New York’s Little Italy: from Ethnic Enclave to Tourist Attraction

Italian migrants to the United States created their own places, not merely by concentrating more inhabitants than preexisting locals, but changing appearance and meaning of spaces by performing their own community life. The term “Little Italy” was invented to designate places where Italian migrants concentrated in central city spaces in the United States. New York’s Little Italy is the oldest and the most famous one. Italians changed the meaning of the place, imposing both new habits and visual appearance of material things. Over time, the ethnic identity changed, also threaten by waves of Chines immigrants. A definitive change of place identity happened when Chinatown and Little Italy has been recorded in 2009 as a unique historic district. Little Italy is still attracting tourism, and making money with a sort of Italian sounding folklore; now it is a bus-tour destination, and a food and wine venue. Ironically, Little Italy and Italy’s main tourist destinations (such as Florence and Venice) shows some parallels, both in fictional representation of Italianess, and in stigmatizing the “invasion” of too many aliens.