Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2n9c9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T02:24:45.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Immigration Research: A Conceptual Map

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Silvia Pedraza-Bailey
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A veritable boom in immigration research has taken place in the last 15 years. The purpose of this article is to provide a conceptual map, a way of presenting the issues and approaches that pertain to the topic, to guide us through the vast territory immigration research now encompasses. As this boundless growth in immigration research has occurred across the social sciences, this review of the literature is not intended to be exhaustive but merely illustrative of what sociologists, historians, and anthropologists have contributed. Since America is the quintessentially immigrant society, the focus is on American immigration, but the theoretical issues this review highlights can be applied equally well to other societies with histories of immigration and racial or ethnic relations, such as Great Britain or Brazil. Increasingly, immigration research is one of the topics where sociologists and historians meet (research on revolutions is another), although they meet in much the same fashion that one sometimes arrives at a party and is much surprised to find out who else is there. Our common research interests increasingly bring us together, although not without a fair amount of surprise and trepidation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990, pp. 43 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1990 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aldrich, H. E., Jones, T. P., and McEvoy, D. (1984) “Ethnie advantage and minority business development,” in Ward, R. and Jenkins, R. (eds.) Ethnic Communities in Business. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 189–210.Google Scholar
Barrera, M. (1979) Race and Class in the Southwest. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Blauner, R. (1969) “Internal colonialism and ghetto revolt.” Social Problems 16: 393–408.Google Scholar
Bodnar, J. (1985) The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bonacich, E. (1972) “A theory of ethnic antagonism: The split labor market.” American Sociological Review 37: 547-59.Google Scholar
Bonacich, E. (1973) “A theory of middleman minorities.” American Sociological Review 38: 583-94.Google Scholar
Bonacich, E., and Modell, J. (1980) The Economic Basis of Ethnic Solidarity: Small Business in the Japanese American Community. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Brettell, C. (1987) Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: The Demographic History of a Portuguese Parish. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bukowczyk, J. J. (1987) And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish-Americans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Burawoy, M. (1976) “The functions and reproduction of migrant labor: Comparative material from southern Africa and the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 81: 1050-87.Google Scholar
Castells, M. (1975) “Immigrant workers and class struggles in advanced capitalism: The Western European experience.” Politics and Society 5: 33–66.Google Scholar
Chiswick, B. R. (1985) “The labor market status of American Jews: Patterns and determinants,” in Van Horne, W. A. and Tonnesen, T. V. (eds.) Ethnicity and the Work Force. Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin System, American Ethnic Studies Coordinating Committee: 96–123.Google Scholar
Cinel, D. (1982) From Italy to San Francisco. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1986) “Social theory, social research, and a theory of action.” American Journal of Sociology 91: 1309-35.Google Scholar
Cowan, P. (1982) An Orphan in History: Retrieving a Jewish Legacy. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Diner, H. R. (1983) Erin’s Daughters in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, H. (1988) “Black Cubans in the United States: A case of conflicts between race and ethnicity.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, Miami, 27-30 October.Google Scholar
Feagin, J. R. (1978) Racial and Ethnic Relations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Ferree, M. M. (1979) “Employment without liberation: Cuban women in the United States.” Social Science Quarterly 60: 35–50.Google Scholar
Foner, N. E. (1978) Jamaica Farewell: Jamaican Migrants in London. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Frazier, E. F. (1957a) Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Frazier, E. F. (1957b) The Negro in the United States. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gabaccia, D. R. (1983) From Italy to Elizabeth Street. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Gabaccia, D. R. (1988a) “Migration and women in nineteenth-century Italy: A response to a decline in household production.” Paper presented at the thirteenth annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 3-6 November.Google Scholar
Gabaccia, D. R., ed. (1988b) “John Bodnar’s The Transplanted: A roundtable.” Social Science History 12: 217-68.Google Scholar
Gans, H. J. (1962) The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian Americans. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, M. M. (1964) Assimilation in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Greeley, A. M. (1982) “Immigration and religio-ethnic groups: A sociological reappraisal,” in Chiswick, B. R. (ed.) The Gateway: U.S. Immigration Issues and Policies. Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: 159-92.Google Scholar
Halter, M. (1988) “Cape Verdean-Americans: An historical perspective on race and ethnicity in the immigrant experience.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, Miami, 27-30 October.Google Scholar
Handlin, O. (1959) The Newcomers: Negroes and Puerto Ricans in a Changing Metropolis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Handlin, O. (1973 [1951]) The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migration That Made the American People. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Hansen, M. L. (1940a) The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, M. L. (1940b) The Immigrant in American History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Higham, J. (1955) Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, M. A. (1960) American Immigration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kamphoefner, W. D. (1987) The Westfalians: From Germany to Missouri. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kessner, T. (1977) The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, E. S. (1966) “A theory of migration.” Demography 3: 47–57.Google Scholar
