When you think of American immigration, what images come to mind? Ellis Island. East Side tenements. Pushcarts on Eighth Avenue. Little Italy. Chinatown. El Barrio. New York City has always been central to the immigrant experience in the United States. In the last three decades, the volume of immigration has increased as has the diversity of immigrant origins and experiences. Contemporary immigration conjures up old images but also some new ones: the sweatshops and ethnic neighborhoods are still there, but so are cell phones, faxes, e-mails, and the more intense and multilayered involvement of immigrants in the social, economic, and political life of both home and host societies. In this ambitious book, nineteen scholars from a broad range of disciplines bring our understanding of New York's immigrant communities up to date by exploring the interaction between economic globalization and transnationalization, demographic change, and the evolving racial, ethnic, gender dynamics in the City.Urban and suburban, Asian, European, Latin American, and Caribbean, men and women and children the essays here analyze the complex forces that shape the contemporary immigrant experience in New York City and the links between immigrant communities in New York and their countries of origin.
Author note: Hector R. Cordero-Guzman is an Assistant Professor at the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy at the New School University in New York City. Robert C. Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Barnard College and part of the Barnard Project on Migration and Diasporas. Ramon Grosfoguel is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Boston College.