Crossing borders : migration and citizenship in the twentieth-century United States / Dorothee Schneider.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schneider, Dorothee, 1952-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Immigrants--United States--History.

Immigrants.

Citizenship--United States.

Citizenship.

United States--Emigration and immigration--History.

United States.

United States--Emigration and immigration--Government policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (331 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Aspiring immigrants to the United States make many separate border crossings in their quest to become Americans-in their home towns, ports of departure, U.S. border stations, and in American neighborhoods, courthouses, and schools. In a book of remarkable breadth, Dorothee Schneider covers both the immigrants' experience of their passage from an old society to a new one and American policymakers' debates over admission to the United States and citizenship. Bringing together the separate histories of Irish, English, German, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants, the book opens up a fresh view of immigrant aspirations and government responses.Ingenuity and courage emerge repeatedly from these stories, as immigrants adapted their particular resources, especially social networks, to make migration and citizenship successful on their own terms. While officials argued over immigrants' fitness for admission and citizenship, immigrant communities forced the government to alter the meaning of race, class, and gender as criteria for admission. Women in particular made a long transition from dependence on men to shapers of their own destinies.Schneider aims to relate the immigrant experience as a totality across many borders. By including immigrant voices as well as U.S. policies and laws, she provides a truly transnational history that offers valuable perspectives on current debates over immigration.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER 1. Leaving Home

CHAPTER 2. Landing in America

CHAPTER 3. Forced Departures

Epilogue

Appendix 1: Figures

Appendix 2: Deportation Categories, 1917

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674267107

0674267109

9780674061309

0674061306

OCLC:

719370035