The Transgression of a Laborer: Malcolm X in the Wilderness of America (original) (raw)
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From Immigrants to Ethnics: Identity, Citizenship, and Political Participation
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 5. The immigrant world has always been a difficult one, torn between old loyalties and new realities. For the most part, the politics of the first generation -- to the extent that such politics have existed -- have been characterized by an overriding preoccupation with the home country. Early participation in American politics has been limited to the more educated groups, those prevented from going back to their countries of origin, and those exceptional circumstances in which the very survival of the immigrant community is at stake. Even then, however, old loyalties die hard because individuals socialized in another language and culture have great difficulty giving them up as a primary source of identity. Throughout the history of immigration, the characteristics of sending countries have also made a significant difference in shaping the politics of the first generation as well as the timing of its shift into American-based concerns. Immigrants in the past or present may have come from: 1) stateless nations -- divided lands contested by warring factions or occupied by a foreign power; 2) hostile states -- dictatorships that oppressed the entire population of their countries or singled out the immigrants' own group for special persecution; 3) consolidated but indifferent nation-states, that neither promoted nor acknowledged the migrants' departure; or 4) states that actually supported and supervised emigration, regarding their nationals abroad as outposts serving their country's interests. These diverse origins interact with contexts of reception to give rise to a complex geometry of political concerns among the foreign born that mold, in turn, the politics of later generations. Depending on this variable geometry of places of origin and destination, immigrant communities may be passionately committed to political causes back home, either in support of or in opposition to the existing regime; they may see themselves as representatives of their nation-state abroad; or they may turn away from all things past and concentrate on building a new life in America. Examples of these and other possible outcomes are found both at the turn of the twentieth century and at present. We look first at the earlier period in order to provide a backdrop against which to describe contemporary developments.
Social Movement Studies, 2019
Immigrants, and particularly undocumented immigrants, are oftentimes seen as disrupting the nation state and destabilizing its boundaries. This paper develops the argument that immigrants can, under certain conditions, actively employ nationalist frames and language to support their rights claims. It presents a two-prong argument to explain for this outcome. First, immigrant rights advocates needed to select a 'master frame' that would will resonate with audiences in different regions of the country and counter the anti-immigrant discourses of their adversaries. These constraints favored the selection of a frame that was nationalist enough to make sense to middle-of-theroad Americans and liberal enough to provide 'deserving immigrants' a pathway to citizenship. Second, advocates needed to ensure that their frames were delivered with a degree of consistency in different localities across the country. This favored a robust and centralized discursive infrastructure that could exercise dominance over the production and diffusion of core messages. The paper uses a range of sourcesincluding interviews with leaders of immigrant rights associations, organization documents, training materialssupport the argument.
On the Past and Future of American Immigration and Ethnic History
2006
To a historian, twenty five years may not seem like much: a span scarcely the measure of a generation, within the frame of “current affairs,” it may not yet qualify as “history”; it might even be said, paraphrasing Gertrude Stein, that there is no long durée there. But to a sociologist, it is a span that packs a wallop. This essay examines the past and future of American immigration and ethnic history in the light of rapid changes marking the 25-year period between 1981 and 2006. Although much of American sociology, led by the scholars of what came to be called the Chicago School, gained its impetus and its disciplinary identity a century ago via the empirical study of mass immigration and the adaptations in American cities of an unprecedented diversity of newcomers, twenty-five years ago there was little scholarly work being done in the sociology of immigration and ethnicity. Doctoral students at leading universities were advised by their mentors as late as the 1980s to avoid writing their dissertations on such topics, since immigration was not a “field” or even a recognized section of the American Sociological Association. There was no there there, then. On the other hand, immigration became a field of specialization in American history in the 1926-40 period, it “erupted” in the late 1960s, and by the 1970s an astounding 1,813 doctoral dissertations in history focused on immigration or ethnicity. It was when immigration became “a thing of the past” that historians surged to study it, while sociologists turned to more contemporary concerns (including what would become glossed as “race and ethnic relations”). Still, historians and sociologists alike have kindred interests in understanding and explaining the common and endlessly fascinating phenomena that delimit our respective fields. While the recovery, if not the discovery, of the past may be the historian’s raison d’être, it is in part the social scientist’s conceit to examine the patterned present in order to predict the future. Whether our glance is backward or forward, our knowledge is ineluctably shaped by our present predicaments, so that as often as not we see through our respective prisms darkly. And history, in any case, does not obligingly repeat itself, whether as tragedy or as familiar farce. If we can learn something from the chaotic, checkered past of the last era of mass migration to the United States a century ago, it may be to harbor few illusions about crystal-ball gazing, even in increments of twenty-five years. Historians and sociologists alike, in our own Janus-faced ways, seek to contribute to human understanding, to enlightenment, and to the tolerance and humility that comes with it – and in that way we make our most important contributions to the long durée of humanity, all the more in a present suffused by a climate of fear. To bring these two disciplines together in the study of American immigration and ethnicity has been one of the pioneering contributions of the JAEH in its first quarter century.
