What do we mean by Italian Enclave? An Expanded Application

If the year was 1920, the descriptor of an Italian enclave was clear to most. It was the North End in Boston, the French Quarter in New Orleans, and The Hill in St. Louis.  With the rise of suburbanization and the exodus of Italians from city neighborhoods, what were once clear-cut Italian enclaves can no longer easily claim this descriptor in 2023. Or so it seems. This trend leaves some to argue there are no longer many Italian Enclaves and the ones that do exist are “dying.” It is true that many Italian neighborhoods, in big cities, are seeing demographic shifts. On top of that, some argue that Italian enclaves are thing of the past and that assimilation has destroyed or is destroying a strong sense of Italian communities. We see things a bit differently. We at the Italian Enclaves Historical Society want to re-conceptualize what the descriptor of Italian enclave means.

How do we define Italian enclaves? Italian enclaves are places where people with heritage from Italy live or once lived. Few things last forever, and in response to this visible disappearance of New York City Italian neighborhoods, we formed the Italian Enclaves Historical Society and saw it as our duty to document what once was. However, our mission also included archiving what still existed. With this in mind, we do not want our descriptor of Italian enclaves chained solely to the past, confined to cities, and loaded with sentiments of decline. Though we often highlight what once was, we also emphasize what is. This means we count locations such as Raleigh, North Carolina – which has its own Festa Italiana, in its 5th year in 2023, and is experiencing a rising migration of Italians from the north – as an Italian enclave.

How we use Italian enclaves is expansive. It includes small towns founded by immigrants from Italy, such as Tontitown in Arkansas and Valdese in North Carolina. We also include temporary locales such as Sunnyside Plantation in Arkansas or entire counties with active cross-county communities such as Ulster County in New York. We want to unchain Italian enclaves as a descriptor dead in the past and bound to decline.  Though there are many examples of disappearing businesses and churches in “the old neighborhood,” there are also plenty of counter-examples akin to Franklin Square, Long Island. Franklin Square is a great case study because it was mostly farmland in 1940. In 2018, 40% of the population self-identified as Italian with much of the population’s families formerly living in Brooklyn or Queens. There is no reason not to include these examples above in how we use the descriptor Italian enclaves.

As a historical society, we highlight the past. That said, over 17 million Americans self-identify as ethnically Italian. This means we have a wealth of localities and stories to draw from across the continent. As the places where Italians live changes, so does our understanding of what an Italian enclave is. How we define Italian enclaves are places where people with heritage from Italy live or once lived. Understanding Italian enclaves as such unchains us from something dead in the past or bound to demise and re-conceptualizes Italian enclaves as still living and expanding.