Major Problems in American Immigration History

By: Mae M. Ngai, Jon Gjerde

ISBN-13: 9780547149073
ISBN-10: 0547149077
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
Published date: 2013
This second edition builds on the first, while making significant changes that reflect new trends in the study of American immigration history. The field was first centrally defined in the mid-twentieth century b the study of immigrants from Europe. Asians and Latinos were not considered “immigrants”–People who settled permanently in the United States. They were considered “birds of passage”–people who did not experience the same social processes of incorporation and assimilation as did Europeans. As immigration from Asia and Latin America to the United States surged in the last third of the twentieth century, scholars began to pay more attention to their experiences, both historical and contemporary. A much more diverse and inclusive portrait of the American immigration experience has emerged.