Needles, hats, shirtwaists and strikes : tornar-se americana no início do século XX

Abstract

Um dos objectivos desta pesquisa foi voltar a percorrer o caminho, muitas vezes penoso, que as jovens emigrantes judias e italianas iniciaram, na sua chegada a Nova Iorque, no final do séc. XIX e princípio do séc. XX. Para melhor compreender esse percurso, tornou-se necessário analisar os condicionalismos económicos, sociais e políticos que as levaram a abandonar os seus países na Europa e a enfrentar uma realidade completamente incerta e que frequentemente as decepcionou, mas que também as levou a reinventar-se como mulheres, de modo a enfrentar as exigências de um novo estilo de vida, numa sociedade bem diferente daquela que deixavam para trás. Avaliar a forma como estas jovens se integraram na sociedade americana foi, sem dúvida, a tarefa mais relevante, salientando que essa integração passava quase sempre, inicialmente, pela apropriação de uma nova imagem, à qual estava obrigatoriamente associada a adesão à cultura de consumo, proporcionada pelo acesso ao trabalho das fábricas, sobretudo de confecção de vestuário. Ao longo deste trajecto, foi também absolutamente imprescindível constatar a ambiguidade com que foi percepcionada a entrada das jovens emigrantes nas fábricas e a sua participação nas primeiras lutas laborais do século XX.

One of the aims of this research work was to go through the hard path that Jewish and Italian immigrant women threaded when they arrived in New York in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century. To understand this moment of women’s history better, it was also necessary to analyze the economic, social and political context in their countries of origin which led them to abandon Europe and look for a new life in another country facing an uncertain and sometimes disappointing reality. Starting a new life in the USA forced them to reinvent themselves as women, so that they could stand up to the demands of a new lifestyle in a completely different society. It was also my priority to analyze the way these young women became part of the American society, bearing in mind that this adaptation frequently involved leaving behind their clothes from Old Europe and adopt the American style. This change of image was intimately associated with the developing consumer culture of the time, only made possible by their access to the work in the factories, especially in the garment industry. It was also rather indispensable to examine the ambiguity of reactions caused by the young women’s participation in the world of paid work and their active mobilization during the first strikes of the twentieth-century.