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Immigrant Communities: A Look at Four Ethnic Groups Immigrants arriving in the United States were often already set up with a support system in the New World. Most people either had relatives or friends already living there or they were traveling with someone who did. According to the class lecture 1, people often lived close to other immigrants of their shared backgrounds. In this way, immigrant neighborhoods were started in many large cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Each immigrant community was different from each other, since the countries that people came from were so culturally diverse. Due to these differences and a language barrier, immigrants tended to stay with their own people and communities.
In order to better understand the similarities and differences between these communities, it is necessary to take a closer look at a few of them. One significant immigrant group during the 1800 s is the Irish. The majority of immigrants coming from Ireland were trying to escape the potato famine. These people set up a large community in the Boston area, which is still today known as having a large population of people from Irish background. The people who immigrated to the United States often came by themselves, since there was not enough money to send a whole family. Most people were not among the most extremely poor peasants, since they had a way to pay for their passage.
Women came as often as men, and their first goal was to find work in order to support themselves and send money home to Ireland. The Irish had a great advantage over most other immigrant groups because they spoke English and immigrated at a time when there were a large number of jobs in the United States. Women took jobs as household servants and maids, and they often lived at the residence they worked at. In these jobs they had no expenses and were able to send the majority of their earnings home to their struggling families. Some Irish women also took jobs as factory workers. Men tended to work as manual laborers, in jobs such as construction work, railroad builders, and canal workers.
Some Irish men also found jobs as firemen, policemen, dockworkers, and cobblers. Irish men often joined unions and became involved in politics through these groups. These immigrants set up their homes in tenement houses and formed large communities in Boston and Chicago. Families were not as common, since women were working to support families in Ireland and often married later in life. Men who were married were sometimes in very mobile occupations which required them to leave their families for months at a time. Religion and the church was a very important part of life for Irish immigrants.
Most Irish were Catholic, although some were of the Protestant faith. However, the Irish also found time for fun, and taverns were a common fixture in most communities. Another large immigrant group was the Germans. People of this ethnic background came to America in search of jobs and land, both of which were hard to come by in their native land. Germans usually brought their families with them to the new country, and took jobs as farmers, service or factory workers and skilled artisans. Single men were often boarders with German families, who took people into their homes as a source of income.
Unlike the Irish, the German women worked at home and sent the children out to work as household servants. They were also able to save some of their income, since they did not have to send it home to needy families. Germans also did not move around very much, but settled in communities with other German families in areas such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.
The German immigrants formed neighborhoods and close ties so that they were able to take care of each other. They began the first type of life insurance with Mutual Aid Societies, which were paid into every month so that if something happened to the head of the household the family would be taken care of. German communities were similar yet different from the Irish in many ways. Aside from the idea of taking care of their neighbors, Germans were also not as active in the church. Although they often attended on Sundays, religion was not as important to their daily lives. Like the Irish, Germans were also involved in politics and unions, however they were not as driven for political freedom as the Irish immigrants who were accustomed to being under British rule.
Known for their love of beer, taverns were also very common in German neighborhoods, and breweries were usually found in large communities. Another immigrant group that formed large communities in the United States were Italians. In this group, usually the men came over first and found jobs, and then later sent for their wives or families. A large number of Italians also immigrated back to their home country. They came to America for a few years to find work, and then went back to Italy to join their families. Italian women rarely came to the U.
S. alone, but for the most part came to meet their husbands or the men that they were arranged to marry. In these cases, women traveled in a group with other Italian women from their town or area and were escorted by a man. Italians worked a variety of jobs upon coming to America.
Some men set up wine businesses in California, and others worked as factory and textile workers in New England, miners in Illinois, and cigar makers in various parts of the country. Since most men were without their families, they were able to migrate and move around in order to find work. Like the Germans, Italian women stayed at home, and they earned an income by doing piecework from factories or mending clothing. They took care of the children, who were often sent out to work at a very early age.
The large Italian communities developed in areas such as Chicago and New York. In Chicago, a well known Italian neighborhood was located around Hull House, which helped immigrant women adapt to their new lives. Italians in New York lived in more spread out communities, most in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. An interesting thing to note about Italian immigrants is that they usually set up their homes very geographically similar to those they had in their home country.
For example, the people that a family lived by in Italy were also most often their neighbors in America. Although this was not always true, in most cases people formed communities with the same people they had known before they immigrated. Italians were also much more family oriented than German or Irish immigrants. Families and neighborhoods were very close-knit, and everyone tried to help out everyone else as much as possible. The majority of Italian immigrants were Catholic, and they took their religion and beliefs very seriously.
The church was often the backbone of the neighborhood, and it brought everyone together and got them involved. Men were sometimes involved in local unions and politics, but it was not as important to them as Irish or German men. Taverns were usually located in Italian neighborhoods, but for the most part Italian communities were characterized by a strong sense of togetherness and family. The last group that will be examined are the Jewish immigrants from various countries. Like the Irish who were forced out of their country by the famine and the British government, the Jews were also exiled from their homelands, but their cause for fleeing was religious persecution. Jewish immigrants came from many different backgrounds, but their religion basically gave them a culture all their own.
They spoke their own language, Yiddish or Hebrew, and followed their own set of traditions and values. In many cases of immigrants, they were being oppressed by the government under which they lived, however they were not allowed to leave. So many had to escape their countries in order to come to America. Similar to the Italians, Jewish men usually immigrated first and then found a way to help their families escape to the freedom of America. They became well known in the clothing industry, and a great number of Jewish immigrants worked in tailoring and as merchants and factory hands. Since in Jewish families, it is a goal for the man to study their religion as a Rabbi and be supported by his family, women were used to working outside the home and adjusted well to factory and tailoring work.
Jews were also highly literate and educated, and most strived to better themselves and better their family standing. Jewish immigrants lived in urban settings, and a large Jewish community was established in New York. These families lived in the tenement houses and often took boarders into their small apartments in order to bring in more income. These boarders were usually single Jewish men who were newly immigrated to the United States.
The Jewish immigrants lived close to each other for a few reasons. For one, although they may have been from different countries, they had a shared past and common origins. Also, it was a way of protecting themselves from outside persecution. The similarities between the four groups seem to be quite obvious, yet immigrant groups can be different even in the things they have in common.
Although both Irish and Jewish immigrants worked in factories, the Jewish were more involved in the clothing and textile industry. Women from Italian and German backgrounds stayed at home and took care of their families, but Italian women were much more devoutly religious than the Germans. Irish and German immigrants were more involved in politics and unions than Italians or Jews, and were more likely to frequent taverns and public houses. The main difference between all of these immigrant groups is the location of their communities. Some groups live in the same city, but their neighborhoods were separate from each other. Immigrants came from different countries and cultures and built their own communities in their own ways.
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