Nation Of Immigrants Research Articles

Race and Social Problems

Latinos represent one of the fastest growing population segments in the United States. The 50 million or so Latinos in the United States, which comprise about 15% of the US population, are here to stay and these numbers will continue to grow. As a group, they have now surpassed the African American population. Up to about 1990, Latinos or Hispanics were mostly geographically confined to the US. Southwest and a handful of places outside that region (New York, Chicago and South Florida), but they now reside throughout the United States. Despite stereotypes about Latinos as immigrants, most are actually born in the United States including those whose families have been here for several generations. Nonetheless, there is a large immigrant component, including many whom are unauthorized, which feeds Latino population growth and complicates American attitudes and perceptions about the Latino population. Latinos are a diverse group of many nationalities, but the Mexican segment comprises fully 65% of the entire Latino population and is among the most disadvantaged. Moreover, Mexicans comprise about half of the entire US undocumented population, they have the longest and largest immigration trajectory and they have been largely concentrated in the Southwest US, though that is changing as Mexican immigrants are increasingly populating new desinations, especially in the South. For these reasons several of the articles focus on that population. Because of the wide diversity of the Latino population, we are thus careful to avoid generalization. We use the terms Latino and Hispanic interchangeably throughout this paper, even though technically they may refer to somewhat different populations. Hispanic may include the small number of Spanish people while excluding the small Brazilian population while Latino does the inverse. Perhaps with these tiny exceptions, they refer to virtually the same populations. An important issue is that this pan-ethnic label was crafted by the Spanish language media, businesses, the US Census and political leaders, as a way of simplifying the categorization of a population (for various reasons) that was mostly known and continues to mostly identify by its national origins (Mora, in progress). Though there are certainly objections to the use of either term, the authors of these chapters tend to favor one or the other, a decision they may have made for various reasons. Whether you call them Latinos or Hispanics, Americans often voice strong feelings about their presence. Pundits like Samuel Huntington and Patrick Buchanan have written strongly against immigration from Latin America. They argue that Latin Americans, particularly Mexicans, are unwilling to assimilate and they therefore represent a serious threat to the American nation. Their followers are numerous, as a scan at the immigration blogs and some mainstream media reveal. Moreover, an anti-immigration brand of politics has resulted in stringent laws against the undocumented, which end up affecting the larger Latino population in various ways, as the cases of Arizona and Alabama vividly show. On the other side of public opinion, many Americans tout the United States as a nation of immigrants, in which successive waves made contributions to American culture, its economy and its democracy. Employers, today as in the past, clearly see immigrants as fueling the economy in many sectors. Latinos, who comprise the majority of the current wave, are seen as no different from previous immigrants. Unfortunately, there are many Americans on either side of a polarized debate and not enough that have an informed or nuanced opinion. Moreover, opinions about immigration and Latinos are E. Telles (&) Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA e-mail: etelles@princeton.edu

Into the borderlands: unruly pedagogy, tactile theory and the decolonising nation

Modern Australia has been defined as an immigrant nation, a settler society that is located in the South and yet is problematically, ontologically and epistemologically oriented towards the North. Australia's colonial experience and trauma – far from being resolved – are characterised by a condition of collective amnesia expressed in social, cultural and psychological boundaries. It is in this landscape that an active and transformative form of cultural studies pedagogy has emerged. This article critically unpacks aspects of this pedagogy through Borderlands, an undergraduate subject that we teach in the Cultural Studies programme at Southern Cross University, and that responds to collective postcolonial amnesia through the antidote of sentient engagement. Using borderland theory (Anzaldua 2007), Borderlands is driven by ethical, transformative imperatives regarding knowledge and responsibility for both student and teacher. Borderlands sets out to redefine cultural studies' pedagogical practice by utilising field trips as a means of epistemological unsettlement and disruption, invoking and engaging with the tangibles of migration, installation, dispossession and displacement. Our article joins students on an excursion into the field, to four specific sites. Through this architecture we argue that Borderlands is an example of an unruly, unsettling cultural studies pedagogy that lends itself to sentient decolonisation.

