Immigrants in the Far West

The product of a 2011 conference at Brigham Young University’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, this anthology addresses the neglect of immigrant histories in the West. Although several essays focus on Mexican Americans and one addresses Japanese immigrants, the majority is devoted to Europeans, so often treated simply as “whites” in western history. The first section, “Who We Were and Who They Thought We Should Be,” is comprised of seven case studies with varied takes on immigrant identities and societal expectations. Brett Myhren uses three pre-1841 accounts to explore complex loyalties and multidirectional assimilation in Mexican California. Also centering on immigrant identities are D. Seth Horton’s analysis of two Mexican American novels, Ryan Dearinger’s study of how Mormon railroad workers’ experiences simultaneously reinforced insular ties and fed identification with the American expansionist project, and Matt Basso’s work on ethnic identities and social structures in two Montana mining towns. Katherine Benton-Cohen’s analysis of the Dillingham Commission’s study of Japanese immigrants balances immigrant identities and societal expectations. Here, however, one wishes for more focus on the Issei views rather than on Western anti-Nikkei sentiment as a key driver of federal immigration policy—a connection first made by Roger Daniels in The Politics of Prejudice (1962). The section rounds out with Anne M. Martinez’s study of Catholic “civilizing missions” toward Mexican immigrants and Eileen V. Wallis’s examination of Americanization efforts in diverse Los Angeles public schools.

Americanization · Ethnic group · Expansionism · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Writ · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Law