Becoming Italian in the US: Through the Lens of Life Narratives.

This article focuses on the lives of Italians in the United States. Sociologist Francis lanni suggests that immigrants from Italy and their children lacked an ethnic identity based on their common national ancestry when they came to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. In his view, when they eventually acquired the consciousness of being Italian, such an outcome was "an invention of the new world." lanni's interpretation of the changes in Italian Americans' ethnicity resulting from their interaction with the adopted society can be easily placed in a broader perspective with implications for other immigrant communities in the U.S. as well. Italian Americans, not unlike other immigrant groups, are subject to two widely-held notions about ethnicity in the US: first, that an individual's attachment to his or her ethnic group undergoes a process of transformation over time, and second, that the social boundaries of an ethnic minority are continuously re-negotiated through real-life encounters.