Entrepreneurs in the Construction Industry: An Italian-Australian Perspective a lecture by Dr Javier P. Grossutti (University of Udine)

Keywords: migration, terrazzo, concrete, friulani, veneti

Event overview: Melbourne’s landmarks of the Rialto Building and of the Crown Casino complex were built by a construction company established by Luigi Grollo, an Italian immigrant who arrived in Australia in 1928. In the last fifty years or so, Italian-Australian entrepreneurial families such as Grollo, Crema and Barro, grew to become prominent leaders in the construction industry in Australia. The involvement of Italians in the construction industry, however, is a story that traced its origins back to the inter-war period of the 1920s and the 1930s. In this period, Italians arguably monopolised the terrazzo and granolithic concrete industry in Australia.

Terrazzo is a type of flooring made of chips of marble or granite set in concrete and later polished in order to achieve a smooth surface. The bulk of the labour force employed in this industry sector came from the North-East Italian regions of Friuli and Veneto. More often than not, Friuli and Veneto workers and artisans immigrated to Australia after learning the trade by fellow countrymen entrepreneurs on worksites outside Italy. For instance, brothers Severino and Annibale De Marco arrived in Australia in 1914 after working as terrazzo workers for some years in London. They established one of the first terrazzo companies in Melbourne. Peter Melocco, who was trained as a marble mosaic worker through his uncles in New York City, arrived in Sydney in 1908. A decade later he initiated a successful mosaic and terrazzo company with two of his brothers.

It is argued that nearly all of the past and current Italian construction contractors in Melbourne and Sydney began their entrepreneurial career by working for Italian terrazzo and granolithic concrete companies. This was pivotal for the working and entrepreneurial trajectories of Italian-Australians within the sector in the ensuing decades. Furthermore, skilled Italians from the North-East regions of Italy continued to be the dominant presence in the terrazzo and granolithic concrete industry in the course of the 20th Century, which reinforced the regional links. Yet, the migration experience of these skilled workers followed the pattern of step-by-step migration, which saw the emigration from Italy to Australia via a third country where the (often informal) process of up-skilling occurred.

Javier P. Grossutti was born in Argentina and graduated in Political Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires in 1991. He later moved to Italy where he obtained his PhD in Political and Economic Geography at the University of Trieste in 1996. His doctoral thesis focused on the recent return migration from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela to Friuli (Italy) and was published in 1997. His main fields of study include Italian and Friulian emigration, networks of ethnic entrepreneurship, return migration and problems connected to Italian and Friulian communities abroad, where he has conducted numerous surveys for the Universities of Trieste, Trento and Udine. He has carried out research in collaboration with the Universities of Columbia (New York, United States), Caen (France), Buenos Aires, Quilmes, Cuyo-Mendoza and Patagonia (Argentina) and Itajaí (Brazil). He has held courses on Italian emigration and return migration for the University of Udine and Trieste. In 2007 and 2008 he was invited as an Associate Research Scholar at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University of New York, where he conducted a research on Italians in the mosaic and terrazzo trade in New York City. As a result of his research he organized the exhibition “Italian Mosaic and Terrazzo Workers in New York City”, which was on display at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, New York from 15 to 30 April 2008. In 2014 he obtained a fellowship from the Winterthur Museum (Winterthur, DE, U.S.) where he researched on “The Herter Brothers Firm and the Introduction of Marble Mosaic in America”. He was also visiting research fellow at the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos in Buenos Aires, the Center for Migration Studies (Staten Island, New York), and the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In 2013 he collaborated with the European Union as a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Evaluator. Currently, he holds the position of Research Fellow for the Department of Economic and Statistics at the University of Udine. Dr Grossutti is currently in Australia as 2014 Swinburne Visiting Scholar – FHAD / FBE.