Blackwell Reference Online

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This volume seeks to provide what has been called an “intellectual attention space,” a meeting place of the mind where leading scholars, students, and informed citizens can encounter up-to-date interpretations (representative of the variety of academic disciplines) of one of the most pervasive and provocative issues in the United States, immigration. As the quintessential “land of immigrants,” the United States had a special relationship to the events of worldwide history. From its colonial origins, the United States developed rapidly into the central destination point of both transoceanic and hemispheric currents of population movement. The origin points of immigration which first centered on Britain and western Europe until the late nineteenth century extended to nearly all regions of the world in the following 100 years. Likewise, the reception points for immigrants which were initially in seaports and nearby hinterlands in the United States during the industrial revolution have spread in the era of globalization to every corner of the country: thus small towns in Maine have become homes to East African immigrants and Minnesota towns have settlements of Indochinese refugees. As a phenomenon of both global and local import, immigration requires an inquiry that embraces international, transnational, national, as well as ethnic-group levels of activity and experience. The topics ... log in or subscribe to read full text