According to an article written by Francesco Cordasco, four-fifths of the Italian immigrant population entered the US
from the years 1901 to 1914.  Joe's parents had immigrated to the US in 1902.  They were a couple in over 2 million Italians who entered the country between 1901 and 1910, most of which were Italian southerners and Sicilians.  He then discusses how immigrant children lived in two worlds with the home community representing the old world and the places outside of that community representing America. School was often a place in the middle of these two worlds and also served as the most efficient means for assimilation. By assimilating the child in school, there was hope that the child would then bring what he learned back to the home in order to assimilate the rest of the family.  However, even children were discriminated against in schools and labeled "foreign-born"; which prevented some assimilation from happening. 

According to an article written by Humbert Nelli, the population of immigrants declined in the 1920's due to the beginning of World War I and immigration laws that were enacted in 1921 and 1924.  Contrary to popular belief, many Italian immigrants went into agriculture.  However, like many other immigrant populations they came to America with goals for economic prosperity.  When the DiMaggio's first arrived to the US, there was potential for economic gain in the commercial and industrial markets.  This could have motivated Joe's father, Giuseppe, to enter the fishing industry in California.  The new urban environment also opened new opportunities for families within the community.  Southern Italians and Sicilians centered their lives around the family.  However, in their ethnic communities within the larger city, the community became the center.  Social clubs, circolo sociale, became more popular as a consequence.  Joe was part of that process himself when the neighborhood boys formed their own baseball club.  The Italian communities stayed close knit and social workers had a hard time because their children did not often meet the compulsory education laws .  If the children were permitted to attend school, many families still secured jobs after school for their children.  Joe and his older brother Vince did not receive high school diplomas because they dropped out of school within two years of attending. 

Because many Italian immigrants lacked education, they gained the stereotype of being naturally predisposed to making money through crime.  Articles by Zoe Burkholder and Nancy C. Carnevale describe the discriminatory environment Joe and his family grew up and lived in.  From Joe's childhood to World War II, Italian-Americans were referred to by the ethnic slur "dago".  It was part of America's culture to discriminate against Southern and Eastern Europeans because they were the minorities of the "white race".  When Italy joined World War II, many Italian-Americans, including Joe's parents, were placed under surveillance.  They were required to carry special identification, could only travel certain distances from their homes, and were not allowed to speak Italian because it was thought of as highly suspicious. Some were even placed in internment camps under President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, the same order that relocated about 120,000 Japanese-Americans.  Also during World War II, there was a movement in the American education system to embrace peoples of all ethnicities as a sort of rebellion in the face of the Nazi regime in Germany and as a consequence of anthropological studies dividing the Earth's population into three races; White, Black, and Asian.  Teachers would have their students celebrate the gifts each culture brought to America in class.  While the program may have had good intentions, it did not promote the change some people were hoping for.  The class demonstrations were often stereotypical and shallow in thought.  The movement succeeded in equalizing all ethnicities of the "white race", but fostered further discrimination of Native Americans, Blacks, and Asians.  Because Joe was a star player in America's pastime, he avoided much of the societal discrimination and suspicion of Italian-Americans during World War II and served to build morale by playing exhibition games on Army teams during the war.  He was consistently called "dago" by his teammates and others, but he did not seem to mind or let it bother him.  His success served as a counterpoint to many of the stereotypes against Italians in America.