Approaches to the Study of Immigration

Handlin Immigration Portrayed as an Experience of Uprootedness

Immigration began among peasants in Europe. Peasants were unchanged for 15 centuries while civilization progressed Marriage was normal and expected Emigration ended peasant life in Europe and began life in America Risks in change higher than risks in stability Acceptance of tradition and authority led peasants to accept an inferior position

Bodnar Immigration Portrayed As an Experience of Transplantation

Immigrants adjusted to two broad categories: working class and middle class Working class worked in menial jobs, while middle class pursued leadership Mentality of most immigrants centered on the immediate and the attainable

Gabaccia Immigrant Women: Nowhere at Home?

Immigration and womens history developed in opposing directions. Method in early 70s: documentation of notable womens lives and their contributions Same time, scholars in immigration abandoned filiopietism, the glorification of the contributions of great immigrants, as elitist, irrelevant, and defensive. The lives of women in Notable American Women affected womens studies but not immigration history Mid 70s: immigration historians are involved in writing histories of ethnic groups and communities (men and women); womens historians focus on the uniqueness of women, apart from men Historians/social scientists who focus on immigrants and ethnics have conflicting understanding of family life (and women as members of families) as compared with those who focus on womens studies Students of immigrant women kept their feet firmly rooted in the assumptions of ethnic studies and immigration history; these assumptions have left them well outside the mainstream of womens studies

Tilly and Scott, Women, Work and Family, argue that womens work lives are best understood as responses to the economies of the family units upon which they depended for their survival and well-being. Immigration historians and ethnic studies scholars build upon Tilly and Scotts work; those in womens studies criticize and reject it to the study of women. Womens studies observed that attention to a family unit revealed too little about womens lives. Scholars following Heidi Hartmann saw the nuclear family as the key institution of patriarchy, and thus a place of conflict between the sexes and an arena of exploitation, not support, of women. Study of women apart from nuclear families was a way to document their efforts to free themselves. Wage-earning is emphasized Progressive era portrays enthnic families as authoritarian, disorganized, and plagued THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE STUDY OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN AND WOMENS STUDIES Immigrant women are studied within the family context because they identified with their families and did not think of themselves as individuals Modern Americans have difficulties accepting a concept of self that is created through relation to others within families There is massive evidence of immigrant womens identification with their families