By Andy Urban and Elliott Young The United States is on track to incarcerate more immigrants this year for longer than ever before. Women, men, children, infants, and entire families have been caught in the jaws of the immigrant detention…
Immigration historians in the news 2018
Immigration, the hallmark issue of the Trump presidency, was front page news all year. Assaults on birthright citizenship, Trump’s family separation policy, a new proposed public charge rule, the asylum ban, the lowest refugee cap ever, fearmongering the migrant caravan,…
Gerson Rosales, “Salvadoreños in Michigan: Deliverance activism in the Midwest during the 1980s”
In my research, I discovered the stories of two teenagers who arrived at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, MI in late fall 1984. The chilly Michigan autumn must have been the coldest weather they had ever felt. Their arrival…
Ashley Johnson Bavery, “Borderlands in North America: A Selective Bibliography”
This bibliography supplements a historiographical essay published in the summer 2018 issue of the Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter (available now to IEHS members and freely available online after a one-year delay). Conceptual Works Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New…
Stacy Fahrenthold, “Resources for Migration and Refugee Histories of the Middle East”
Resources for Migration and Refugee Histories of the Middle East I have developed this list of readings from the syllabus from my course, Migrants and Refugees in the Modern Middle East. The course meets weekly and is arranged around a…
Alexander M. Stephens, “Wet Foot, Dry Foot: the Mariel boatlift and the dangerous persistence of memory”
In one of its final acts, the Obama Administration ended the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, closing a special path to legal resident status for Cubans. While often understood merely as a unique privilege, the policy was also an effort…
In 2017 IEHS scholars made history
In 2017, historians entered the fray. Immigration and ethnic history society scholars, especially, have been called to bring historical thinking and analysis to policy issues and public debates about immigration, citizenship, borders, white supremacy, and vulnerable and marginalized communities. Not…
Gamze Katı Gümüş, “Disposable and Un/mournable: Immigrant Bodies in Contemporary Political Discourse”
I want to picture two scenes. The first is a beach of the Aegean Sea where the lifeless bodies of Aylan and Galip Kurdi were found ashore. The second one is a scene of the political rally in Phoenix in…
Patrick Lacroix, “Refugee Soldiers, American Patriots: Canadians in the Quest for Independence”
In the spring of 1775, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountains Boys surprised the small British garrison at Ticonderoga, a strategic point guarding the all-important hydrographic highway consisting of the Hudson River, Lake Champlain, and the Richelieu River in Canada.…
Stacy D. Fahrenthold, “Teaching Migrant and Refugee Histories in the Shadow of Trump”
There are numerous challenges facing historians of Middle Eastern migration at the moment. Trump’s promise to ban Muslims from travel to the United States has engendered an executive order that Trump’s administration variously claims is and is not a “ban.”…
