Betty Caroli

Italian Repatriation from the United States, 1900-1914 Betty Caroli

When Betty Boyd Caroli traveled to Italy on a Fulbright in 1970, she had a purpose: to find Italians who had journeyed to America to work between 1900 and 1914 and then returned to live in Italy. Sometimes she found clubs of "repatriates", sitting under American flags and pictures of JFK. Individuals told her their stories-why they left for "bread" but returned for "family". Caroli puts these workers in context, giving statistics from both countries and citing accounts written by their contemporaries, to help us understand the price paid by these "birds of passage".