A Companion to American Immigration

A Companion to American Immigration is an authoritative collection of original essays by leading scholars on the major topics and themes underlying American immigration history.

• Focuses on the two most important periods in American Immigration history: the Industrial Revolution (1820-1930) and the Globalizing Era (Cold War to the present)
• Provides an in-depth treatment of central themes, including economic circumstances, acculturation, social mobility, and assimilation
• Includes an introductory essay by the volume editor.

Notes on Contributors vii

Introduction 1
Reed Ueda

Part I Policy and Politics

1 A Nation of Immigrants and a Gatekeeping Nation: American Immigration Law and Policy 5
Erika Lee

2 Naturalization and Nationality 36
Irene Bloemraad and Reed Ueda

3 Immigration and Ethnic Politics 58
James J. Connolly

4 Immigrant Transnationals and US Foreign Relations 77
Xiao-huang Yin and Peter H. Koehn

5 Bodies from Abroad: Immigration, Health, and Disease 106
Alan M. Kraut

6 The Politics of Immigration and the Rise of the Migration State: Comparative and Historical Perspectives 132
James F. Hollifield

Part II Ethnicity , Race , and Nation

7 Ethnic and Racial Identity 161
Marilyn Halter

8 Nativism and Prejudice Against Immigrants 177
Tyler Anbinder

9 Assimilation and American National Identity 202
Michael R. Olneck

10 Internationalization and Transnationalization 225
David Gerber

11 Immigration and Race Relations 255
Jeffrey Melnick

Part III Population and Society

12 Demography and American Immigration 277
Michael S. Teitelbaum

13 Gender and Immigration 289
Suzanne M. Sinke

14 Immigrant Residential and Mobility Patterns 309
Barry R. Chiswick and Paul W. Miller

15 Characteristics of Immigrants to the United States: 1820–2003 328
Guillermina Jasso and Mark R. Rosenzweig

16 Marriage Patterns in Historical Perspective: Gender and Ethnicity 359
Robert McCaa, Albert Esteve, and Clara Cortina

Part IV Economy and Society

17 Immigrant Social Mobility and the Historian 373
Kenneth A. Scherzer

18 Labor and Immigration History: First Principles 394
Leon Fink

19 Immigration in the Economy: Development and Enterprise 409
Nian-Sheng Huang

20 Immigrants in the American Housing Market 424
Barry R. Chiswick and Paul W. Miller

Part V Culture and Community

21 Immigration and American Diversity: Food for Thought 443
Donna R. Gabaccia

22 Immigration and Language 471
Nancy C. Carnevale

23 Immigration and Education in the United States 492
Paula S. Fass

24 Religion and Ethnicity 513
John McClymer

25 Mutual Aid Societies and Fraternal Orders 528
Daniel Soyer

Index 547

Reed Ueda is Professor of History at Tufts University. He is the author of Postwar Immigrant America: A Social History (1994). A Companion to American Immigration is an authoritative collection of original essays by leading scholars on the major topics and themes underlying American immigration history. The book focuses on the two most important periods in American history when immigration had its greatest impact on American society: the Industrial Revolution and the Globalizing Era from the post-World War II decades to the present. It explores immigration from a global and interdisciplinary perspective to show the variety of methods that scholars have recently used to supply new insights.

The structure and approach provide in-depth treatment of central themes, including economic conditions, public policies, demography, social structure, group identity, communal institutions, and cultural life. A Companion to American Immigration also places a key question in the foreground of the book: how immigrants of the industrializing era and the globalizing era can be studied with respect to a host of collective and common experiences that bridge historical periods. The comparative dimension is a defining feature of these essays, capturing the essence of America, and its rich history of immigration.