Identity, diversity and citizenship: A critical analysis of textbooks and curricula in Irish schools

Despite the long presence of migrant communities, Ireland was only transformed to a net-receiving immigration nation in 1996, and is currently experiencing net emigration in the wake of a sharp economic downturn. Debates about immigrant incorporation and educational responses are still at a relatively early stage. This study, which forms part of a larger project, set out to explore the role of schools and curricula in developing citizenship and the conception of Irish identity implicit therein. The article draws on citizenship curricula as well as some textbooks used in citizenship lessons. It argues that the curriculum at primary level emphasizes diversity and active citizenship in a plural society to a greater extent than the curriculum at secondary level. Moreover, there are discrepancies between the progressive rhetoric of policy documents and the content of textbooks and other curriculum material. This raises important questions of inclusivity in a still Catholic-dominated education system.

다문화가족 남성배우자의 이중문화스트레스, 의사소통이 결혼만족도에 미치는 영향

본 연구는 다문화가족의 남성배우자의 이중문화스트레스 및 의사소통과 결혼만족도와의 관계를 파악하고자 전국에 있는 결혼이민자 지원센터, 건강가정지원센터의 프로그램 참가자와 지역사회복지관의 다문화 프로그램을 이용하는 결혼이주여성의 배우자를 대상으로 실시하였다. 첫째, 이중문화스트레스는 하위영역 중 문화충격(M= 4.32)이 가장 높고, 지각된 적대감의 평균값이 가장 낮은 것으로 조사되었는데, 점수가 높을수록 이중문화스트레스가 높은 것으로 볼 수 있다. 둘째, 이중문화스트레스에 따른 결혼만족도는 이중문화스트레스가 높은 집단이 낮은 집단보다 높았다. 셋째, 의사소통에 따른 결혼만족도는 의사소통이 높은 집단이 낮은 집단보다 높았다. 넷째, 의사소통은 이중문화스트레스가 결혼만족도에 미치는 영향을 매개함을 알 수 있다. In order determine potential correlations of multicultural family's male spouses' bicultural stress and communication with their marital satisfaction, this study surveyed male spouses of foreign female participants in a variety of multicultural family assistance programs available at national marital immigrants assistance centers and healthy family assistance centers of Korea, The results of this survey can be summed up as follows: First, with regard to subordinate categories of bicultural stress, it was found that cultural shock (M= 4.32) scored the highest mean points in bicultural stress, while perceived hostility scored the lowest mean points in bicultural stress, where the higher points indicate the higher bicultural stress. Secondly, in terms of cultural adaptation stress, it was found that the group exposed to higher cultural adaptation stress felt more satisfied at marital life. Thirdly, with regard to communication with foreign female spouses, it was found that frequently communicating group had higher marital stability. Finally, it was found that communication worked as a mediator in potential effects of bicultural stress on marital satisfaction.

Why Arizona matters: the historical, legal, and political contexts of Arizona’s instructional policies and U.S. linguistic hegemony

The United States is home to the largest number of immigrants of any nation (United Nations 2006). In 2005, 38.5 million residents of the U.S. were foreign born. As a result, an increasing number of children in the public schools are either immigrants or the children of immigrants: more than one of every five. Most of these children come from homes in which English is not the primary language spoken, and more than half at any one time are designated as English learners (or ELs), that is, they do not speak enough English to allow them to succeed in the mainstream English classroom. Importantly, however, about 75% of these students speak Spanish and while there is an increasing dispersion of immigrants across the U.S., still most are concentrated in particular areas such that a number of instructional options are often possible. Nonetheless, the U.S., like many other immigrant nations has struggled to find appropriate ways to incorporate these students into the public schools and to help them to become successful learners. Much of this quest has been shaped by legal and political battles over the rights of immigrants and English learners. Although there were major initiatives in the U.S. Congress and the courts in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been little policy coherence since that time.

