Minnesota 2.0, a new digital archive created by the University of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center (IHRC), aims to document how 1.5 and 2nd generation Mexican, Somali, and Hmong youth use social networking sites to express their emerging sense of identity and social connection. The archive explores the youth's connections to Minnesota and the United States, to their parents and communities, to each other and to the homelands from which their families arrived. News Release, Explore this collection
Sheeko - Oral histories with Somali youth. This project was begun in Fall 2010 and is currently underway.
Heritage preservation activities:
]]>The IHRC earned a notice in the July 25 New York Times "EducationTimes" Supplement: Normally, that's cause for celebration here in Andersen Library.
Unfortunately, this time the IHRC (along with other research centers at the University of Minnesota) was noted as part of a supposedly disturbing trend--the proliferation of educational administrative costs--that (according to authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus) deflects resources from education.
]]> In their analysis, Hacker and Dreifus juxtapose the multiplication of educational administrators (84 coaches, "queer life coordinator," etc.) at the 2000-student Williams College in Massachusetts to the large numbers of research centers at the University of Minnesota with its 65,000 students.Can we really equate the two developments or find a threat to undergraduate education in either?
As a long time faculty member, I have certainly been aware of the growing numbers of educational administrators in all institutions of higher education. Administrative costs have generally outpaced the costs of faculty and instructional staff. But even Hacker and Dreifus are forced to admit that most research centers (including the IHRC) are usually funded by private endowments and grants and not by tuition or funding from state legislatures.
Are there more research centers now than in the past? Probably. But the IHRC was created in 1965, well before the supposed trend the authors identify.
The authors also call attention to the rise of what they call "educational executives." It's not a label I recognize in my own life as Director of the IHRC. I'm a half-time member of the faculty, responsible for teaching undergraduate and graduate students. A large part of my job furthermore is to integrate IHRC research into the university educational programs. In the five years since I arrived at the IHRC, our administrative staff has been cut almost in half, while the numbers of undergraduate students involved in our programs and research activities has increased tenfold.
"Isn't education the purpose of college?" the two authors conclude provocatively.
It certainly is. And the IHRC--like most Minnesota research centers--is actively involved in that education. On a research budget of about $80,000 this past year, twelve undergraduate researchers--some working for pay, some for academic credit--assisted the IHRC staff and faculty in doing original research on the lives of immigrants and refugees in the United States. The undergraduates helped create a new digital archive of Facebook writings by immigrant youth, sorted through rare foreign-language books and pamphlets, did background research for an exhibit on immigrant letter writing, analyzed newspaper content on nineteenth century immigration, and explored the lives of foreign-born from the Midwest.
Last I checked, every one of those undergraduates was happy to include "research" among the accomplishments of their undergraduate education at Minnesota. The undergraduates who participate in research teams at the 200 plus Minnesota research centers thus easily surpass the total number of undergraduates at Williams College. And that's an educational achievement we should celebrate!
]]>As someone who became a historian after doing an oral history with my grandparents while I was still in college, I still love reading about the experiences of everyday immigrants and refugees and their children. They provide a window into the contemporary issues and trends in immigrant America.
My students' subjects reflect the great diversity of Asian Americans in the 21st century, but also the unique regional characteristics of Asian Americans in the Midwest and in Minnesota. About one third of the papers focused on Hmong refugees or Hmong in America. Post-1965 immigrants from China, South Asia, the Philippines and adopted Korean Americans were also common. My international students from China interviewed other international students from China. A few interviewees were multiracial Asian Americans. Most projects focused on the migration narrative of why their subjects came to America as well as the immigrant narrative of finding success in the U.S. Common themes included: post-1965 opportunities to pursue education and professional training in the U.S., the escape from Communist persecution in Laos, adaptation to the U.S., struggles, hardship, and discrimination. But the interviews also documented refugees and immigrants who earned their GEDs, opened up nail salons, restaurants, and engineering firms, and who took pleasure in seeing their children pursue higher education. A significant change from years past is the decrease in the number of interviews involving grandparents and an increase in the number of projects on 1.5 and second generation Americans and on issues that reflect internal divisions and disparities within ethnic communities. Older siblings, cousins, and teachers who came to the U.S. as refugee children and who are now teachers, police officers, and counselors involved in the Hmong American community were common subjects. One student interviewed a Hmong lesbian activist whose parents refuse to acknowledge her sexual orientation. Another interviewed Hmong families with children with developmental disabilities who feel marginalized and ignored by mainstream Hmong social service organizations. Other students have begun to more critically analyze the ways in which history and family narratives are produced and why. One student focused on his family's "family nights" during which his parents tell and retell their reasons for coming to the United States and the hardships they faced once here as a way to inspire the second generation to achieve educational and economic success.
