One Quarter of the Nation

One Quarter of the Nation

Author: Nancy Foner

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0691255350

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An in-depth look at the many ways immigration has redefined modern America The impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration scholars tells the story of how immigrants are fundamentally changing this country. An astonishing number of immigrants and their children—nearly eighty-six million people—now live in the United States. Together, they have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the heart of the country’s identity and institutions. Unprecedented in scope, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order—and, importantly, how Americans perceive race—and played a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. It discusses how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as some far-flung rural communities, and examines how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones. This wide-ranging book demonstrates how immigration has touched virtually every facet of American culture, from the music we dance to and the food we eat to the films we watch and books we read. One Quarter of the Nation opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration. While many books look at how America changed immigrants, this one examines how they changed America. It reminds us that immigration has long been a part of American society, and shows how immigrants and their families continue to redefine who we are as a nation.


Immigrants in American History [4 volumes]

Immigrants in American History [4 volumes]

Author: Elliott Robert Barkan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-01-17

Total Pages: 3748

ISBN-13:

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This encyclopedia is a unique collection of entries covering the arrival, adaptation, and integration of immigrants into American culture from the 1500s to 2010. Few topics inspire such debate among American citizens as the issue of immigration in the United States. Yet, it is the steady influx of foreigners into America over 400 years that has shaped the social character of the United States, and has favorably positioned this country for globalization. Immigrants in American History: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration is a chronological study of the migration of various ethnic groups to the United States from 1500 to the present day. This multivolume collection explores dozens of immigrant populations in America and delves into major topical issues affecting different groups across time periods. For example, the first author of the collection profiles African Americans as an example of the effects of involuntary migrations. A cross-disciplinary approach—derived from the contributions of leading scholars in the fields of history, sociology, cultural development, economics, political science, law, and cultural adaptation—introduces a comparative analysis of customs, beliefs, and character among groups, and provides insight into the impact of newcomers on American society and culture.


Black Identities

Black Identities

Author: Mary C. WATERS

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 9780674044944

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The story of West Indian immigrants to the United States is generally considered to be a great success. Mary Waters, however, tells a very different story. She finds that the values that gain first-generation immigrants initial success--a willingness to work hard, a lack of attention to racism, a desire for education, an incentive to save--are undermined by the realities of life and race relations in the United States. Contrary to long-held beliefs, Waters finds, those who resist Americanization are most likely to succeed economically, especially in the second generation.


Exceptional People

Exceptional People

Author: Ian Goldin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-09-16

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 069115631X

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The past, present, and future role of global migration Throughout history, migrants have fueled the engine of human progress. Their movement has sparked innovation, spread ideas, relieved poverty, and laid the foundations for a global economy. In a world more interconnected than ever before, the number of people with the means and motivation to migrate will only increase. Exceptional People provides a long-term and global perspective on the implications and policy options for societies the world over. Challenging the received wisdom that a dramatic growth in migration is undesirable, the book proposes new approaches for governance that will embrace this international mobility. The authors explore the critical role of human migration since humans first departed Africa some fifty thousand years ago—how the circulation of ideas and technologies has benefited communities and how the movement of people across oceans and continents has fueled economies. They show that migrants in today's world connect markets, fill labor gaps, and enrich social diversity. Migration also allows individuals to escape destitution, human rights abuses, and repressive regimes. However, the authors indicate that most current migration policies are based on misconceptions and fears about migration's long-term contributions and social dynamics. Future policies, for good or ill, will dramatically determine whether societies can effectively reap migration's opportunities while managing the risks of the twenty-first century. A guide to vigorous debate and action, Exceptional People charts the past and present of international migration and makes practical recommendations that will allow everyone to benefit from its unstoppable future growth.