Dilemmas of Multiculturalism

I was born here . . . How many generations does it take to stop mentioning my origin?- Nadir DendotuneMost contemporary societies are ethnically and culturally diverse. Responding to diversity is a challenge! - for the United States, a nation of immigrants, for post-colonial states of the global south, cobbled together from diverse ethnic groups, and for European nations experiencing mass immigration. Contributors to the current issue address pressing questions about cultural diversity and the dilemmas it poses.1. Multiculturalism and Cultural DiversityRoy Brooks compares three different models for dealing with cultural diversity: cultural assimilation, transculturalism or cosmopolitanism, and or multiculturalism as it is commonly understood. Each of these programs represents an answer to what he holds is the most important question concerning cultural diversity: whose values or perspectives should govern mainstream society when the values or perspectives of diverse groups clash?Cultural assimilation is the classic American doctrine of the melting pot. On this account, Brooks notes, cultural integration is a one-way process, going from majority to minority group. When it comes to socially significant institutions, cultural assimilationists insist that middleclass folkways should prevail. This, he suggests, confronts members of minority groups with a dilemma: cultural assimilation, and the material benefits that go along with it, come at the cost of cultural subordination.Cosmopolitanism, or transculturalism, represents an assimilationist alternative according to which the aim is not cultural hegemony for the dominant group but cultural convergence, with each social group contributing something of value to the new, blended mainstream culture. But cosmopolitanism, Brooks notes, poses a similar dilemma since, on the cosmopolitan model, there is only one, albeit transculturalist, mainstream, which members of some minority groups might find it difficult to embrace.Unlike either of these assimilationist options, the third alternative Brooks considers, multiculturalism or pluralism, holds that there is no one mainstream or cultural canon but rather many mainstreams and cultural canons. Nevertheless, Brooks notes, pluralism is also problematic: to the extent that it preserves cultural identity it threatens cultural balkanization.None of these alternatives is entirely satisfactory because there is no arrangement that will satisfy everyone. While, as Brooks suggests, maintaining distinct cultural identities is important to many Americans, others regard minority identities as inherently oppressive: [W]hiteness is the marker of racial invisibility in America, writes Gary Kamiya, who describes himself as Eurasian, or half- Japanese.White, in other words, means no race, not the master race .... This is, in fact, how most people in America - unless they subscribe to some virulent form of identity politics, whether on the Ku Klux Klan right or the I-am-a-member-of-the-oppressors left - see themselves. White people don't go around feeling white unless they are either racists or have just come out of a corporate diversity consciousness-raising session . . .Having no racial self-identification is a Utopian state because it allows you to escape this malignant mirror. (Kamiya, 2007)In spite of attacks from the right and increasing critical scrutiny by the left, multiculturalism - Brooks's - is still heavily promoted in the U.S. Prima facie it seems to be the view that liberals, who value liberty, should adopt since it frees individuals to maintain their cultural distinctness. Nevertheless, the liberty of one person may impose restrictions on another and satisfying the preferences of multiculturalists may set back the interests of assimilationists who, like Kamiya, prefer not to think of themselves in racial terms at all - particularly members of visible minorities who cannot opt out. …

When “Second Generation” Narratives and Hollywood Meet: Making Ethnicity in <i>My Big Fat Greek Wedding</i>

As the nation has held itself up to the media mirror ... the image of white America that reflects back looks less and less like the whitebread, Protestant world of Rob and Laura Petrie [from The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966)], and rather more like, well, a big fat Greek wedding. --Matthew Frye Jacobson (71) The theory of semiotic excess proposes that once the ideological hegemonic work has been performed, there is still excess meaning that escapes the control of the dominant and is thus available for the culturally subordinate to use for their own cultural-political interests. --John Fiske (200) Popular American film often oversimplifies the experiences of American ethnics of European heritage. Although Polish Americans, German Americans, or Greek Americans may appear as ethnic characters, their claim to difference is rarely the primary focus. Mainstream cinema deploys various European American identities as tropes to address issues of national belonging, to assert dominant ideals, to allegorize the American Dream, or to discipline ethnicity. It largely refrains from delving into the intricacies of their hyphenated lives. European Americans, Dan Georgakas notes, served as cinematic wallpaper, good for an odd costume, colorful dialog, and quaint habits (36). In this respect, Hollywood reproduces larger social discourses. The narrative of America as a nation of immigrants elevates the acculturated European American as a national icon, endowing this figure with cultural hyper-visibility as it simultaneously contains it through a scripted narrative: hard-working, colorful in its folk dances, authentic in its cuisine, law abiding, family-and community-centered, civic-oriented; a cookie-cutter ethnicity. (1) This combination of heightened public visibility and ideological containment confronts cultural critics with the question of how to proceed with the analysis of European American ethnicities now that they have become an American norm: assimilated yet with cultural affiliations beyond the dominant. What are the critical routes that enable the recovery of these historically distinct yet interrelated identities as a richly textured field? How do we frame their representations in order to advance research that recognizes the multiple facets of these ethnicities while confronting their control by the dominant society? One venue for inquiry presents itself via an unlikely source. The blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), a film that might be overlooked as a banal illustration of the conventions of romantic comedy, suggests a fresh way to address the issue--from the perspective of popular culture. The film may dismay with its reductive representation of self and other. Its portrayal of immigrants as primitives in our midst reanimates a stock of images common to Hollywood and ethnographic cinema in general: the infantilization, debasement, and exoticization of the other, cast as an aboriginal who embodies a way of life that is bygone in the spectator's culture. In this narration, the immigrant is seen as parochial and frozen in time, belonging to an earlier temporal reality. What is more, the objectified gaze of the camera does not spare practices coded as WASP, but subjects them to merciless mocking. Nevertheless, the film produces varied ways of seeing ethnicity; taking heed of them may move us beyond readily recognized meanings and open up space for alternative interpretations of ethnicity. This paper explores this maze of filmic representations to show how ethnicity is deployed in specific contexts. The emphasis is on the construction of ethnicity in relation to dominant categories such as romantic love, femininity, whiteness, modern anomie, immigrants, and autonomy. For this purpose, the discussion is organized around two major axes. First, it identifies the dominant meanings in the filmic narrative, including the portrayal of the culturally dominant/self and subordinate/immigrant other. …

