What factors provide for successful integration of peasant immigrants into industrial society? The Borders of Integration offers detailed examination of one historical example of crossing cultural boundaries and entering urban, industrial environments. The author selected a sample of Polish migrants of predominantly peasant background who settled in the mining regions of the United States and Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the time, both countries were undergoing rapid urbanization and industrialization as well as consolidation of nation-states following the end of the Civil War in the United States (1865) and the reunification of Germany in 1871.

Although it may not be the first attempt to use comparative study approach to researching Polish miners’ experience, the closest being Pien Versteegh's studies (1994, 2005), this book offers a novel and well-poised approach. McCook decided to choose two Polish immigrant communities in north-eastern Pennsylvania and in the Ruhr Valley. Although the latter attracted almost twice as many Polish peasants in the selected period, by 1914, approximately 25 per cent of miners in each of these regions were of Polish origin. The migration push-and-pull factors in both cases were similar. The Poles arriving to work in mines and related industries in both areas were faced with comparable workplace hostility and racialized discrimination (Pole–Catholic–wage labourer). The author's choice was not however solely based on the Poles’ visible presence in the mining regions of Europe and the United States. The most intriguing observation was that the process of immigrant integration in the two similar environments produced different outcomes. In the 1920s, two-thirds of workers of Polish origin left the Ruhr (for Poland, or France) and the remainder quickly assimilated. In the same period, the vast majority of Polish miners in Pennsylvania decided against returning to Poland or migrating elsewhere, the eventual integration being completed a generation later. As the two regions differed in the forms of organization of industry and markets, in levels of governmental intervention in the economy and cultural matters, and also in the strength of civil society, it was in these areas that the author decided to look for answers as to why the two integration processes produced different outcomes.

McCook, a senior lecturer in history and politics at Leeds Metropolitan University, conducted his research in the American, German and Polish archives, examined the ethnic and local press of the three regions involved and studied available printed sources on the topic. He set out to discover the parameters of inclusion, and found that the level of integration depended on the extent to which the immigrants could actively fight for their rights within the public sphere (labour strikes, unionization, the establishment of ethnic organizations and control over church matters). McCook argues that integration was conditional on Poles engaging in social conflicts within the boundaries of civil society. In his interpretation, conflict resolution was a path to integration. In other words, immigrants had to be politically active in order to be able to negotiate their contact with the native population on their terms. Furthermore, the chances for integration increased with immigrant opportunities to become economic stakeholders (ownership of homes and small businesses, financial investment in mutual-aid societies, banks, newspapers, even the parishes). One of the key observations found in this volume is that ‘ethnicization aided the adaptation’. Initially faced with discrimination and isolation, the immigrants turned inwards, creating their ethnic organizations which thus provided them with stability and the means to become active in the public sphere. The transnational social sphere and the pluralistic identity that they created further paved the way towards defining the ethnic minority's social role and place.

This volume is the twelfth publication in the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series which publishes original works on immigrant and ethnic experience as well as on the history of Poland. Although the author did not escape minor mistakes in spelling of names (Franciszek, Grodno) and missed few diacritical signs, the overall impression is one of a well-organized, accessibly written text with major findings well supported and clearly indicated. All in all, McCook's dissertation – recipient of the Stanley and Sophie Kulczycki Prize – is an opportune study of immigrant inclusion and recognition within a context of transition from peasant to urban environment. This study offers an important lesson that the path towards successful integration includes immigrants’ economic, political and cultural participation in the public sphere. Only through a shared cultural community in which both the immigrants become similar to the host society, and the native populations undergo changes prompted by immigration, are the barriers to integration removed. Based on the Polish experience in north-eastern Pennsylvania and Ruhr, it becomes obvious that the receiving state must tolerate a degree of social conflict, which contributes to breaking down the mental barriers separating ethnic and social classes.