I finished grading at midnight last night (grades are due today!) and I am tired from a lack of sleep. But I have learned a lot about this snapshot of Asian Americans in the twenty-first century. I'm already looking forward to next year's papers.
By Erika Lee, Director, Asian American Studies Program; Associate Professor, Department of History and Asian American Studies, University of Minnesota.
Even though many people think that theories are useless in our everyday lives and that they just serve the interests of the academics, theories do matter. Theories about immigration policy are no exception.
]]> Theories about immigration policy help us understand the factors that influence politicians' decisions but they also make the world more comprehensible. Without simplification and conceptualization, and without some regularity and patterns, it would be more difficult to understand how the world works now and what is likely to happen in the future. In addition, politicians can shape their decisions as well as their policy goals based on the alternatives offered to them by different theories in all aspects of politics.Eytan Meyers offers a good comparison of the main theories in immigration policy in his article "Theories of International Immigration Policy - A comparative Analysis", published in the International Migration Review in 2002. In the article, Myers compares the six most influential theories of international migration: Marxism, realism, liberalism, the "national identity" approach, domestic politics, and institutionalism. He examines pros and cons of each theory in a very clear manner and even though the article appeared in an academic journal, Meyers has a writing style that enables readers outside of the academic community to understand his message. The aim of Meyers' article is to fill a hole in the academic debate; even though it is well understood that immigration policy shapes immigration patterns, the theories behind these policies are not well defined and not compared with each other.
Among other things I found to be intriguing in this article is the fact that the six most influential theories are the same ones that can be found in the theories of international security. However, in international security the six theories presented are usually placed inside only three different theory groups; realism, liberalism and constructivism. Treating each of these approaches as their own theory is one of the advantages of Myers' article. It enables him to discuss and compare them with more depth. However, as Myers points out, there is no one theory that can explain everything. Therefore trying to study and understand the theories can feel frustrating and seem pointless to both readers of the article and to the politicians who are supposed to use them as a background to their policy decisions. In addition, and probably due to the limited space of the article, Meyers does not offer specific examples of how politicians use these theories as a decision making tool.
By Anna-Maria Nykänen, Bachelor of Political Science, Good Governance Consortium Exchange Student in the University of Minnesota.
From mid-April to mid-May 2010, selected students from Professor Katherine Fennelly's course "PA5452: Immigration and Public Policy" are sharing thoughts on their readings with IHRC readers.
Even after reading Samuel Huntington's cautionary "The Hispanic Challenge," an excerpt from his 2004 book Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity, I am confident that the dominant American identity is here to stay.
]]> In the article, Huntington warns the nation's citizenry that as a result of thriving Latin American "political and linguistic enclaves," America faces the imminent threat of cultural divide and confrontation over the fundamental identity of the country. He goes so far as to say that Hispanics have the potential to "challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and educational systems" and foresees resistance in the form of a new "White Nationalism."As a multiculturalist and hispanohablante, I was inclined to react to Huntington's argument with the following, callow response: So what? Why is this impending cultural transformation a problem?
A quotation presented by Huntington as evidence for burgeoning Hispanic influence, however, offers a different insight. Huntington cites a Hispanic man explaining his situation in Miami. "Here, we are members of the power structure," he remarks. This man's use of the descriptor "here" discredits Huntington's generalizations about the future of the American identity.
