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The Religious Practice of the Italian Immigrants in France during the Inter-war period: the Case of La Villette at Paris

  • Korean Review of French History
  • Abbr : KRFH
  • 2010, (22), pp.197~230
  • Publisher : KOREAN SOCIETY FOR FRENCH HISTORY
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

LEE Kyung Il 1

1경성대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In the studies of the integration of the migrants, the collective mentality is a specially important aspect for examining the change/ persistence of their identity in the process of migration. As the catholicism is a pivotal base which frames the Italians’ general life as custom and culture more than religion, to probe into how the religious practice develops among the immigrants abroad is a sufficiently effective assay for verifying the change of their identity. In spite of this relevance, we have nearly few studies on the religious life of Italian immigrants in France during the inter-war period for lack of sources, etc. This article reconstructs the real aspect of religious practice of the Italians at La Villette, applying the demographic statistical analyse, collating the sources conserved at the parish church of La Villette with the others, in particular nominal lists of the census. Above all, we see that the religious practice among the Italians has not disappeared so fast during the inter-war period, but keeps up until after the Second World War. Among the reasons of this religious persistence, the composition of immigrants according to the length of stay in France is decisive: in other words, the migrants which arrived after the First World War constitute their majority. So, it is necessary that the integration at the level of the community is explained by the total of the function between the pre-migratory experience and the post-migratory experience, which comes in evidence at the level of individual. Furthermore, the creed is related not only to the mentality of the pre-migratory world but also to the enlargement of the social relation with natives. As for the integration, we must therefore bring out that a characteristic does not concern only one orientation, but can have pleural aspects. All these facts show that unlike the results already obtained, the Italian community of La Villette was still in course of stabilization and integration during the inter-war period.

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