Hyphenated Atlantics: Homeland “Pull” Factors and Transatlantic Lives during Late-Modern Mass Migrations to the Americas

• In Event: Hybrid and Borderland Identities

Abstract

Research on “hyphenated” ethnic groups has expanded considerably during the transnational and mobilities “turns” in migration and diaspora studies. This work has improved understandings of hybrid and dual notions of belonging that migrants and descendants of migrants often maintain due to strong connections with places of both residence and origin. Most often, studies link hybridity and duality to processes of assimilation that create greater proximity between ethnic groups and the mainstream in countries of arrival and settlement.

This paper adds to these analyses by considering relations that migrants and their descendants maintain with places of origin. It studies several ethnic groups with origins in Europe and the Middle East that were established in Latin America between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. The paper finds that many factors “pulled” immigrants and their descendants toward their homelands, both physically and emotionally, while other factors “pushed” them away from places of residence. It argues that hyphenated, hybrid, and dual notions of belonging were not only outcomes of assimilation, but related to sustained homeland connections that might reverse processes of assimilation when events drew ethnic groups toward places of origin.

This analysis challenges assimilation as a unidirectional and uncontested process for Italo-Uruguayans, Syro-Lebanese Brazilians, Franco-Argentines, and other groups. It also considers their hyphenated realities as critical components of transatlantic networks of interaction and exchange during this time, thereby seeking to extend the study of “Atlantic worlds” into the twentieth century and diversify the types of people who are studied through an Atlantic lens.

Author

• John S Galante, Worcester Polytechnic Institute