ABSTRACT

Immigrant Life in the U.S. brings together scholars from across the disciplines to examine diverse examples of immigration to the paradigmatic 'nation of immigrants'. The volume covers a wide range of time periods, ethnic and national groups, and places of immigration. Contemporary Chinese children brought to the U.S. through adoption, Mexican laborers hired to work in the mid-west in the 1930s, Indian computer programmers hired to work in California, and more, are examined in a series of chapters that show the great diversity of issues facing immigrants in the past and in the present.
This book emphasizes the complex tapestry that is the everyday experience of life as an immigrant and turns a critical eye on the place of globalization in the everyday life of immigrants. The contrasts it draws between past and present demonstrate the continued salience of national and ethnic identities while also describing how migrants can live almost simultaneously in two countries.
This book will be of essential interest to advanced students and researchers of Sociology, History, Ethnic Studies and American Studies.

chapter |12 pages

1 Introduction

American identities in a global era

part |68 pages

Part I The local and the nation in a transnational world

chapter |16 pages

2 Elusive citizenship

Education, the press, and the struggle over representation in Napa, California 1848–1910

chapter |20 pages

3 The prehistory of the Cadenú

Dominican identity, social class, and the problem of mobility, 1965–78

chapter |14 pages

4 Between fantasy and despair

The transnational condition and high-tech immigration 1

part |49 pages

Part II Family, school, and youth culture

chapter |14 pages

7 Members of many gangs

Childhood and ethno-racial identity on the streets of twentieth-century urban America

chapter |17 pages

8 ‘Becoming' and ‘being' Chinese American in college

A look at ethnicity, social class, and neighborhood in identity development

part |70 pages

Part III Immigrant labor

chapter |19 pages

9 Workplace identities and collective memory

Living and remembering the effects of the Bracero total institution 1

chapter |18 pages

11 ‘Natural mothers' for sale

The construction of Latina immigrant identity in domestic service labor markets

chapter |10 pages

12 An afterword

The work and the wonder in studying immigrant life across the disciplines