Hopelessly Alien

Hopelessly Alien

by Louis Corsino
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 01/05/2024

Share This eBook:

  $52.99

An in-depth sociological investigation of "hope" as it applies to the Italian immigrant experience in the blue-collar suburb of Chicago Heights between 1910 and 1950.


Hopelessly Alien is an in-depth study of Italian immigration to Chicago Heights, Illinois, between 1910 and 1950. Drawing upon oral histories, interviews, historical documents, and census materials, Louis Corsino examines the critical concept of hope, which most immigration studies have cast in privatized, psychological terms as the motivation to emigrate in search of a better life. This investigation offers a more contentious, sociological perspective, depicting hope as both an ideological lure to recruit and manage the "foreign element" and as a resource immigrants employed to purchase acceptance and avoid a disparaging label as a "hopelessly alien" stranger. These dialectical processes are illustrated through the Italian immigrants' pursuit of occupational mobility and homeownership, and the appropriation of their children's hopes. Each became forms of cultural capital that demonstrated a public commitment to the American ethos of "joyful striving." Each provided measures of success, but these individual pursuits came at the expense of upsetting the necessary tension between individual and communal hopes.

ISBN:
9781438497631
9781438497631
Category:
Migration
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
01-05-2024
Language:
English
Publisher:
State University of New York Press

This item is delivered digitally

Reviews

Be the first to review Hopelessly Alien.