America Classifies the Immigrants

America Classifies the Immigrants

Author: Joel Perlmann

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-03-26

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0674425057

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Joel Perlmann traces the history of U.S. classification of immigrants, from Ellis Island to the present day, showing how slippery and contested ideas about racial, national, and ethnic difference have been. His focus ranges from the 1897 List of Races and Peoples, through changes in the civil rights era, to proposals for reform of the 2020 Census.


Border Wars

Border Wars

Author: Julie Hirschfeld Davis

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1982117419

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Two New York Times Washington correspondents provide a detailed, “fact-based account of what precipitated some of this administration’s more brazen assaults on immigration” (The Washington Post) filled with never-before-told stories of this key issue of Donald Trump’s presidency. No issue matters more to Donald Trump and his administration than restricting immigration. Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear have covered the Trump administration from its earliest days. In Border Wars, they take us inside the White House to document how Stephen Miller and other anti-immigration officials blocked asylum-seekers and refugees, separated families, threatened deportation, and sought to erode the longstanding bipartisan consensus that immigration and immigrants make positive contributions to America. Their revelation of Trump’s desire for a border moat filled with alligators made national news. As the authors reveal, Trump has used immigration to stoke fears (“the caravan”), attack Democrats and the courts, and distract from negative news and political difficulties. As he seeks reelection in 2020, Trump has elevated immigration in the imaginations of many Americans into a national crisis. Border Wars identifies the players behind Trump’s anti-immigration policies, showing how they planned, stumbled and fought their way toward changes that have further polarized the nation. “[Davis and Shear’s] exquisitely reported Border Wars reveals the shattering horror of the moment, [and] the mercurial unreliability and instability of the president” (The New York Times Book Review).


Migration Narratives

Migration Narratives

Author: Stanton Wortham

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-10-01

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350181331

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Migration Narratives presents an ethnographic study of an American town that recently became home to thousands of Mexican migrants, with the Mexican population rising from 125 in 1990 to slightly under 10,000 in 2016. Through interviews with residents, the book focuses on key educational, religious, and civic institutions that shape and are shaped by the realities of Mexican immigrants. Focusing on African American, Mexican, Irish and Italian communities, the authors describe how interethnic relations played a central role in newcomers' pathways and draw links between the town's earlier cycles of migration. The town represents similar communities across the USA and around the world that have received large numbers of immigrants in a short time. The purpose of the book is to document the complexities that migrants and hosts experience and to suggest ways in which policy-makers, researchers, educators and communities can respond intelligently to politically-motivated stories that oversimplify migration across the contemporary world. This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Boston College.


Framing Immigrants

Framing Immigrants

Author: Chris Haynes

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 2016-09

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0871545330

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In the past few years, liberal and mainstream outlets have tended to frame immigrants lacking legal status as "undocumented" (rather than "illegal") and to approach the topic of legalization through human-interest stories, often mentioning children. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, tend to discuss legalization using impersonal statistics and invoking the rule of law. Yet, regardless of the media's ideological positions, the authors' surveys show that "negative" frames more strongly influence public support for different immigration policies than do positive frames. For instance, survey participants who were exposed to language portraying immigrants as law-breakers seeking "amnesty" tended to oppose legalization measures. At the same time, support for legalization was higher when participants were exposed to language referring to immigrants living in the United States for a decade or more.


Here, There, and Elsewhere

Here, There, and Elsewhere

Author: Tahseen Shams

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1503612848

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Challenging the commonly held perception that immigrants' lives are shaped exclusively by their sending and receiving countries, Here, There, and Elsewhere breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond. Tahseen Shams posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland—the "elsewhere." Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Shams uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants' ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Yet not all places in the world are elsewheres. How a faraway foreign land becomes salient to the immigrant's sense of self depends on an interplay of global hierarchies, homeland politics, and hostland dynamics. Referencing today's 24-hour news cycle and the ways that social media connects diverse places and peoples at the touch of a screen, Shams traces how the homeland, hostland, and elsewhere combine to affect the ways in which immigrants and their descendants understand themselves and are understood by others.