[Review of] Lydio F. Tomasi, ed. Italian Americans: New Perspectives in Italian Immigration and Ethnicity

There are those who have heralded the 1980s as The Decade of the Italian American as many of the 20 million Americans of Italian descent achieve increasing prominence in politics, business, education and the arts. This new role assumed by Americans of immigrant stock has necessitated revised patterns of investigation addressing the impact of socio-economic mobility, the effects of transmigration and the growing phenomenon of exogenous marriage. For example, of the Italian American women born since 1950, between two-thirds and three-quarters have married outside the ethnic group. Finally, the size and multigenerational sampling provided by the Italian American population invites careful study of rural versus urban assimilation patterns, analysis of the relationship of sojourner settlement patterns to politico-economic conditions in the homeland, and an investigation of the myriad variations of acculturation affected by class, age and extent of social support network

Critique [of Reclaiming the Subject: Italian Women Self-Defined by Chris Ruggiero]

The results of the 1980 United States census indicate that about twelve million persons were reported as being partly or solely of Italian ancestry. One in twenty people in the United States or 5.4 percent of the total U.S. population claims Italian descent, representing the sixth largest group in the United States