From International Migration to Transnational Diaspora

Abstract

In his influential history of American immigrants, Oscar Handlin (1973:3) wrote: Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. Indeed, the sociology of international migration has been a central concern of American sociology, of which William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918/1958) remains a foundational text (see Wiley 1986). An inspired work of the sociological imagination, Polish Peasant analyzed historical and structural changes in Poland and the United States and their interrelationships without squelching personal narratives and experiences. Thomas and Znaniecki not only employed a wide array of methods and data sources, but also combined theoretical and practical discussions in their sustained empirical inquiry. In spite of American sociology's auspicious beginning, very few current works bring together the personal with the historical and the structural, advance theories and inform politics, and use multiple methods and data sources. At the same time, several bedrock assumptions-best exemplified in the narrative structure of Handlin's extremely influential Uprooted-have guided the majority of international migration studies. sojourn of immigrants entails a radical, and in many cases a singular, break from the old country to the new nation; migration is inter-national across well-defined national territories and boundaries. In the process of unidirectional crossing, migrants are uprooted and shorn of premigration networks, cultures, and belongings. At the shores of the new land, migrants enter the caldron of a new society. melting pot assimilates migrants; the huddled masses become Americans. In analyzing international migration, sociologists have plunged into and plumbed the depth and breadth of various waves of immigrants. They have analyzed macrostructural changes affecting international migration, the persistence of premigration networks, gender and other sources of social differentiation, and the differential adaptation and assimilation of distinct migrant streams. Yet theoretical and methodological concerns remain rooted in the classic immigration narrative and statistical analyses of survey and census data. historical and the ethnographic impulse of Polish Peasantand most glaringly the place of personal narratives-has largely sunk with only a few traces (see, e.g., Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). In pursuing scientific rigor, most sociologists have consigned individual voices to the academic periphery-the marginalia of Americana. International Migration Review [IMR], the flagship journal of migration studies in the United States, exemplifies this trend. special issue on The New Second Generation (IMR 28:4, 1994), edited by Alejandro Portes, features a wide range of interesting and informative articles. vast majority of them, however, focus on the questions of socioeconomic and cultural accommodation and assimilation and rely predominantly on survey and census data. A similar range of topics and methods characterizes most recent articles in IMR (the first three articles in the previous issue, 28:3, 1994, are on unauthorized workers, naturalization, and economic attainment). repressed legacy of Polish Peasant has, however, revived with a vengeance in recent publications, which mark a sea change in the study of international migration. No longer is it adequate to peruse International Migration Review: New journals-Diaspora (Oxford University Press)