It is an unfortunate truth that outside of a handful of cities like Miami, Hispanics are not members of the national power structure. Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the country. Still, Hispanics make up only five percent of the 111th Congress of the United States; there is one Hispanic governor in the country. White, Christian men continue to dominate our political system and business community despite notable progress in terms of racial, gender, and religious equality. America is not a nation of rich, white men. Why, then, are our representatives this way? Clearly, influential America has not strayed too far from its Anglo-Protestant foundations.
Huntington affirms that the reconquista of the Southwest United States is underway, that Miami is the prototype, and that this region could become the country's Quebec. He fails, however, to recognize that numbers do not equal power, and that in this country, it is power that matters.
By Kristen Lynn, Master of Public Policy Candidate, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.
From mid-April to mid-May 2010, selected students from Professor Katherine Fennelly's course "PA5452: Immigration and Public Policy" are sharing thoughts on their readings with IHRC readers.
]]>First-hand accounts like Enrique's story, told in There's No Jose Here: Following the Hidden Lives of Mexican Immigrants (Nation Books 2006), by journalist Gabriel Thompson, can humanize the issue of immigration for legislators and the broader community.
]]> There's No Jose Here follows the harrowing experience of one Mexican immigrant family living in New York City. Forced to live in a dilapidated apartment overrun by rats and roaches, while working multiple jobs at sub-minimum wages in order to pay even for such abysmal conditions, Enrique's family is hardly living the American Dream.Enrique, the main character, was born in Cuicatlan, Mexico. His father left to work in the US when Enrique was just two years old. Enrique suffered the abandonment of his father, yet followed in his footsteps, arriving undocumented in 1986. Enrique and his father became citizens through amnesty in the late 1980s.
Life in the US was anything but easy for Enrique and his family. Enrique's first daughter suffered from lead poisoning, leaving her mentally challenged and eventually pregnant at 14. The substandard living conditions in which they are forced to live inspires Enrique to become an activist; his persistence leads to passage of a tenant protection law to abolish lead paint in New York City apartments.
Enrique directly addresses the issue of undocumented immigrants several times in the book. He and second generation Mexican-American, Manuel, are arguing over the issue when Enrique asks, "What do you think your parents did? If they hadn't crossed, you would be the same as me... What are people supposed to do to survive? Hay que comer (p. 134)."
There are many statistics about immigrants--especially undocumented immigrants--in the US today. But if legislators do not take stories such as this one into account, immigration policy will continue to breed exploitation of undocumented immigrants. It will not address the life-threatening journey Mexicans are forced to take so they can feed their children. Without putting a face to the crisis, how can legislators truly create policies to give everyone--citizens and newly arrived--the opportunity to thrive in the United States?
By Molly Illes, MPA Candidate, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.
From mid-April to mid-May 2010, selected students from Professor Katherine Fennelly's course "PA5452: Immigration and Public Policy" are sharing thoughts on their readings with IHRC readers.
That is the message of Phillipe Legraine in his interview with the New York Time's Freakonomics blog. Moral viewpoints drive policy debates across a wide spectrum of issue areas, and immigration is no different.
]]> Legraine makes convincing economic and moral cases for open migration (Melissa Lafsky, "The Case for Open Immigration: A Q&A with Phillipe Legraine," October 17, 2007). Why, he asks, is it acceptable for migration across national boundaries to be limited to the rich and skilled workers of the world? Migration both between and within nations is one of the most effective means to better the lives of the poor. We all agree that it is good for Americans to migrate throughout the nation in search of better opportunities. Why does this same principle not apply to Mexicans? Why should their human concerns be worth any less consideration?Economically, Legraine says that removing immigration controls could more than double the size of the world's economy. Further, the diversity engendered by immigration helps to fuel the innovation that keeps economies strong. Look no further, he says, than the founders of high-tech giants Google, Intel, eBay, or Yahoo!, all of whom immigrated to the United States as children. Of course, this viewpoint implies fully open borders, which will not happen anytime in the foreseeable future. Fair enough.
Legraine's moral case for immigration is what hits this reader hardest however. Short of fully open borders, a new viewpoint that stops viewing immigrants as apart from ourselves, as foreigners, but instead recognizes their common humanity would have very real policy implications. Immigrants would be treated as members of families, not simply as workers, and family reunification would be made more accessible. Immigrants would be seen as members of communities, not as invaders of American space, and more active integration polices would be proposed. Immigrants would be seen as the contributors to the economy rather than as drains on social services or job thieves, and work visas could be made more easily available.
