“A Nation of Migrants”, “A Part and Apart”, and “Globalizing Migration Histories.” Week One Readings.

Each of the three essays involving some form type of immigration were fascinating reads The first essay entitled “A Nation of Migrant,” by Adam Goodman was the one that I found the most interesting. Growing up, I learned that the United States of America is a country composed of immigrates, from all over the world. What makes the United States what it is today consisted of thousands of people including immigrates entering the United States and contributing to America over the years. I was very appalled after reading the essay, that the essay makes an argument calling for a shift in how immigration studies should be done. Instead of studying immigration, in which we instead we should be calling it migration, as there is more to this term than there is of immigration. At first, I was confused, believing that the study was different, but as I drove more into the essay, I realize that the author Adam Goodman is right. For one, the language that he discusses in the essay is an important aspect to take away, especially of how it changed an aspect of culture, schools, and many more and how it helps researchers in understanding the nation and the study of migration more. To be honest, what got me the most, from this reading was that even though America is term as being the “melting pot”, Goodman states that African Americans and Native Americans were excluded from the term.

The second essay that really fascinated me was “A Part and Apart”, by Erika Lee. Her essay like the first essay discusses the aspect of how immigration should be studied. I feel that Lee’s argument is that in order to understand more about the evolution of immigration, we need to get an understanding of immigrants experience. Lee’s essay describes that throughout American history, immigrates were treated badly and subjected to discrimination and prejudice. Part of studying the evolution of immigration history is studying and learning about what immigrations went through and that is exactly what Lee is trying to explain in her essay. When World War ll, began for the United States following the attack on Peral Habor, many Asian immigrates were treated horribly, and how some were treated fairly. After reading this essay, I felt bad for what many of these immigrates went through, but it also made me realize that in order understand and learn more about immigration, is that we need to study their experiences in the United States and what we as a nation did to help them? I mean how do you study immigration without studying the experience of what many went tough

“Globalizing Migration Histories: Learning from Two Cases Studies”, by Bruno Ramirez, describes a new term of globalization. When I first read this essay, I was a little confused by what was being said, and what Ramirez was talking about. Sometime in the 1980s, Ramirez started using the term globalization to discuss immigration, and how he believed the term should be used. He then describes two cases in the essay involving the Italians and the Canadians. I was surprised to learn that prior to World War ll, many Italians emigrated to the United States thus causing mass attention upon the Italians, while Canadians rarely came into the United States. Both the Italians and the Canadian culture and the reason as to why they came to the United States are mention in the essay. I am interested in learning more about the importance of the Italians and the Canadians. From the reading, how do historians think that Canadians could have globalized, if they had attracted more attention.

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