The Massachusetts Historical Society | Events

Immigration scholars from throughout the U.S. will gather to discuss a question of compelling current interest for American society: What is new about recent immigration?

This program will investigate how the substantial immigration of recent decades has transformed our nation politically, economically, demographically, and culturally.

Experts point to the 1965 adoption of the Hart-Celler Act, which replaced national quotas with priorities that emphasized education, jobs, and professional skills, as the inception of the modern immigration regime. Since 1968, the provisions of the act have governed immigration at a time when the subject has been intensely controversial.

The end of the Vietnam War triggered a series of waves of refugees from Southeast Asia. Subsequent migrations brought large numbers of arrivals from the Caribbean, Central America, South America, South Asia, East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Americans' image of their nation as a melting pot has hardly been more apt than it is today, although the increasingly polyglot quality of American culture is deeply troubling to many of our countrymen and women, especially after 9/11.

This program includes experts on recent immigration from a number of fields including history, political science, sociology, economics, anthropology, and folklore, who will make their scholarship available to registrants in advance. The sessions will consist of formal comments followed by open discussion of these pre-circulated papers.

Our goal? To understand not only the current state of U.S. immigration but how we arrived at it, an inherently historical subject. We want to ascertain what is truly new about the new immigration, both documented and undocumented, how it compares to earlier migration waves, and what its consequences have been.

Program

Registered users may login to download papers:

Thursday, April 7

6:00-7:00 P.M. Keynote Address
Presented with the generous support of The Lowell Institute
- Maria Cristina Garcia, Cornell University, U.S. Refugee Policy in the Post-Cold War Era: Balancing Humanitarian Obligations and Security Concerns
7:00-8:00 P.M. Reception

Friday, April 8

8:00-9:15 A.M. Registration and continental breakfast
9:15-9:30 A.M. Welcome
9:30-11:30 A.M. Immigration, Religion, and Identity
- Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College, and Kristen Lucken, Boston University, Managing Geography, Managing Morality: The Religious Lives of the Second Generation
- Kristen Lucken, Boston University, Bosnians in Boston: Ethnic and Religious Identity Maintenance in a Post-Migration Setting
- Veronica Savory-McComb, Boston University, The Ties that Bind: Kinship and Religion among Nigerian Communities in the U.S.
- Chair and comment: Jacob Olupona, Harvard University
11:30 A.M. -1:00 P.M. Lunch (on your own)
1:00-3:00 P.M. Immigration and Geography
- Lynn Johnson, Boston College, The Metropolitan Diaspora: Immigrant Settlement in Greater Boston
- Mary Odem and Irene Browne, Emory University, Transforming Race/Transforming Place: Latino Immigration in Metropolitan Atlanta
- Dominic Vitiello, University of Pennsylvania, The Politics of Design in Puerto Rican, Chinese, and Arab Philadelphia
- Chair and comment: Marilyn Halter, Boston University
3:00-3:15 P.M. Break
3:15-5:15 P.M. Immigration, Work, and the Economy
- Thomas Adams, Tulane University, Economic Crisis, Service Work, and the Problem of the Undocumented Worker in the 1970s
- Marc S. Rodriguez, University of Notre Dame, Mexican Immigrants and Tejano Migrants: Then and Now
- Chair and comment: Paul Watanabe, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Saturday, April 9

8:00-9:00 A.M. Registration and continental breakfast
9:00-11:00 AM Immigration and Politics
- Caroline Brettell, Southern Methodist University, Engaging the Public Sphere: The Civic and Political Incorporation of Post-1965 Indian Immigrants
- Carolyn Wong, Carleton College, Becoming Citizens: The Meaning of Political Membership for the Hmong in America.
- Xiao-huang Yin, Michigan State University, The Role of Chinese Immigrants and Chinese Americans in U.S.-Chinese Relations
- Chair and comment: Christopher Capozzola, MIT
11:00-11:15 A.M. Break
11:15 A.M.-1:15 P.M. Immigration, Gender, and the Family
- Vibha Bhalla, Bowling Green State University, Asian Indian Migration: A Gendered Analysis
- Nancy Foner, Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Intergenerational Relations in Immigrant Families: Past and Present
- Judith McDonnell and Cileine de Lourenco, Bryant University, 'audades' and Returning: Brazilian Women Speak of Here and There
- Chair and comment: Nazli Kibria, Boston University

Registration

The papers under discussion at this conference will be available at the Society’s website approximately one month before the program.

April 7-9, 2011