Immigration: An American History by Carl J. Bon Tempo and Hasia R. Diner

Abstract

In this book, Bon Tempo and Diner provide a readable and expansive survey of U.S. immigration history. Moving briskly from the seventeenth century to the present day, they chart the twists and turns in U.S. immigration patterns, policies, and bureaucracies, as well as in the lives of U.S. immigrants. Along the way, they incorporate many recent, important trends in immigration historiography—including an emphasis on race and racism, on immigrants from all over the world (both women and men), and on its transnational dimensions (notwithstanding the subtitle “American History”). They also dot their narrative with compelling personal stories of varied, lesser-known immigrants—Irish union leader Leonora Barry; Sudanese refugee Achut Deng; Louise Norton, Malcolm X’s mother, who migrated to the United States from the West Indies by way of Canada; and struggling Chinese artist Qiming Lui.In a book of such breadth, central arguments can be difficult to decipher, but Bon Tempo and Diner stress two of them. The first is the “primary significance [of] … economic matters”—especially “work and the nation’s labor needs”—“in explaining the United States’ immigration history” (4). The second is the centrality of the state in determining which immigrants could come to the United States, which of them could stay, which of them could become full-fledged members of the nation, and which of them could access a full range of rights, protections, and resources in their new home. In concluding, the authors highlight three surprisingly straightforward historical themes that “best arm our readers as the story of immigration and the United States continues to unfold” (362). In addition to the argument above about the state’s importance, they insist that “immigrants came to North America in search of a better life” and that they “are like us” (362, 363).In making these and other claims, Bon Tempo and Diner draw from a mix of sources, including government and think-tank reports, newspaper and magazine articles, memoirs, oral histories, and even an occasional YouTube video, campaign advertisement, or protest poster. But their main source is the scholarship of historians and, to a lesser extent, political scientists, sociologists, economists, legal scholars, anthropologists, and others. Hence, the book has a faint interdisciplinary flavor. Its main audience, however, appears to be non-specialists in immigration history, as fine an audience as any but one that brings some disadvantages, especially for readers of this journal. In their understandable effort to keep the story moving, Bon Tempo and Diner tend to shy away from any deep engagement with the big theoretical debates that roil much of the immigration scholarship. For example, they avoid any analysis of the extent to which political institutions, political traditions, social forces, economic interests, cultural dynamics, or some combination thereof is responsible for the many shifts in U.S. immigration policy over time. Nor do they interrogate the role that capitalism, in its various configurations, played. Is it true, as one scholar recently suggested, that the “interests and strategies of capital” have largely determined U.S. immigration policy over the years?1 For a book that places “economic matters” at the center of the story, it is surprising that the authors seldom address these issues systematically.Immigration is nonetheless a valuable, far-reaching history. Those wishing for more interdisciplinarity and theory, however, might consult older overviews by Ngai, Tichenor, and Zolberg.2