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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: glorianemec@interfree.it
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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 

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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

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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

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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

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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