In the 1930s, the Australian community maintained a perception of cultural inferiority of Italians that owed much to longer-term racial conceptions and which were confirmed by the lifestyle of the migrants. As observed by Bertola in his study of the riots, racism towards Italians lay in "their apparent willingness to be used in efforts to drive down wages and conditions, and their inability to transcend the boundaries that separated them from the host culture". Within Australian society there was an opposition to Italian immigration that stemmed from the fact that Italian migrants were often seen as "Mediterranean scum", or as a "grave industrial and political danger", as reported by Lampugnani.