The moral viewpoint of law and order has to this point prevailed in discussions of immigration. Perhaps it is time to push forward more prominently an alternative morality that acknowledges the accident of birth that determined that I would be prosperous and others would be left needing, and that the interests of the rich are not worth more than the interests of the poor. Pie in the sky? Probably. But nothing ever changed by doing nothing.
By Walker Bosch, Graduate Teaching Assistant and Master of Public Policy Candidate, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.
From mid-April to mid-May 2010, selected students from Professor Katherine Fennelly's course "PA5452: Immigration and Public Policy" are sharing thoughts on their readings with IHRC readers.
]]>Plead guilty and the U.S. government will not charge you with the felony of identity theft, but rather offer a "bargain" of 6 months in prison followed by deportation. Plead not guilty, request a trial, wait several months in jail for a trial, and then face the prospect of 2 years in prison. . . followed by deportation.
]]> If you were one of the 390 undocumented immigrants working at a plant in Postville, Iowa on May 12, 2008, these would be your options. Although using a false social security card carries a jail sentence of 0-6 months, the careful manipulation of circumstances and distortion of congressional intent allowed the federal government to charge the Postville detainees with identity theft which carries a two year jail sentence. Yet, as author Erik Camayd-Freixas explains in his article, "Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History: A Personal Account" (2008), less than .5% of the detainees may have been guilty of identity theft.Freixas asks why the U.S. government would spend tax payer dollars to imprison and provide legal counsel for detainees held under false charges rather than immediately send them home. His investigation led him to conclude that this activity has been undertaken to justify the expansiveness of the DHS budget - it was a means of creating work. Last fall, I attended an information session for a DHS fellows program. DHS now has 16 offices and most are only vaguely, if at all, related to border enforcement. Can we hope that this expansion into other fields of tremendous national interest and importance will reduce the urge to manipulate U.S. law and unnecessarily persecute undocumented immigrants?
Yet, it is too easy to simply demonize ICE, immigration judges and other immigration officials. Throughout the article, Freixas subtly suggests that we do not need more reasonable executors of the law, but rather a more reasonable law to be executed. We need a system of accountability that assures that appropriate authorities are interpreting the law according to constitutionally defined roles and that publicly-funded assignments are justified by potential public benefit, and not to retroactively justify a budget.
Just prior to his deportation, one Guatemalan arrested in Postville summed up the paradox nicely when he said, "God knows you are just doing your job to support your families, and that job is to keep me from supporting mine."
By Kelly M. Anderson, Master of Public Policy Candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.
From mid-April to mid-May 2010, selected students from Professor Katherine Fennelly's course "PA5452: Immigration and Public Policy" are sharing thoughts on their readings with IHRC readers.
Even though I am a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, and don't really think of myself as an immigrant, I find the cultural dynamics described in fiction written by immigrants to be very familiar.
This is how an Indian man who has migrated to the United States describes his life in Jhumpa Lahiri's short story "The Third and Final Continent". I have felt a similar sense of bewilderment when interviewing refugees who have arrived in Finland or when reading accounts by victims of trafficking for prostitution. Their experiences of leaving their war-torn homelands and traveling across the globe with human smugglers have sometimes been beyond my imagination and understanding. Yet I have wanted to hear their stories, engage with them, and share them with a wider audience through my artworks.
Since my artwork and research began to circle around the topics of migration and dislocation, I have found myself constantly immersed in fiction dealing with the same themes. Some of the most memorable and powerful novels I have read in the last few years are - to mention just a few - What is the What by Dave Eggers, Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories, Edwidge Danticat's biographical narratives of the Haitian diaspora, and Dinaw Mengestu's melancholy novel about an Ethiopian immigrant in Washington DC: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.