Lieberson, S. (1980) A Piece of the Pie: Black and White Immigrants since 1980. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Light, I. (1972) Ethnic Enterprise in America: Business and Welfare among Chinese, Japanese, and Blacks. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Light, I. (1979) “Disadvantaged minorities in self-employment.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 20: 31–45.Google Scholar
Light, I. (1984) “Immigrant and ethnic enterprise in North America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 7: 195–216.Google Scholar
Marshall, T. (1978) “A history of discrimination requires compensation.” Dissenting opinion, Regents of California v. Allan Bakke, U.S.S.Ct.Google Scholar
Massey, D. S., Alarcón, R., Durand, J., and Gonzalez, H. (1987) Return to Aztlán: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Merton, R. K. (1968) “On sociological theories of the middle range,” in Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press: 39–72.Google Scholar
Morawska, E. T. (1985) For Bread with Butter: The Life-Worlds of East Central Europeans in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1890-1940. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muller, T., and Espenshade, T. J. (1985) The Fourth Wave: California’s Newest Immigrants. Washington: Urban Institute.Google Scholar
Noel, D. (1968) “A theory of the origin of ethnic stratification.” Social Problems 16: 157–72.Google Scholar
Ostergren, R. C. (1988) A Community Transplanted: The Trans-Atlantic Experience of a Swedish Immigrant Settlement in the Upper Middle West, 1835-1915. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Park, R. E. (1928) “Human migration and the marginal man.” American Journal of Sociology 33: 881-93.Google Scholar
Park, R. E. (1950a [1926]) “Our racial frontier on the Pacific,” in Race and Culture. Glencoe, IL: Free Press: 138—51.Google Scholar
Park, R. E. (1950b) Race and Culture. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Park, R. E. (1950C [1913]) “Racial assimilation in secondary groups,” in Race and Culture. Glencoe, IL: Free Press: 204-20.Google Scholar
Park, R. E., and Burgess, E. W. (1921) Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pedraza-Bailey, S. (1985) Political and Economic Migrants in America: Cubans and Mexicans. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Persons, S. (1987) Ethnic Studies at Chicago, 1905-45. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Portes, A. (1978a) “Immigrant aspirations.” Sociology of Education 51: 241–60.Google Scholar
Portes, A. (1978b) “Migration and underdevelopment.” Politics and Society 8: 1–48.Google Scholar
Portes, A. (1981) “Modes of structural incorporation and present theories of labor immigration,” in Kritz, M., Keely, C. B., and Tornasi, S. M. (eds.) Global Trends in Migration: Theory and Research on International Population Movements. New York: Center for Migration Studies: 279-97.Google Scholar
Portes, A., and Bach, R. L. (1985) Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Portes, A., and Ross, A. (1976) “Modernization for emigration: The medical brain drain from Argentina.” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 18: 395–422.Google Scholar
Reimers, D. M. (1983) “An unintended reform: The 1965 immigration act and third world immigration to the United States.” Journal of American Ethnic History 3:9–28.Google Scholar
Reimers, D. M. (1985) Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rouse, R. (1988) “Mexican migration and the social space of post-modernism.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Rumbaut, R. G. (1982) “Migration, adaptation, and health: A cross-cultural study of Indochinese refugees in the United States.” Research grant proposal.Google Scholar
Sanchez-Korrol, V. E. (1983) From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1917-1948. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Schermerhorn, R. A. (1978) Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. H. Jr., (1987) “Theory of action, dialectic, and history: Comment on Coleman.” American Journal of Sociology 93: 166-72.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. H. Jr., (1989) “Toward a theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transforma tion.” Working paper, Program on the Comparative Study of Social Trans formations, Departments of Sociology and History, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. (1927) The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 2 vols., New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Tilly, C., and Brown, C. H. (1967) “On uprooting, kinship, and the auspices of migration.” International Journal of Sociology 8: 139-64.Google Scholar
Tilly, C., and Brown, C. H. (1986) “Transplanted networks.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Tilly, L. (1988) “Gender, women’s history, and social history.” Paper presented at the thirteenth annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 3-6 November [published under the same title in Social Science History 13 (1989): 439-62].Google Scholar
Turner, F. J. (1920 [1893]) “The significance of the frontierin American history,” in The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt: 1–38.Google Scholar
Waldinger, R. (1986) Through the Eye of the Needle: Immigrants and Enterprise in New York’s Garment Trades. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Waldinger, R., Ward, R., and Aldrich, H. (1985) “Ethnic business and occupational mobility in advanced societies.” Sociology 19: 586-97.Google Scholar
Watson, J. L. (1975) Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: The Mans in Hong Kong and London. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1978 [1922]) “The distribution of power within the political community: Class, status, party,” in Roth, G. and Wittich, C. (eds.) Economy and Society, vol. 2. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press: 926-39.Google Scholar
Zolberg, A. R., Suhre, A., and Aguayo, S. (1989) Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar