Were They Pushed?

This chapter paints a picture of the major structural and cultural disadvantages the Italians in Chicago Heights faced in their struggle. In essence, it attempts to show how these forms of discrimination boxed most Italians into a spatial and social isolation in Chicago Heights. However, they also had the unintended consequences of transforming the prosaic features of the Italian culture and social structure into a rich supply of social capital. Specifically, they enhanced the possibilities that Italians would turn to their paesani next door, their cugini on the next street over, their amici at the corner bar as resources for organizing a union, establishing ethnic businesses, recruiting members to mutual-aid societies, and for running a criminal organization. Structural and cultural disadvantages, on the one hand, and consequential social capital resources, on the other, are joined in an attempt to provide a more encompassing and integrated understanding as to how Italians may have been pushed, but also were able to leap into organized crime.