But only after I moved to Minneapolis a year ago did the themes of my work and the fiction I was reading start to feel strangely familiar and somewhat more personal. When reading Jhumpa Lahiri's stories last January I remember recognizing her characters' deep feelings of isolation and disconnectedness - not to mention their bewilderment and frustration with the American way of life. Many of the immigrants in her stories are, like myself, educated middle class people coming to work in American universities.
I finally started to accept my friend's suggestion that in some ways the topics of my art and research could also be rooted in my own life history: living in different countries; experiencing persistent feelings of exclusion and not-belonging; and facing the as yet unresolved question of 'where is home?' I stubbornly protested her idea of my work being based in any way on personal experience, and pointed out that I belong to the privileged elite of globalization; I am an educated western citizen who travels and moves around according to my own free will, and I always have the option to return to my native country. Ignoring my objections my friend calmly continued that even though my socioeconomic and cultural situation is very different, the psychical experience of moving to another country is not necessarily completely dissimilar. Maybe she was right after all.
As the character in Jhumpa Lahiri's story mentions, there is nothing extraordinary in the experience of migration. Whether it is voluntary or dictated by circumstances, every year hundreds of millions of people cross borders and move around the globe. But as Sara Ahmed has pointed out, "[t]he question is not simply about who travels, but when, how and under what circumstances?" It is paramount to understand the historical and political causes and effects of patterns of migration and dislocation.
However, maybe art and fiction can shed light not only on the historical and political conditions of migration, but also give us insights into the inner lives of people who have experienced it. I still maintain my position in emphasizing the difference between my migratory experiences and those who have left their countries fearing for their lives or to escape poverty. Nevertheless, perhaps the acknowledgment of a certain, albeit limited, shared human experience through art - whether it is fictional narratives, film or visual art - will help me gain a deeper understanding of my research topic, which, although so commonplace in today's world, is at times still beyond my imagination.
By Minna Rainio, Visual Artist and Researcher, Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Art, University of Minnesota.
]]>In the Minnesota 2.0 project I have been cataloging Facebook groups that relate to a Mexican or Mexican American identity. I am interested in how the media is used by different groups of people and as a part of this project I have learned how youth use Facebook and how non-Mexicans view Mexico.
]]> In the first two months of research I have seen many fan pages where most group members are from the United States or European countries and are talking about how much they love Mexico. There are also many fan pages where the members are Mexican and are talking about how much they love Mexico. There are various groups and fan pages dedicated to Mexican restaurants. This speaks to the fact that the Mexican culture and identity has been commodified. Many of the most active members in groups such as "Sayulita, Mexico" are not Mexican and the way that they see the culture is quite different than the Mexicans that are from Sayulita. Many Mexicans have posted on the wall that the way the tourists see them as a "sleepy" town is incorrect. This is important because, although there may be thousands of groups where white Americans claim to love Mexico for being authentic, what these white Americans may love is less "authentic" and is instead more the result of a commodified image of Mexico.As I continue my research I hope to hear more from the Mexican and Mexican American community rather than the white Euro-American community talking about Mexico. Groups with words like "Mexicano" in the title will surely yield better results. There are groups like "Soy Mexicano y no tengo influenza!!!!" "I am Mexican and I don't have the flu" and "un Mexicano sin tacos...no es mexicano" "a Mexican without tacos...is no Mexican." These kinds of groups bring up what it means to be Mexican and I look forward to researching more fully into this aspect of how Mexican and Mexican Americans use Facebook.
Beatriz Carrillo is an IHRC Undergraduate Research Assistant.
As part of my research with Minnesota 2.0, I have been examining and documenting Hmong Facebook groups and fan pages. Despite being Hmong myself, I am learning more things about Hmong youth identity.
In particular, with the research I have done, I am finding central ideas that are present and discussed in the majority of the larger Hmong Facebook groups. In the "Hmong of Today" group, education is one theme of discussion that appears frequently. There are agreements and disagreements amongst the members to why Hmong youth are failing or succeeding in academics. Ideas of culture and financial problems seem to be two recurring explanations offered by the members. These same concerns about education can also be seen in many other Facebook groups.