A Nation of Immigrants. By Susan F. Martin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 344p. $85.00 cloth, $28.99 paper. - Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States. By Hiroshi Motomura. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 256p. $24.99.

A Nation of Immigrants. By Susan F. Martin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 344p. $85.00 cloth, $28.99 paper. - Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States. By Hiroshi Motomura. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 256p. $24.99.

Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale (review)

Reviewed by: Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale Mark Seamon Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale. Written and directed by Aditi Brennan Kapil. Mixed Blood Theatre, Minneapolis. 4 March 2011. The world premiere of Aditi Brennan Kapil's superb drama offered a timely reflection on the immigrant experience in the United States. Selected in 2008 as a National Endowment for the Arts' Distinguished New Play Development Project, Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale continued the mission of Mixed Blood Theatre: "a professional, multi-racial company [that] promotes cultural pluralism and individual equality through artistic excellence, using theater to address artificial barriers that keep people from succeeding in American society." Kapil, a playwright, actor, and director of Bulgarian and Indian descent and a resident artist at Mixed Blood for seventeen years, re-imagined the American "melting pot" as a kind of cultural spectacular, an enormous big top housing people of diverse backgrounds who must perform "tricks"—including lying to loved ones, retreating into silence, and committing fraud—in order to survive. Through effective design, expert acting, and careful attention to voice, Kapil upended romanticized notions of America as a nation of immigrants by scrutinizing the losses, failures, and coping mechanisms of recent immigrants. Agnes wove together seminal experiences in the lives of four American newcomers. Shipkov (Nathaniel Fuller), a former circus ringmaster, and his wife Roza (Virginia Burke) are Bulgarian immigrants in their forties. He drives a subway train, while she provides in-home care for the aging Ella (Linda Kelsey), a bedridden woman suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis. Agnes (Shá Cage), a Liberian immigrant in her thirties, is also Ella's home-care worker. Agnes has been recently diagnosed with Click for larger view View full resolution Busker (Nick Demeris), Roza (Virginia Burke), and Shipkov (Nathaniel Fuller) in Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale. (Photo: Rich Ryan.) [End Page 640] Click for larger view View full resolution Agnes (Shá Cage) with Busker (Nick Demeris) in Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale. (Photo: Rich Ryan.) terminal cancer and has only weeks to live. Happy (Ankit Dogra), a young man in his twenties from India, works on the subway as Shipkov's trainee. An anonymous Busker (Nick Demeris) moves freely through time and space playing multiple roles, including a musician in whom Agnes confides, a silent Bulgarian clown whom Roza conjures, a pot-smoking Indian friend of Happy's, and a bird who speaks and listens to Agnes, Roza, and Ella. While not all of the characters' paths intersect, they are dramaturgically connected through themes of isolation, alienation, loss, and an unusual attention to sound, voice, and silence. Scenic designer Andrea Heilman, lighting designer Jeff Bartlett, and sound designer Katharine Horowitz created an intimate yet fragmented mise en scène for Kapil's tale of immigration. Greeted by recorded subway sounds, horizontal flashes of light suggesting train movement, and the live rhythms of a charismatic busker, the audience embarked on a theatrical journey between, across, and about barriers. Variously bright, dim, quiet, cacophonous, tranquil, and bustling, the dynamic environment served as a fitting representation for the confusion and challenges expressed in the diverse voices (and silences) of Kapil's characters. In addition to the sonic landscape of the train, Kapil further used the sounds of foreign language, vocal outbursts, and even deafening silence to illustrate the interpersonal consequences for Shipkov and Roza as they pursued economic opportunity in America. They remained physically separated throughout the production until Roza, in a shocking act of boldness, boarded Shipkov's train to confront him about her apparent inability or unwillingness to assimilate. She unleashed a jarring tirade in broken English that made plain her profound sense of loss of community, culture, family, and self. Burke's masterfully imperfect vocal delivery reached shouting levels to compensate for the whizzing sounds of passing subway trains. Fuller's frustrated, disbelieving facial expressions were at once hidden and revealed as train lights quickly flashed by and then vanished. The depth and hollowness of the subway tracks, coupled with fast-moving lights and piercing train sounds, emphasized the deep emotional expanse separating Roza and Shipkov within the tumult of their...

