Foreign Relations

People in the home countries of past and present immigrants to the United States are America's foreign relations. These relationships have created and continue to create, as Donna R. Gabaccia writes in the introduction to her new book, “transnational linkages created ‘from below’ by immigrants” (p. 1). She demonstrates how these “immigrant foreign relations” are related to American foreign policies “created ‘from above’ by the federal government” (ibid.). For students of American immigration, much of Gabaccia's account of the history of this immigration may cover familiar ground, but her discussions are refreshingly new and enlightening. Her project is to open immigration history—as it relates to domestic and foreign policy history—to new methods of study. That immigration history is created by immigrants may seem obvious, but in standard accounts and surveys the immigrants are largely absent except as statistics and rather general observations and analyses. By deftly weaving the stories of individuals and families into her discussion—not so much as illustrations of a generalized story as the basic elements of this story—Gabaccia has opened new windows onto the history of American immigration. One important thread in her discussion is convincingly argued in these life stories: immigrants do not suddenly become Americans without ties to former identities, but subtle relationships between Americans and former home countries may be sustained over many decades and several generations as demonstrated by her use of the stories of families from China and Germany. Another eye-opening aspect of Gabaccia's study of immigration is her introduction of “American emigrants,” “investors, businessmen, and missionaries [who]—much like immigrants to the United States—traveled abroad in pursuit of private agendas and interests” and who “never dreamed of assimilating or trying to adapt to the local culture” (pp. 79, 91

China · Family reunification · Immigration · Immigration policy · Political science · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Race, History, and American Society

• A History That "Dares Not Speak Its Name"? Atlantic History, Global History and the Modern Atlantic Space

  Open Access•Marco Mariano•Journal of Transnational American…•2017

  Add to list