As a young Hmong male and part of the Hmong youth who are searching for a more solid Hmong identity, there are comments expressed by the Facebook group members that I agree and disagree with. Most of the time, whether for or against a certain issue, I can see why the person chose to say what he/she did because Hmong youth are creating and re-creating their identity, trying to negotiate what it means to be Hmong. For example, ideas of Hmong culture are an important and controversial issue that I agree hinders and/or motivates Hmong youth to succeed in the American educational system. Since the American and Hmong cultural values are very different, the cultural expectations from the Hmong youth individuals vary. In the process of trying to meet the expectations of these two distinct cultures, Hmong youth are met with ambiguity and failure, and many Hmong do not make it in the educational system. In exploring these and other issues through my continued research with Minnesota 2.0, I hope to gain a greater understanding of Hmong youth identity and contribute to the discussions and shaping of that Hmong identity.
Suk Her is an IHRC Undergraduate Research Assistant.
The "Minnesota 2.0" project has allowed us to look at Facebook from a different standpoint, and analyze the complexity within it. We are able to see that young immigrant youth of Somali descent are actively engaging in sharing their stories via social networking sites such as Facebook.
Yet we are not just researchers that stand on the sidelines and wait for things to analyze in this project: we are also participants. All of us have engaged in Facebook discussions, something that is unique about this research project. For example, Salma wrote on a Facebook Fan Page entitled "The Ugly Towers in Minneapolis with all the colors on them." The buildings it condescendingly refers to are those of the Cedar Riverside plaza, a neighborhood that she volunteers and works in. Even more disheartening, though, were the comments of young people attending various colleges and universities referring to the buildings as "crack stacks," and even at times calling them "Somali projects." Through interaction with some of the individuals who posted on the page, they were able to realize the hate that was evident in their writings. Many were simply trying to be sarcastic, but soon realized that they were doing so at the expense of putting down an entire ethnic group.
In addition to these topics, we have read other young Somalis' views on subjects that range from peace in our motherland to preservation of identity to succeeding in school. It has been extremely interesting to see how people can be so far in distance yet share so many things in common. We are both excited to be part of such a dynamic and important project.
Salma Hussein and Mustafa Jumale are IHRC Undergraduate Research Assistants.
Work on the Minnesota 2.0 project is a very different example of "What I'm Reading." Begun in September of 2009, Minnesota 2.0 aims to ...
]]> ... document and understand how social networking sites have opened ways for 1.5 and 2nd generation Mexican, Somali, and Hmong youth to express their emerging sense of identity and social connection - to Minnesota and the U.S., to their parents and communities, to each other, and to the homelands from which their families arrived.The students involved in the project--six undergraduates as well as well the two of us--have spent the majority of our time "reading" Facebook. We are focusing on the more publicly-accessible Fan Pages and Groups of the three ethnic groups, and how themes such as the following are discussed and debated:
• Ethnic identity and pride, as well as connections across a given diaspora
• Gender and sexuality
• Discussions about language as it relates to cultural and ethnic identity
• Education
• The struggles of living life as an immigrant and refugee
• Homeland politics
• Religion
• Americanization and assimilation
The research we are doing overturns assumptions that social networking sites are ephemeral time-wasters that distract youth from more meaningful pursuits. Instead, we have found that participating in discussions on social networking, while potentially a means of distraction, are also crucial spaces of identity formation. Our research has also shown a more popular culture-oriented conceptions of these ethnic groups, whether it be discussions around the Hmong actors in Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, the huge number of Groups and Fan Pages dedicated to Mexican restaurants and vacations, and, on a more depressing note, the often vicious jokes and stereotypes imagined through Somalia. Overall, Minnesota 2.0 has shown how much Facebook is a medium of connection, not only amongst the profiles and pages we've looked at, but also amongst those working on the project.
In the next three blog entries, the undergraduate research assistants working with us on the project will write entries detailing their initial research with Somali, Hmong, and Mexican Facebook materials. As you will find out from their entries, Facebook and other instances of Web 2.0 are a dynamic and wide-ranging platform for immigrant and refugee youth to shape their own identities as well as connect with other youth--and even some adults--across the Twin Cities and across the world.
Andy Wilhide is a Ph.D. Student in History, and Justin Schell is IHRC Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature.
