ECG 100: Immigration Bibliography: Histories and Overviews

This short book provides a succinct and masterly overview of the history of migration, from the earliest movements of human beings out of Africa into Asia and Europe to the present day, exploring along the way those factors that contribute to the successes and failures of migratory groups. Separate chapters deal with the migration flows between Europe and the rest of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries and with the turbulent and complex migratory history of the Americas.

Contents: How does illegal immigration impact America? -- How should America enforce its borders? -- Should US immigration policy be reformed? -- Are illegal immigrants treated fairly in the United States?

This book is a reassessment of how immigration is changing our world. The policies of multiculturalism that were implemented in the wake of postwar immigration have, after 9/11, come under intense scrutiny, and the continuing flow of populations has helped to ensure that immigration remains high on the social and political agenda. Based on his deep knowledge of the European and American experiences, the author shows how immigration entails the loss of familiar worlds, both for immigrants and for host societies, and how coming to terms with a new environment evolves from avoidance through conflict to accommodation. The conflict that accompanies all major migratory movements is not a failure of integration but part of a search for new ways to live together. It prompts an intensive process of self-examination. That is why immigration has such a profound existential impact: it goes to the heart of institutions like the welfare state and liberties like the freedom of expression. The author argues that our ability to cope with the challenges posed by immigration requires that we move beyond multiculturalism and find a new balance between openness and exclusion. Tolerance cannot be based on avoidance but should rest on the principle of reciprocity, which means that native populations cannot ask of newcomers any more than they themselves are prepared to contribute.

International migration has emerged in the last decade as one of the world' s most controversial and pressing issues. This thought-provoking textbook offers the reader a more nuanced and extensive understanding of the complex economic, political, cultural, and moral concerns that arise when people move across borders seeking admission into other countries.

This work details the dramatic transformation of the western U.S.-Mexico border from its creation at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 to the emergence of the modern boundary line in the first decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive research in U.S. and Mexican archives, this book weaves together a transnational history of how an undistinguished strip of land became the significant and symbolic space of state power and national definition that we know today.

This volume is the first fieldwork-based study of how the U.S. economic crisis that erupted in 2007 has affected flows of Mexican migrants to and from the United States. Focusing on Tunkás, a migrant-sending community in rural Yucatán that they first studied in 2006, and its satellite communities in southern California, the researchers find that it is the combination of poor job prospects in the United States with higher costs of migration (mainly, people-smugglers’ fees) that has discouraged new migration in recent years, among both legal and unauthorized migrants. They also find that neither the economic crisis nor workplace raids and other forms of interior enforcement are inducing large numbers of migrants already in the United States to go home. The researchers document the strategies that have been developed by migrants and their dependents in Mexico to cope with the economic crisis, how migrants navigate the contracting U.S. labor market, and how the economic crisis is affecting health, education, and community participation on both sides of the border.

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America.

The World in Brooklyn: Gentrification, Immigration, and Ethnic Politics in a Global City, is a collection of scholarly papers which analyze demographic, social, political, and economic trends that are occurring in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, as the context, reflects global forces while also contributing to them. The idea for this volume developed as the editors discovered a group of scholars from different disciplines and various universities studying Brooklyn. Brooklyn has always been legendary and has more recently regained its stature as a much sought after place to live, work and have fun.