The 23-year-old Melburnian completed a Bachelor of Arts in 2016, majoring in Italian and sociology, and was equally passionate about both of these fields when she embarked on her honours degree.
So she decided to combine them, applying the theories and methods she’d learnt during her sociology studies to focus on the experiences and perspectives of members of the Italian community in Australia.
In her research, Daniela focused on second- and third-generation Italian-Australians, that is, those who were born in Australia or migrated to Australia at a young age and have at least one parent or grandparent who was born in Italy and migrated here.
This topic is of particular interest to Daniela, as she’s a second-generation Italo-Australian herself.
Her father migrated to Australia with his mother and two sisters from the town of Rocca d’Arsiè, in Veneto, when he was seven years old.
He was reunited with his father – who’d already been living in Australia for seven years – and the family settled in Gippsland.
Daniela’s grandparents returned to Italy when they retired, and her two aunties also went back to live in the Belpaese.
Her father was the only family member to stay in Australia.
“I’ve been going [to Italy] almost every two years since I was a baby to visit my relatives,” she said.
“My Italian heritage is quite an important aspect of my identity and it’s something I’ve become quite conscious of.”
Daniela grouped the respondents of her study into three age brackets: youngest (aged 17-35), middle (36-50) and eldest (51-87).
She chose to focus on the youngest and eldest of the three, as they represent distinct age groups who have grown up in particularly different periods.
She used a mixed methods approach, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data in an online-questionnaire and follow-up interviews.
Over 400 people participated in the questionnaire, but as Daniela decided to focus on just two age groups, 300 respondents were included in the study.
The respondents represented a range of Italian regions, the most common being Calabria, Sicily, Veneto, Abruzzo and Campania.
The questionnaire collected demographic information about the respondents and gave an insight into their linguistic background.
It also covered a number of topics related to the participants’ experiences growing up in Australia, experiences as adults, self-identification choices, perspectives on socio-historical shifts and their impact on their sense of identity, perspectives on generational differences, the importance of language and their regional identities.
Daniela explained that the older group, consisting of 155 respondents, experienced their youth in Australia during a period of “assimilation” and then during adulthood, experienced the shift towards “multiculturalism”.
On the other hand, the younger group (145 respondents), have grown up following the rise of multiculturalism, in a more globalised context, and during a time in which Italo-Australians represent a well-established community.
She added that these shifting contexts coincided with the development of the Italian-Australian community and shifting notions of and attitudes towards “Italianness” in Australia.
“For example, when the former group were growing up, there was great societal pressure to ‘fit in’ to the ‘Australian way of life’, which was overwhelmingly grounded in Anglo-Celtic culture,” she said.
“This often led to people having two identities, Italian within the home and ‘Australian’ outside the home. “
The study indicates that experiences of racism and the desire to assimilate led to many second-generation children rejecting their italianità in order to fit in and avoid prejudice.
However, it also found that many older respondents were eager to return to their roots later in life, eventually coming to embrace their Italian heritage and identity.
In more recent decades, Italian culture has become relatively “fashionable” in Australia, and the Italian community is now considered to be well integrated into broader society.
As a result, Daniela found that members of the younger age group felt freer to express their Italian identity.
When exploring self-labelling, Daniela came across intriguing, and perhaps surprising responses.
Interestingly, the younger group labelled themselves as “Italian” and “Italian-Australian” more than the older group, who instead identified more often as “Australian-Italian”.
“It is particularly interesting that in spite of the participants being predominately Australian citizens who have grown up in Australia, only 29 per cent of all respondents selected the term ‘Australian’ to describe themselves, whilst only 12 respondents out of the total 300 chose only ‘Australian’, with the majority selecting multiple and hyphenated labels,” Daniela said.
What’s more remarkable, identity altered depending on context and place.
Daniela found that the experience of feeling Italian or Italian-Australian in Australia while feeling Australian in Italy was commonly expressed in both age groups, while many respondents claimed to have experienced a change in identity after visiting Italy.
Family proved to be the strongest influence on the respondents’ sense of Italianness, followed by Italian culture and lifestyle, having connections with family or friends in Italy and the Italian language.
The study’s results confirm that identity depends highly on context and therefore can’t be thought of as lost simply with the passing of time within and across generations.
“Despite the different experiences, demographics and eras, both age groups have demonstrated a strong sense of Italian heritage and identity, a commonality that transcends age,” Daniela concluded.
Daniela hopes the findings give voice to members of the Italian community in Australia and challenge some of the assumptions about what being Italo-Australian means today.
More broadly, she hopes they offer an insight into questions of identity and belonging that are relevant to not only the Italian-Australian community, but also to more recent migrant groups.
Daniela’s aim is to have some of her findings published, while she’d like to further explore the data that she didn’t have a chance to focus on this time.
But as for now, she’d just touched down in Italy at the time this article was written, where she’ll enjoy some well-deserved downtime with family and friends.
