stop sooner? Why did it seem that Canada and Australia proportionally got greater numbers of Italians in the postwar period, such as the '60s, while Italian-American immigrants seem to be mostly earlier than that? Were there political or social reasons for this? Did the source of the immigrants differ?
Work. Australia needed workers. There wasn't much to stick around for in southern Italy post WW2.
One grandfather of mine did go to the US & could have settled there, but found it wasn't for him... so went home then got back on a ship for Australia.
Yes, it's a little known fact. There were also quite a lot of Chinese farmers.etc, but most of that disappeared over time.
There was even less Chinese rural migration in Canada than Italian. Some Italians did go to small towns in southern Ontario and were involved in some of the same things you described: fruit farming and wineries. But it was still a massively urban immigration overall.
There was even less Chinese rural migration in Canada than Italian. Some Italians did go to small towns in southern Ontario and were involved in some of the same things you described: fruit farming and wineries. But it was still a massively urban immigration overall.
Yes, I don't know if there were early Chinese farmers in the 1800s and early 1900s in Canada, but there were quite a few here and in the US, although this is a little known fact nowadays. Aside from those who came during the gold rush most people aren't aware that there was quite a bit of Asian migration to Australia early on, not just from China, but also India, Afghanistan (camel traders, Indonesia (it's quite possible they arrived before Europeans), Japan (many were pearl divers in Broome). I would say it's quite possible that after the aborigines Asians landed in Australia before Europeans. Asians, of course, were the first Americans/native Americans and Canadians as well.
To a degree, they did; though as you note, they tended to be urban.
Here in Alberta, Calgary boasts a strong and vibrant Chinatown, and even in much-smaller Lethbridge, there are still remnants of a Chinatown that was strong in the early parts of the 20th century. The Chinese who built the railway went to the cities, and ran restaurants and cafes ("Chinese and Canadian Food"), laundries, and other businesses that catered to the Chinese.
Very few seemed to engage in agriculture. That was left, here in southern Alberta, to the Japanese, and to the locals.
I wonder about the period of industrialization. Canada generally industrialized some time after the US did. Italian immigrants weren't into rural homesteading - they were after city jobs.
Lots of rural homesteaders in places like California or Argentina too. Fishermen as well.
Like all immigrants they were after a better life, urban or rural. Whenever there was land available, many worked the land (a majority of Italian immigrants came from the country anyway). Elsewhere they took city jobs.
Yes I went to the Japanese American Museum in Little Tokyo in LA. Apparently the Japanese operated a lot of farms in California, but many were confiscated or abandoned after the internment in WWII. It's a forgotten legacy.
Yes I went to the Japanese American Museum in Little Tokyo in LA. Apparently the Japanese operated a lot of farms in California, but many were confiscated or abandoned after the internment in WWII. It's a forgotten legacy.
The Japanese did farm in British Columbia as well. The same thing happened to them as in California - seizure of property and internment.
For Asian immigration (at least immigration from east Asia, like the Chinese or Japanese), I wonder if the United States, Canada or Australia has the longer or more established history?
I used to assume because of Hawaii and the West coast, the US had earlier numbers of this Asian immigration but then again, after learning a bit on Canadian and Australian history, I'm not so sure.
Or all three countries pretty equal in how old their Asian communities are (it seems harder to tell compared to Italian immigration, because many Asian communities are still newer)?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
