Southern European people
Southern European people are a pan-ethnic group, or multi-ethnic regional grouping, and the inhabitants of Southern Europe. South or Southern Europeans can usually trace back full or partial heritage to Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, as well as nations bordering with, or ethnoculturally related to, the region.
As the pan-ethnic group is also culturally defined, rather than exclusively a geographical category, it often includes peoples inhabiting areas that are, at times, considered outside of the region. This can include people with heritage from Southern France, the Mediterranean islands of Corsica, Malta and Cyprus, Southeastern Europe's Albania and European Turkey.
There are also descriptions of Southern Europeans which include ancestry from other nations in Southeast Europe, and countries of the South Slavs, particularly in diasporic identification. As Slavs, they are also often identified as Eastern Europeans. There is a large Southern European diaspora, with significant concentrations in the United Kingdom, North America, and Southern European Australians in Oceania.
Other subgroups of Europeans include Eastern European people and Northwestern European people.
Background
Southern European people have been widely identified as a distinct pan-ethnic group, being researched academically, studied culturally and reported on in journalistic and scholarly works. Although Southern Europeans are often defined by heritage or descent from the geographic southern extremities of Europe, the identification also has cultural meaning, and includes various peoples native to regions adjoining with, or islands in, the Mediterranean sea.Many of the territories in Macaronesia are geographically closer to Africa than Europe, and remain significantly populated by Portuguese and Spanish people. Cyprus is geographically considered one of the westernmost parts of West Asia, and is populated mainly by Greek Cypriots. In this regard, Southern Europeans are a cultural and pan-ethnic group, as well as a geographic category and the modern inhabitants of Southern Europe. In diasporic terms, the grouping has been broadened to include a wider scope of nationalities, whether through convenience or Anglo-centric perspectives, such as with Americans or Australians of Southern European descent.
Culture
In 2013, Ed Vulliamy suggested that Northwestern Europeans revered Southern European lifestyles, while their various national medias portrayed the region's financial stability and work ethic negatively.According to Umeå University, a 2016 European Social Survey showed that Southern Europeans alongside Eastern Europeans, reported various measures of health to be in a worse state when compared with several Northwestern European peoples, such as Swedes, Irish, Finns, Swiss, and Norwegians. In 2018, Eurostat data revealed how the group were leaving home as adults at the highest ages across Europe, with Maltese people being the highest in the EU. In 2018, the UK government's Loneliness minister, Mims Davies, recommended that British families adopt the vacation customs of Southern European people, by including their grandparents on family holidays.
Academic research
A 1998 study, published in the Atherosclerosis journal, studied postprandial dip in Southern Europeans compared with Northern Europeans. Research has been conducted comparing Southern Europeans' average height, human body weight, and body mass index against Northern Europeans and people living in Central Europe.Diaspora
There are significant diasporas of Southern Europeans, both within other regions of Europe, and to other continents. Some of these diasporic groups included, Southern European Americans and Southern European Canadians in North America, and Southern European Australians in Oceania. Southern Europeans have left a strong legacy In Latin America, both in the cultural and genetic sense.Europe
Southern Europeans have emigrated to large economies in Northwestern Europe, such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom.This has been attributed to Freedom of movement for workers in the European Union, lack of employments opportunites in Mediterranean European countries, and specific events, such as the 2009 Euro crisis. Tens of thousands of the group settled in London in the 2010s. From 2006 to 2011, 25,000 Southern Europeans moved to France, with 60 percent of the increase represented by Portuguese people alone. A 2016 report on Southern European migration showed that, of Europe's larger economies, Germany and the UK remained most attractive to the group for resettlement and work, ahead of France.
A 2019 study showed that young Southern European people have been particularly drawn to the job markets of London and Berlin since 2008, and that the attraction of the cities may encourage the group to accept poor employment conditions, rather than return home.
North America
Early immigration
Despite bias against the group from Wilfrid Laurier's government, Southern Europeans came to Canada in significant numbers between 1896 and 1905, under the charge of Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton. While policy initially prioritzed immigrants from Northwestern Europe to work on the Canadian Prairies, many newcomers arrived from Mediterranean Europe between 1903 and 1914, working in Canada's industrial sectors, including railways, lumbering and mining.In the United States from 1900, the pan-ethnic group emigrated continuously for decades, until the advent of the 1965 Immigration Act. Despite opposition to the Act in the US Congress ; academics Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf have suggested that the passing of the legislation permanently ended further demographically significant Southern European immigration into the country.
Canada also manifested a growing anti-immigration stance against the group around this time period. In the US, Southern Europeans have been perceived to be in cultural opposition to the American establishment, which according to geographer Donald W. Meinig, created various societal tension with Old Stock Americans during the early 20th-century. The group were often discrimated against, and judged inadequate against a criteria of whiteness invented by Northwestern European Americans. Slurs, such as dago or wop, were directed at Southern Europeans of many different heritages in North America.
Integration and success
Southern Europeans born in the US between 1956 and 1965 were indistinguishable in educational outcomes, including bachelor's degrees, with British Americans.From 1945 to 1973, during the, the group became heavily represented in industrial towns such as Lansing, Michigan, where a General Motors plant attracted new labor and providing working-class occupations. In Canada, political philosopher William Kymlicka has suggested that the group, along with French Canadians, had one of the lowest average incomes recorded in the 1986 Canadian census. Southern Europeans, living in Toronto and Montreal, were demonstrated to be one the least socially mobile ethnic groups by a 1994 study.
Culture
Southern Europeans tend to demonstrate family-centric behaviours in the United States when academically researched. Studies suggest co-habitation with parents, and grandparents, endures longer for the grouping than other ethnic groups in the US. Studies have revealed a similar pattern with the group in Canada. Young Southern Europeans living in Vancouver were shown, in a 2003 study in Canadian Studies in Population, to leave home at one the latest stages, remaining home-stayers longer than Chinese Canadians, Indian Canadians or British Canadians.In Canada, residential behavioural patterns of the group were shown to be most typically represented by Portuguese Canadians, from a 2004 Housing Studies journal piece.
Other research has shown that Southern Europeans in Canada remain economically and culturally involved with their ancestral nations, despite globalization.
Academic research
There has been wide study of the pan-ethnic group's behaviours as multi-generational immigrants to North America. By 1990, while little study regarding the nutritional intake of Southern European Americans had been conducted, a 2003 study found that members of the group, particularly of Catholic backgrounds had lower risk of suicide than Northwestern European Canadians, including German Canadians or Scottish Canadians. Using a genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism, a 2006 PLOS Genetics research study showed that Americans, who self-reported being solely of Southern European heritage, had a closer clustering of base pairs in comparison to those who self-reported a mixed Southern and Northern European ancestry.A 2014 in-depth interviewing process of around 500 parents analyzed intergenerational conflict in Southern Europeans' family lives, compared with South Asian Canadians and other groupings.