Betty Boyd Caroli

Book Review: Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New YorkWomen of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York. By CoserRose Laub, AnkerLaura S. and PerrinAndrew J.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Pp. 162.

important in Italian-American tradition. Part II includes three essays.The third chapter examines the relationship between Italian Americans and their saints and shows how this relationship has changed over time, shaped by forces in Catholicism, in Italian history and in American history. Chapter four presents a sociohistorical account of Italian and Italian-American religious life, and it indicates that contemporary ItalianAmerican Catholics maintain many of the religious practices established by their immigrant forebears. The fifth chapter demonstrates how the saints have played, historically, a key role in Catholic teaching, especially in the lives of Italians and Italian Americans, and discusses the changes in religious practices by rodays Italian Americans. Chapter six shows that Italian-American national parishes exhibited a decline in the proportion of new churches dedicated to Italian saints from the years 1896 to 1960. It argues that this decline is associated with the Italian-American acculturation into the IrishAmerican religious practices. Part III consists of only one essay. Chapter seven analyzes the role of the saints in the Italian-American feasts and parishes of Long Island, New York. Part IV includes four essays. Chapter eight investigates the historical clash between the external, exuberant religiosity of Italian Americans and the internal, reserved religiosity of Anglo and Irish Americans. The ninth chapter describes the changes from 1880 to the present that have taken place in ItalianAmerican reverence to the saints. Chapter ten argues that devotion to the saints is an important aspect of Italian-American culture and that this devotion is important for this ethnic groups psychological health. The eleventh chapter demonstrates how Lafesta (the Italian religious feast of a saint) was deeply rooted in custom and how La festa enabled Italian immigrants to adjust to an unfriendly, modern society in America. Part V contains three essays. Chapter twelve discusses the historical relationship between Italian-American Catholics and their saints, and it argues that Italian-American Catholics need to embrace the issue of veneration of saints in order to develop a realistic Italian-American Catholic multiculturalism. The thirteenth chapter proposes more social-psychological research on the relationship between Italian Americans and their saints. Chapter fourteen is a bibliographic essay that presents readings on the saints in the lives of Italian Americans. I strongly recommend Varacalli, Primeggia, LaGumina and DElias work for anyone interested in race and ethnic studies. Their book provides the reader with an impressive and comprehensive treatment on Italian-American religious life.

49.95.

gration data obtained from the census carried out in August 1969.An obvious, and admitted, defect of the study was the failure to survey either returnees or nonmigrants. As a result, the determinants of migration were tested with the aid of two aggregate models, the first identifying the probability of migration for a given member of the rural labor force using a polytomous logistic model, the second in the form of a migration allocation model to show how a particular urban destination is selected from among a set of possible destinations. These aggregate models revealed a general result, namely that variations in income levels and employment prospects among locations are the dominant factor in both the migration decision and in the selection of a particular destination. This result was confirmed by the answers to questions in the migration survey. The survey also confirms findings familiar from other migration studies: that migration is selective in terms of education and age (and both these variables are highly correlated in the early years of post independence Kenya); that, despite initial periods of unemployment, migrants soon increased their incomes dramatically above the rural aver!ige that urban based kin are a major source of shelter, sustenance and information; that urban amenities are not a central factor in migration; that rural-urban ties, especially in the form of remittances, continue to be important after migration; and that step migration from one urban sector to another is quite common as an instrument for promoting income growth. In the final chapter Rempel examines public policy options to influence the migration process. He considers reducing the attractiveness of formal sector employment (as a means of weakening the stimulus to acquire more formal education, which is highly correlated with migration), creation of more rural employment opportunities, measures to narrow the urban-rural income differential, investment in transport and communications, which has an ambiguous net impact on the migration process, and improving public services and amenities in rural areas. In general, he argues that the results of such actions will be marginal and instead argues for radical solutions to promote the active participation of low-income, especially rural, Kenyans in the development process. Such a strategy would require a substantial redistribution of resources from urban to rural areas and elimination of the high degreee of protection that sheltered Kenyas large-scale industries. To sum up, this research monograph offers no startling new findings but merely confirms results that are familiar to migration researchers. However, its virtue is that it provides a careful and detailed analysis of the behavior and welfare of recent urban migrants in an important developing country based on survey data.

Book Review: Storie senza storia: Indagine sull'emigrazione Calabrese in Gran BretagnaStorie senza storia: Indagine sull'emigrazione Calabrese in Gran Bretagna. By CavallaroRenato. Rome: Centro Studi Emigrazione, 1981. Pp. 262. 11,000 lire or about

have disappointingly little to do with its contents, the difference may make it somewhat more interesting to readers of IMR rather than less so. Although the titles are well chosen from the point of view of attracting a large audience, The essays in this volume are revisions of papers submitted for the workshop on Southwest Areal Linguistics, University of Texas at EI Paso, April 6-8, 1972. Thus, the lions share of the papers deal with various aspects of Spanish and Spanish speaking populations in the Southwest-and are neither applied nor educational in focus. The other major ethnolinguistic groups of the Southwest, Indians, blacks and (in Texas) German speakers, also receive a modicum of attention, although only in the last named case is the attention anything but fleeting or superficial. (The paper on blacks is a two page abstract.) Finally, the rest of the United States is represented by one paper on Arabic English bilinguals in Detroit and a three page position paper on minority languages more generally. Not having succeeded in living up to the promisory note of the books title and/or subtitle, the editors launch their volume with a prefatory sour grapes disclaimer to the effect that available data ... is still too sparse either for grandiose language/culture theorizing or for the effective formulation of concrete educational and language policy designed to accelerate social change. Although this may well be true it is somewhat beside the point given the topical, regional and qualitative restriction of the papers involved. Notwithstanding all of the foregoing criticisms, this little volume is not without value, particularly for students of Texas and New Mexico proximate to the Mexican border. Several of the papers dealing with the latter area are certainly reputable contributions to our growing understanding of this new immigrant impacted and longterm Chicano influenced region. Whereas a generation ago it was difficult to locate scholars with a thorough methodological, empirical and theoretical grounding in the microand macrosociolinguistic aspects of this region, this is no longer the case today. If theoretical and practical (policy) integration has not yet been attained at an advanced level, nor at a level that has supraregional implications, such integration and stimulation are obviously closer at hand than they were or than the editors may recognize even in terms of their own better papers. The most gratifying surprise of all is the paper by Gilbert on German speakers in Texas. It is a fine example of building on the accomplishments of the past quarter century (among them, Gilberts own prior studies) and should stimulate others to do likewise.