In debates about immigration, Americans prefer watery metaphors--of waves or streams of migrants washing into the United States. Maybe that's why so many imagine that their government can simply "turn off the tap." World historians explain why such faucets don't always work.
]]> This week my graduate students and I are reading world historians. The scale of their analyses is breathtaking. See one effort to re-tell the history of the earth and its peoples in a seven-minute video: http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/movies/flash_large.htm. A focus on the long-term history of human movements is equally humbling.Historian Patrick Manning for example tells the story of how, in 30,000 years ago or so, "homo sapiens" walked out of Africa, along rivers and coasts, through mountain valleys and across vast plains to populate every corner of Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Manning stops short of describing humans as a mobile species, although in his book Migration in World History, he distinguishes humans' cross-cultural movements to the migratory habits of birds and wildebeests. He also suggests that migration may be the most important source of innovation and change in human history.
Dirk Hoerder too portrays a world on the move in every era and indeed every decade. Hoerder demonstrates how normal migration has been and how many human beings have expected to move at some point in their lives. The Lucasssen brothers, Leo and Jan, put to rest a common assumption that it was modernization that transformed "naturally" sedentary people into restless migrants. And historian Adam McKeown dismisses the notion that Europeans have been uniquely mobile or innovative for he documents Asians as equally restless, whether in crossing the Pacific or expanding relentlessly into every corner of their own vast continent.
It's hard to read the world historians without forming a graphic image of the earth as a kind of teeming anthill, where people are constantly venturing off in one direction or another, for shorter or longer times, in search of food, of adventure, of opportunity, of material comfort or of a better meal, of education, of work or of safety. Historians like Hoerder do acknowledge the emotional stresses, the separations from loved ones, the cultural shocks and even the exploitation and oppression that can accompany migration. But almost no one can read these world histories of migration without questioning whether most humans would prefer a sedentary life or whether barriers to movement can easily be erected to "stem the tide." On the contrary, if humans are a mobile species, and if mobility is the engine of development, why have so many nations around the world sought to restrict it? That is the question world historians pose.
When I speak to Jewish audiences about the contemporary politics of immigration, I often lean on the historical parallels between contemporary migrations and Jewish experience of diaspora, in which Jews have so often been the strangers.
]]> Recently, at a forum sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, I invoked Michael Chabon's wonderful diasporic novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union. In the novel, Chabon imagines that the FDR administration, rather than ignoring the coming storm of the holocaust as it did, granted the Jewish people a lease to land in Sitka, Alaska. As a result, far fewer Jews perished in Europe, and at the time of the novel's setting, the 1970s, Yiddish is a thriving, creolized language, with wonderful specific vernaculars, like the cop talk that graces its pages.In my talk, I explained that the situation of contemporary migrants from Mexico and Central America is in some ways very much like that of European Jewish refugees from Europe in the late 1930s. While Mexican and Central American migrants flee the economic devastation of free trade, rather than a genocidal regime, their collective survival is nonetheless at stake.
Presented in this way, the parallel generally goes over well. Many in the Jewish community recognize the situation of contemporary migrants as eliciting a specifically Jewish sympathy. As an issue, immigration has progressive currency in contemporary Jewish communities, specifically because it is a diasporic issue: it addresses Jews as wanderers, rather than nationals. So a conversation about migration avoids the third rail of Israel, which has so often, since 1948, divided the Jewish left, Jews from the left.
This is instructive to me as an im/migration historian. When contemporary Jewish communities remember ourselves as migrants and wanderers, we conjure a history easily shared with other communities, not one that rests on our connection with a particularly imagined homeland. Allegiances to the homeland, argues Matthew Frye Jacobson, were part of the constitution of American ethnic identity for Jewish, Polish and Irish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (2002).
The creation of ethnic identities has been of central concern to historians of immigration. But perhaps, as we move towards a transnational history of immigration, it is time to move away from ethnic exceptionalism, towards a comparative history of migration. Such a history recognizes cultural specificity and historical exigency, as well as the diversity within ethnic communities. At the same time, such a history speaks powerfully to our current moment of global transformation and displacement.