Reimagining Political Community: Diaspora, Nation-State, and the Struggle for Recognition
Modern Drama, 2005
BAN WAN G diaspora, nation-state, and mass isolation In current discussions, diaspora is associated with population movement, the expansion of world markets, advances in communications technology, and flows of capital and labour. The diasporic spread of people seems to move in tandem with the decline of the nation-state as a dominant political system. 1 Evelyn Hu-DeHart has linked the rise of diasporic conditions and sensibility in Asia to the expansion of trade and markets ("Introduction"). Chinese businessmen and professionals, for instance, seem to be riding the wave of the diasporic boom. As economic tigers and dragons, the overseas Chinese are poised to enter a free-floating, prosperous orbit of trade and growth. Shedding their national identities and "freely" crossing territories, they "identify first with their co-ethnics wherever they are rather than submit to the hegemonizing claim of exclusive citizenship demanded by a single country or nationstate" (Hu-DeHart, "Introduction" 4). With flexible citizenship, unanchored to a specific national community, Asian diasporics take great strides in uprooting themselves, trotting the globe, and in times of vulnerability, resorting to families and kin and to a wide-ranging network of personal and professional connections (5). The rise of Asian-Pacific economies in recent decades has blurred the difference between Asian Americans as a group in the United States and the recent diasporic, "nationless" Asians, less encumbered by a grounded community. The collective self-consciousness of Asian Americans arose as social rather than transnational phenomenon, as part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Striving to find roots in America, Asian Americans tried to reconstruct, not the image of an original home nation, but the experience of Asian immigrants since their arrival on American soil in the nineteenth century. As is well expressed by Maxine Hong Kingston's phrase "claiming America"
Colonial Genealogies of Immigration Controls, Self- Determination, and the Nation-State
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 2021
Political philosophy has long treated the nation-state as the starting point for normative inquiry, while paying little attention to the ongoing legacies of colonialism and imperialism. But given how most modern states emerged, normative discussions about migration, for example, need to engage with the colonial and imperial history of state immigration controls, citizenship practices, and the nation-state more generally. This article critically reviews three historical studies by Adom Getachew, Radhika Mongia, and Nandita Sharma that engage in depth with this history. The studies historicize concepts that are central to discussions in political philosophy: the categories of citizen and migrant, the concept of ‘nationality,’ and the principle of self-determination. I argue that this historicized form of conceptual analysis helps us challenge the default authority of concepts that are deeply embedded in the political structures that we inhabit.
2020
This thesis seeks to contribute to migration studies literature by focusing on the case of Mexican expatriates living in the United States of America. It examines the birth and development of Mexican migrant community in the United States and the change of homeland states’s attitude towards the Mexican diaspora community from a Foucauldian perspective. The main argument of this thesis is that; the deep rooted phenomenon of Mexican migration to the United States led to the formation of Mexican diaspora in the U.S. and there is a power relation between Mexican state and its diaspora in which the state has been governing its diaspora beyond borders, conducting the conduct of diaspora population through different techniques of governing. After rediscovering the population beyond, Mexican state developed a governmental rationality towards this population by using subjectification and biopolitical practices such as population building, establishing close bonds inside the community and app...