ABOUT THIS BOOK

Presenting an unprecedented, integrated view of migration in North America, this interdisciplinary collection of essays illuminates the movements of people within and between Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States over the past two centuries. Several essays discuss recent migrations from Central America as well. In the introduction, Dirk Hoerder provides a sweeping historical overview of North American societies in the Atlantic world. He also develops and advocates what he and Nora Faires call “transcultural societal studies,” an interdisciplinary approach to migration studies that combines migration research across disciplines and at the local, regional, national, and transnational levels. The contributors examine the movements of diverse populations across North America in relation to changing cultural, political, and economic patterns. They describe the ways that people have fashioned cross-border lives, as well as the effects of shifting labor markets in facilitating or hindering cross-border movement, the place of formal and informal politics in migration processes and migrants’ lives, and the creation and transformation of borderlands economies, societies, and cultures. This collection offers rich new perspectives on migration in North America and on the broader study of migration history.

Contributors. Jaime R. Aguila. Rodolfo Casillas-R., Nora Faires, Maria Cristina Garcia, Delia Gonzáles de Reufels, Brian Gratton, Susan E. Gray, James N. Gregory, John Mason Hart, Dirk Hoerder, Dan Killoren, Sarah-Jane (Saje) Mathieu, Catherine O’Donnell, Kerry Preibisch, Lara Putnam, Bruno Ramirez, Angelika Sauer, Melanie Shell-Weiss, Yukari Takai, Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez, Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dirk Hoerder taught North American social history, the history of global migrations, borderland studies, and the sociology of migrant acculturation at Arizona State University. He is the author of many books, including Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium, also published by Duke University Press. Hoerder lives in Salzburg, Austria.

The late Nora Faires was Professor of History and of Gender and Women’s Studies at Western Michigan University and co-author of A History of Women in America.

REVIEWS

“The introductory essay by Hoerder… is exemplary…. Replete with innovative maps, his account decries the ‘Westward ho’ trope of the continent’s migration history distilled into an advance of civilization from the Atlantic coast across the prairies, to the neglect of population movements in the northern and southern US borderlands and of trans-Pacific immigration.” - Population and Development Review

“For such a large topic, each contributor does an excellent job of summarizing his or her field, and the book comes together to present a swirling depiction of relocating populations that is complex yet understandable…. Overall, it is a well-written, enlightening account of dozens of population movements across modern North America that puts together current scholarship on migration in an interesting, readable manner.” - Zachary Adams, Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“The significance of creating scholarly dialogue between the ever-expanding fields of migration history in the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada, Central America, and the United States, not to mention studies of the southwestern borderlands, should not be overlooked. For scholars already well versed in current migration theory, this comparative aspect represents the volume’s greatest strength.” - Matthew Casey, Hispanic American Historical Review

“Its most satisfying theme is the broad and varied challenge to traditional understandings of North American immigration experiences. By introducing under-studied immigrant groups, reversing directions in studies of immigrant travel, and otherwise forcing readers to reconsider various topics, this volume makes a strong statement…The various growing fields of transational history need scholarship that decentres the US-centric model and expands beyond borders, regions, directions, and peoples that have dominated this field of inquiry. This volume makes a strong contribution in that direction.” - Brendan Rensink, Canadian Journal of History

“This collection achieves a feat of thematic and conceptual integration. It explores the demographic, socioeconomic, political, and symbolic role of migration in the formation of North American nations. Yet it transcends national borders and categories with examinations of the local, regional, borderlands, and hemispheric mobility of indigenous peoples, Asians, Europeans, Afro-descendants, Latinos, and Anglo- and French-Canadians, among other sub- and supra-national groups. The result is a combination of macro- and micro-perspectives that illuminates both the forest and the trees.”—José C. Moya, author of Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930

“This excellent collection is easily the best effort to date to interpret North American migrations. It takes seriously the inclusion of the Caribbean and Central America in its purview, successfully integrates analyses that range from the micro- to the macro-levels, and incorporates a long-term perspective that connects studies of ‘pre-historic’ Native America and the early-modern slave trade to modern studies of ‘immigration’ and ‘refugees.’ Best of all, it provides readers with a marvelous introduction to the ways that a North American perspective on human movement differs, often remarkably so, from the national perspectives developed within the historiographies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.”—Donna R. Gabaccia, author of Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History

“For such a large topic, each contributor does an excellent job of summarizing his or her field, and the book comes together to present a swirling depiction of relocating populations that is complex yet understandable…. Overall, it is a well-written, enlightening account of dozens of population movements across modern North America that puts together current scholarship on migration in an interesting, readable manner.”

-- Zachary Adams Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“The introductory essay by Hoerder… is exemplary…. Replete with innovative maps, his account decries the ‘Westward ho’ trope of the continent’s migration history distilled into an advance of civilization from the Atlantic coast across the prairies, to the neglect of population movements in the northern and southern US borderlands and of trans-Pacific immigration.”

-- Population and Development Review

“The significance of creating scholarly dialogue between the ever-expanding fields of migration history in the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada, Central America, and the United States, not to mention studies of the southwestern borderlands, should not be overlooked. For scholars already well versed in current migration theory, this comparative aspect represents the volume’s greatest strength.”

-- Matthew Casey Hispanic American Historical Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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