Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia: Origins of a community, 1910--1945 (Pennsylvania)

The history of the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia much, like the history of Puerto Ricans in other cities in the United States, is essentially the history of labor migration and community building. This pre-1945 migratory working-class established a base and set up the groundwork for future migrants from the island. Even before Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory; a significant migration had already established links between the U.S. and the Island. After the war, this link became an invisible bridge bringing groups of Puerto Ricans into contact with many U.S. industrial centers, including Philadelphia. Many migrants remained and formed small enclaves that evolved by 1945, into a colonia, a pre-communal structure, which became, in the post-World War II period, the foundation of the present-day Puerto Rican community in the city.; This dissertation examines the early formation of the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia, focusing on the dynamics of labor migration, the role of informal networks, residential patterns, occupational patterns of Puerto Rican. The study draws extensively on the manuscript census for 1910 and 1920. City Directories for 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1936 provided cross-reference of Spanish-surnames with residence and occupational status. Church records also contributed to determining marital, family and social networks compiled from marriage and baptismal records. Selected oral histories of Puerto Rican migrants who came to Philadelphia in the 1930s and 1940s offered unique testimony of the migratory experience. Finally, government documents, from the U.S. and Puerto Rico, made possible a comparison of perspectives on officially sponsored migration to the Philadelphia area.; The literature on Puerto Ricans in the United States is scant with only a hand-full of books and dissertations. By examining the pioneer period of Puerto Rican migration between the world wars this study contributes to the literature on Puerto Rican migrants within the American context. Puerto Ricans initially moved into Philadelphia neighborhoods where other Latinos lived. Housing policies and population shifts in the city during the 1920s to 1940s increasingly left Puerto Ricans with limited residential choices. A native-born whites and, later foreign-born whites moved to the newer housing developments in South Philadelphia and the Northeast, Latinos joined blacks in settling in North Philadelphia. Employment opportunities also played a key role in the formation of the occupational and residential patterns of Puerto Rican migrants in Philadelphia. Puerto Rican migrants in Philadelphia experienced a segmented labor market. It is within the population shift and economic restructuring in Philadelphia in the early twentieth century that Puerto Ricans organized and built the community institutions to sustain them as they incorporated into the city. This dissertation also situates Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. within a global economic context. It explores structural factors influencing migration, and posits this migratory experience within the colonial context in which occurred. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...