It’s not all about tombola. Australian Italian senior clubs and member attitudes to ‘the other’

Abstract

Italian senior clubs constitute the community lifeblood of post-war Italian migrants to Australia. As part of the calder project, aimed at involving elderly Australians of non-English-speaking background in medical research, we visited five clubs in Melbourne and interviewed 19 members. A primary goal was to present a tablet-based bilingual resource on medical research and observe members’ reactions. As a new migrant arriving in Australia from Italy after 2000, the first author had a similar linguistic and cultural background, but was also perceived as ‘other’ by club members, due the generation gap and the unusual activity she was proposing. During these intra-diaspora encounters, a wide ra..