Immigrant nations

Immigrant nations

Yo soy negro: blackness in Peru

Shows that the Afro-Peruvian experience must be part of any serious discussion of race, ethnicity, or contemporary society in Peru. This book will spark scholarly debate and inspire student discussion.--Leo J. Garofalo, coeditor of Afro-Latino VoicesConstitutes a much-needed addition to the literature on racial dynamics in Latin Through the words of her research subjects, Golash-Boza masterfully cautions the field against the facile equalization of color and race in Latin And, in a bold twist, she also warns against the reification of black culture and state officialization of race.--Stanley R. Bailey, author of Legacies of Race: Identities, Attitudes, and Politics in BrazilYo Soy Negro is the first book in English--in fact, the first book in any language in more than two decades--to address what it means to be black in Peru. Based on extensive ethnographic work in the country and informed by more than eighty interviews with Peruvians of African descent, this groundbreaking study explains how ideas of race, color, and mestizaje in Peru differ greatly from those held in other Latin American nations.The conclusion that Tanya Maria Golash-Boza draws from her rigorous inquiry is that Peruvians of African descent give meaning to blackness without always referencing Africa, slavery, or black cultural forms. This represents a significant counterpoint to diaspora scholarship that points to the importance of slavery in defining blackness in Latin America as well as studies that place cultural and class differences at the center of racial discourses in the region.Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, assistant professor of sociology and American studies at the University of Kansas, is the author of Immigration Nation?: Raids, Detentions and Deportations in Post 9/11 America.

Migração Internacional e Desenvolvimento Econômico: Algumas Considerações em Relação À Economia Brasileira (International Migration and Economic Development: Some Theoretical Considerations in Relation to the Brazilian Economy)

Brazil is a country of a long immigration history, however its emigration experience is a recent issue. The migration transition started in the 1980s, when the first wave of migration was initiated. This process is continued in the next decades: therefore, the traditional nation of immigration was transformed in the nation of emigration. Brazilian Diaspora is now estimated at 3.7 million and constitutes an important area of interest for the scholars and policy-makers interested in development policy. This article focuses on the relationship between migration and development from the perspective of the sending country. The author argues that in the Brazilian case, the impact of migration on the national economy should be beneficial, especially when analyzing the effects of remittances on the mezzo (i.e. regional) level.

A Nation of Immigrants

A Nation of Immigrants

Babies and Belonging: Reproduction, Citizenship, and Undocumented Nicaraguan Labor Migrant Women in Costa Rica

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of 43 Nicaraguan labor migrant women in Costa Rica, among whom two thirds were undocumented. Drawing from more than a year of field research, this research explores how undocumented migrant women parlayed reproductive capacities in a context of a modernizing democratic host nation-state increasingly limited in its capacity to fulfill longstanding national ideals of “health for all.” Pregnancy and postpartum periods presented unique opportunities for achieving gains related to citizenship. As the third most common migrant destination context in the Western hemisphere, Costa Rica is grappling with its dual role as a nation of emigration and immigration and is attempting to maintain its “exceptional” national identity in the face of rapid globalization. Due to the jus soli citizenship model, the health care system has become a site for struggle over inclusion in the Costa Rican nation-state.

