| The immigrant experience in the United States was | | | | competition ensued.# Although they did not |
| one that consisted of a drastic transition in peasant | | | | acculturate with American society, many of their |
| life which uprooted citizens from their native villages. | | | | festivals and rituals vanished from their lives while in |
| Their villages served not only as their homes and | | | | America. After death, many had their bones sent |
| workplaces, but as communities and as a way of | | | | back overseas to China, since the funeral procession |
| identifying themselves as a people. However, varying | | | | was one of the few traditions that they held onto, |
| political and economic upheavals in their homelands | | | | and didn't want to be buried alongside their hostile |
| caused them to seek out other options, as it came | | | | American neighbors.# The Chinese did not merely |
| down to a matter of do or die for many, not a | | | | have their communities transplanted overseas, but |
| matter of choice. Once in America, they had to | | | | rather had them abruptly ripped apart when settling |
| struggle with the unfamiliarity and alienation that was | | | | over in America. |
| thrust upon them in the New World. The situation of | | | | The Mexicans were forced to move out of their |
| uprootedness was not limited to the English or Irish, | | | | country after a chaotic series of political and |
| but to peasants in other countries, as well, including | | | | economic uproars, caused primarily by the Mexican |
| the Italians, Chinese, and Mexicans. | | | | Revolution.# The farm-workers and miners now lived |
| The Italians fled from their villages in flocks of millions | | | | in company-owned settlements in which every |
| at the end of the 19th century . Although reluctant | | | | aspect of their lives were regulated, and some even |
| to leave their established communities, the high cost | | | | considered it to be worse than the serfdom back |
| of oil, along with widespread starvation and cholera | | | | home in Mexico.# Although some did succumb to |
| outbreaks forced them to make the trip overseas.# | | | | Americanization, most resisted the adoption of |
| Italians did not migrate out of their own volition, but | | | | American culture and were adamant on keeping their |
| rather because "Life was impossible here. ...America | | | | Mexican heritage and ways. Mexican children were |
| has become a disease, but out of necessity." stated | | | | only permitted to speak Spanish at home, and they |
| the president of an Italian agricultural society.# They | | | | retained close bonds with their close neighbors to the |
| were forced to leave because there became no | | | | South.# Prejudice and segregation were dominant |
| other options, although pamphlets, posters, and | | | | themes in their lives, and they were described as an |
| word-of-mouth did tell fantastic stories of the | | | | "illiterate, diseased, pauperized" people in an article.# |
| dazzling new life that awaited them in America. # | | | | The Mexicans had their communities uprooted, and |
| Italian communities were uprooted suddenly, and | | | | did not simply decide to move toward the |
| many did not have time to make plans for their new | | | | unwelcoming lands of America out of choice. |
| lives in America. After arriving in America, the | | | | The role of the village played a crucial role in the lives |
| peasants worlds were turned upside down, and many | | | | of people everywhere. The shared community gave |
| fostered warm affections toward the familiarity of | | | | them a sense of security and power in their lives. By |
| their home country.# | | | | saying that communities were uprooted, one is |
| Similarly, the Chinese were driven out of their | | | | saying that these people were forced away from |
| communities and into a world of alienation and | | | | their homes and everything they'd ever known, and |
| isolation. Chinese people were uprooted out of their | | | | shoved into a completely unfamiliar territory. These |
| communities through the waning Manchu government, | | | | people, not only Europeans, but also the Chinese, and |
| and were forced to deal with the ridicule of | | | | Mexicans were forced to learn how to survive in an |
| Americans at their old practices and customs. The | | | | often unwelcoming foreign land. They did not simply |
| white Americans paid little attention to them, and | | | | pick up and move voluntarily, but out of necessity of |
| actually developed an animosity toward them as job | | | | the situation. |