The Croatian Community of Southeastern Louisiana: Immigration, Assimilation and the Retention of Ethnic Identity

• Main Author: Bourgogne, Renee Danielle
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2014
• Subjects: Croatian; immigration; assimilation; Plaquemines Parish; seafood industry; New Orleans; Croatia; Urban Studies and Planning
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1904; http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2998&context=td

This work is a study of a community of Croatian immigrants to Southeast Louisiana in the twentieth century. Drawn from a multidisciplinary approach that included spatial analysis of settlement patterns, quantitative analysis of seafood industry data, the records of voluntary associations, and guided by the oral histories of men and women of Croatia who immigrated to Louisiana, this work reveals a community that has managed to maintain close ties despite its distribution both in urban New Orleans and rural coastal Louisiana through links created by and supportive of the state’s seafood and restaurant industries. The study points out how the custom of returning to Croatia for marriage and the retention of property in Croatia helped the group maintain links with its national and cultural origins in ways not always seen with other ethnic groups in America, pointing out the range of the immigrant experience in the United States.