Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective (America in the World, 19) - Hardcover

Gabaccia, Donna R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691134197 ISBN 13: 9780691134192

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Histories investigating U.S. immigration have often portrayed America as a domestic melting pot, merging together those who arrive on its shores. Yet this is not a truly accurate depiction of the nation's complex connections to immigration. Offering a brand-new global history of the subject, Foreign Relations takes a comprehensive look at the links between American immigration and U.S. foreign relations. Donna Gabaccia examines America’s relationship to immigration and its debates through the prism of the nation’s changing foreign policy over the past two centuries. She shows that immigrants were not isolationists who cut ties to their countries of origin or their families. Instead, their relations to America were often in flux and dependent on government policies of the time.

An innovative history of U.S. immigration, Foreign Relations casts a fresh eye on a compelling and controversial topic.

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From the Back Cover:

"No one has done more than Donna Gabaccia to develop a global framework for understanding the history of American immigration. In this book, she brings together her earlier work on international migration with a new interest in American foreign relations. The result is a bold, sweeping, and provocative recasting of America's encounter with immigrants past and present."--Gary Gerstle, author ofAmerican Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

"This innovative fusion of social and political history surveys the interaction between U.S. immigration, national politics, and foreign relations from colonial times to the present and from an international perspective. Gabaccia's erudition, lucid prose, and insights illuminate a fundamental process of modern American and global history with a subtlety and a sharpness that few can match."--Jose C. Moya, Barnard College

"This elegant and highly original book interweaves three kinds of "foreign relations": U.S. immigration policy, American trade and diplomacy, and migrants' own transnational commitments. Examining how the United States treated immigration as a domestic matter even while its global connections multiplied, Gabaccia unpacks a paradox that clarifies the nation's past and troubles its present.Foreign Relations will win many admirers and should enrich current immigration debates."--Carl Guarneri, author ofAmerica in the World: United States History in Global Context

"Gabaccia's fascinating book demonstrates the indissoluble intersections between U.S. national interest--industrialization in the 1880s, international trade, wartime need for labor--and immigrants' life projects and family relations. This thought-provoking synthesis of America's global role and immigrants' foreign relations is a must for historians, economists, and political scientists."--Dirk Hoerder, author ofCultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium

"Deftly weaving together immigrant narratives and policy histories, while bridging the domains of immigration, commerce, and diplomacy, Donna Gabaccia successfully connects the many--and traditionally separated--meanings of 'foreign relations.' Both accessible and sweeping in scope, this book points the way forward in the effort to globalize the study of U.S. immigration history."--Paul A. Kramer, author ofThe Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines

"Rooted in compelling stories, Foreign Relations broadens our understanding of immigration to the United States by showing the remarkable extent to which it has been shaped by foreign policy. Starting with the commercial treaties that initially regulated migration and continuing on to the global politics of recent mobility, Gabaccia brings immigration and foreign relations history together in groundbreaking ways."--Kristin Hoganson, author ofConsumers' Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865--1920.

"Spanning two centuries, Foreign Relations supplies fresh interpretations about American immigration history. Gabaccia focuses insightfully on the lives of individual migrants, including Americans living abroad, the role of economic policies and other aspects of globalization, and the persistent controversies that have roiled the domestic politics of immigration for more than a hundred years."--Barbara M. Posadas, Northern Illinois University

"Gabaccia offers a way for readers to situate U.S. migration history in an international context and to understand how the American experience is similar to yet different from the experience of other migrant-receiving countries. Putting the history of migration in the context of historical global trends, she gives globalization itself a history. A much-needed book from a preem

About the Author:

Donna R. Gabaccia is professor of history and former director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Her many books include We Are What We Eat and Immigration and American Diversity.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0691134197
• ISBN 13: 9780691134192
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296