Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade

14 Portugal and Spain: Culture of Migration

Emigration from the Iberian peninsula dates to the time of the discoveries. Emigration has been pervasive over the centuries and has become part and parcel of the national consciousness, while acting as a release valve for demographic pressures associated with underdevelopment and lack of resources. Differing from each other in destination, in composition of the emigrating populations, in the timing of migration streams and in the motivation for leaving their respective countries, Portuguese and Spanish emigrants have, nonetheless, many things in common. Primarily, these two peoples share parallel trajectories of emigration. Varied as the outmigrations ofSpaniards and Portuguese may have been over time, an analysis of the several phases of emigration suggests a common cultural and social pattern based on the parallel evolution of the respective social, economic and political structures. The geographicallocation alone and the long history ofseafaring had a determining influence on these two peoples. The venturing into uncharted seas and continents by the Potuguese and Spaniards and the riches brought back but soon squandered may explain the neglect of industrial development at home and of their falling behind industrializing Europe. In turn, the economic backwardness predisposed the population of the peninsula to outmigration. The peninsula thus became a mere supplier to the international markets, leading ultimately to ~n economic dependency on the rest of the industrialized world. The one product which came from the peninsula in great abundance was men willing to work. Finding no employment at home, they had to leave

Book Review: Qui sont-ils Suisses et/ou Espagnols? La deuxième generation d'Immigrés en Suisse—Enquéte de la JOC/EQui sont-ils Suisses et/ou Espagnols? La deuxième generation d'Immigrés en Suisse—Enquéte de la JOC/E. Edit. Institut de Science Politique, Mémoires et Documents No. 13, Lausanne, 1980. Pp. 161.

The migratory movements which took place in Europe in the last decades have given rise to a new generation: young people belonging to different age groups attached to two cultures-their parents culture and the one of the country where they grew up and where they live. To call them the second generation is an easy designation resulting from the need to classify a group whose characteristics are not very well known, but which define a different social and cultural existence. This designation is sometimes rejected by the immigrants children themselves, who claim their own individuality without finding it necessary to belong to something which is already being taken as a stereotype. From an epistemological point of view, the reader should be aware right from the start that this study has been primarily determined by an engagee and militant attitude (J.0.c. is an organization of young Catholic workers, where this threefold quality of age, class and creed is clearly visible). One of the organizations concerns, in its Spanish emigrant sector in Switzerland, is the need to assist these young people-and thus the need to know the different aspects of their real situation; this is the reason that motivated this study and the reason behind some of the questions put forward. From a methodological point of view, the people responsible for collecting the necessary information belong to the world of those who answered the inquiry; the advantage of a better acceptance by the latter (354) is somewhat hampered by the lack of a certain distance between inquired and inquirers, on the one hand, and by the inquirers own mili148 IMR Vol. 17. No.1 tant involvement. The solution adopted (closed questions) minimizes this difficulty. The authors of this study have made a point of not hiding these difficul ties, but have rather admitted them. The book has, therefore, a great deal of information obtained empirically on various aspects and questions, and this immediately guarantees the interest and value of the work as an enlarged exploratory survey of a population belonging to a vast but well defined universe (young people from Spanish immigrant families living in Switzerland, aged between 16 and 21). The team from the University of Lausanne who organized and defined the inquiry were careful in the way they interpreted each of the results obtained, trying to be as objective as possible. Also important is the final identification of the conclusions by the organization which promoted the study, and which clearly inserts it in its militant strategy. In short, this work is a valuable contribution to the study of a mul tifaceted problem the answer to which is still insufficiently known and which is presently one of the main concerns of several national and international scientific and political organizations.

Book Review: La Emigratión Españpola en Francia en el Periodo 1960–1977 (Spanish Emigration to France in the Period 1960–1977)La Emigratión Españpola en Francia en el Periodo 1960–1977 (Spanish Emigration to France in the Period 1960–1977). By LunaFrancisco Parra. Madrid: Spanish Institute of Emigration, 1981. Pp. 221.

The migration of Italians to England after World War II continued a long history of Italians leaving the mezzogiorno. Yet there is very little sense of that continuity in the stories reported here. Cavallaro conducted all the interviews in the summer of 1980 among the families of people who went to work in Bedfords brick factories after 1951, so many of them were no longer young. A full quarter were over 50 and many had given up brick work for a variety of other jobs. Most had remained blue collar workers but almost ten percent reported they were enrolled full time in school. Cavallero interviewed for 42 hours, then transcribed the results and chose segments to illustrate particular points. Calabresi in Bedford, England, were not so different from meridionali who went to other parts of the world. Sons marry outside more than daughters and the Italian they all speak is altered so as to bring in local necessities. Lincomand assiste boddwill be perfectly clear to speakers of Italian who know about reporting their income in order to satisfy the requirements of the Assistance Board (pages 161 and 175). Calabresi in Bedford tend to live near other Italians and to prefer the foods they had grown up eating. They socialize almost exclusively with relatives. Few blame their home government for the hardship that forced them to leave their own country in order to find work. When women take jobs, they give economic reasons for doing so. The generational changes familiar elsewhere characterize Bedford, too. Young people no longer turn over their paychecks to their parents and the work ethic appears contagious. Italians in Bedford insisted that they did not want to fool away their time sounding more like the Englishmen they had joined than the meridionali they had left. Some readers may question whether or not the sample is large enough to support valid conclusions and want to know how the interviewees were chosen. Others may suspect that the transcriptions were not as literal as Cavallero says because of the very correct grammar that most respondents used. Only occasional lapses break in on the perfect Italian and sentences sound suspiciously finished and well formed. But whatever changes the author felt obliged to make, the result is a readable book, valuable for helping us understand one small, but significant, immigrant group and how it fits into the larger picture.