Working in a Global Village: Cultural Competency and Collaboration With Families Through Interpreters

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar, created the term global village. In early 1960's, McLuhan explains that just as the human nervous system connects and communicates, there is a global communication network that extends and connects people despite geographic distance. Such network, he calls “electronic interdependence,” will replace visual, individualistic print culture to aural/oral culture through electronic media. He went on to predict the creation of the World Wide Web 30 years before it appeared. The connectivity of our world through the internet has been the leading force in globalization. Moreover, although the United States has been called the nation of immigrants, there continues to be increased numbers of foreign-born population in our country: 19.8 million or 7.9% in 1980 and 38.5 million or 12.5% of the total population in 2009. As more immigrants live and stay in the United States, health-related issues including the unforeseen consequences of having premature infants from many different cultures and backgrounds cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit became the reality. Although the immigrants come from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, nurses are there to provide care not only for the infants but also for the whole family, helping the family to one day be able to care for their own child. Cultural competencies are essential to excellent nursing care in today's diverse patient population.

A nation of immigrants

A nation of immigrants

Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration, 1882 – 1930

During the late nineteenth century, growing concerns in the United States about immigration resulted in a series of laws intended to significantly curtail or ideally stop the entry of economic, medical, political, and racial undesirables. These laws denied entry to many; however, the laws also encouraged immigrants to seek alternative routes. In this timely and succinct study, Patrick Ettinger examines US efforts to control illicit immigration from 1882 to 1930 along the Canadian and, especially, Mexican borders. According to Ettinger, change and continuity characterized US government efforts. Whereas the northern and southern borders during this period changed from nominally “guarded” to heavily patrolled, despite increases in resources, illegal border crossings continued. This “ungovernability” of the border, Ettinger argues, reveals not only the limits of state power in enforcing national boundaries but immigrants’ creative and successful resistance.According to Ettinger, 1882 marked the beginning of significant decades-long efforts to restrict entry based on race, class, and ethnicity. In a pattern that would be repeated, efforts to enforce restrictions against the poor and the Chinese at maritime ports simply led determined immigrants to land in Canada or Mexico and enter the United States along the largely unguarded land borders. As Ettinger explains, by 1891, although many in Congress expressed alarm about the permeability of the Mexican and Canadian borders, they also considered illegal land entries as peripheral and focused instead on expanding the categories of excludable immigrants and enforcing stronger federal control over seaports. While the Immigration Act of 1891 created the Bureau of Immigration, he points out that this new agency struggled to enforce existing laws and failed to keep up with new methods of border crossings that shifted primarily to Mexico after 1902. Violence and dislocations caused by the Mexican Revolution, Ettinger argues, coupled with economic growth in the US Southwest again transformed immigration patterns. For the first time, large-scale Mexican immigration became the norm and by 1930, Mexicans had replaced Asians and Europeans as the main target of border authorities.Although Mexicans were technically subject to immigration restrictions, authorities did not strictly enforce those regulations because Mexicans were seen as temporary visitors and workers. Thus, according to Ettinger, border authorities constructed a “Mexican exception” to restriction laws. Border officials under pressure from competing interests attempted to balance US economic demands against immigration restrictionists. Thus in 1915, when railroad construction declined, officials turned away high numbers of Mexicans at the border as potential paupers. During the economic boom years of 1917 to 1921, farmers’ and railroad executives’ demands for labor resulted in exemptions for tens of thousands of Mexicans. Not surprisingly, there was no significant decline in Mexican migration into the United States when labor demands eased after 1921. Further, even with the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924, there was little change in border permeability. Mexicans, like other immigrants before them, disregarded various requirements for entry, including visas, health certificates, and proof of literacy. Thus, according to Ettinger, the Border Patrol focused on what was possible: creating deterrents and keeping the number of illegal entries down.Ettinger is effective in illustrating the tensions between restrictive legislation and immigrant innovation. While the discussion on the US-Mexico border is focused and well-developed, his examination of the Canadian border lacks depth. For example, according to Ettinger, after 1902, illicit European entry by way of the northern border effectively ended as the Canadian government began serious screening of immigrants arriving at its seaports. Why this change occurred in 1902 and why, how, and if the Canadians successfully controlled their entry ports in the following decades remains unanswered. Further, this also begs the question: Can the permeability of the southern border be attributed simply to the lack of Mexican government cooperation? Despite these gaps, this is an engaging study that students of immigration and border history will find worthwhile.

Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929. By Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009. xiv plus 233 pp.)

Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929. By Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009. xiv plus 233 pp.)

Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929 (review)

Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929 (review)

John Higley and John Nieuwenhuysen with Stine Neerup (eds): Nations of immigrants: Australia and the USA compared

John Higley and John Nieuwenhuysen with Stine Neerup (eds): Nations of immigrants: Australia and the USA compared