Often depicted as the nation's iconic legal immigrant, unauthorized European migrants are often overlooked by scholars, policymakers, and the media. This volume tells the stories of European migrants who adopted irregular migration strategies to enter and remain in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Contributors explore facets of this history with essays on migration patterns from Russia, Italy, Ireland, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland. They also offer important arguments about the treatment of unauthorized European migrants by states and societies on both sides of the Atlantic and how the reception of undocumented immigrants has been and continues to be impacted by the dynamics of racial, class, and gender constructions in the United States and abroad. As the contributors show, the reception accorded unauthorized European migrants frequently obscured and even normalized their irregular migration strategies, easing their access to American citizenship. Revealing and insightful, Hidden Histories of Unauthorized Migrations from Europe to the United States sheds new light our intertwined notions of race, legality, and immigration. Contributors: Danielle Battisti, Ashley Johnson Bavery, Mary Patrice Erdmans, Polina Ermoshkina, Torsten Feys, Carly Goodman, S. Deborah Kang, E. Kyle Romero, Randa Tawil, and Joanna Wojdon
Danielle Battisti is an associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She is the author of Whom We Shall Welcome: Italian Americans and Immigration Reform, 1945-1965. S. Deborah Kang is John L. Nau III Associate Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954.
Acknowledgments Introduction Pulling Back the Curtain: Unauthorized European Migrations to the United States Danielle Battisti and S. Deborah Kang Part I Making and Unmaking Unauthorized Entries A Pathway to Citizenship: Russian Refugees and the Politics of Immigration Relief during the Great Depression S. Deborah Kang Privileges of Illegality? Italian Seaman Deserters and Adjustment of Status in the Twentieth Century Danielle Battisti Irish Immigrants in the 1980s: Immigration Narratives, Whiteness, and Diversity Carly Goodman Part II Reimagining the European Migrant Time Difference: Pregnancy and Deportability in Early Twentieth-Century United States Randa Tawil Between Arabic, English, and Spanish: Syrian Muslim Migrations from Mexico to the Midwest in the Early Twentieth Century Ashley Johnson Bavery Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Polish Undocumented Home Care Workers in Late Twentieth-Century Chicago Mary Patrice Erdmans and Polina Ermoshkina Part III Global Productions of Illegality The Maritime Origins of the Deportation Nation: Viapolitics of Unauthorized European Migration to the United States, 1819-1914 Torsten Feys Finding the "Most Desirable" Refugee: Russian Refugees in Constantinople and American Humanitarian Migration Networks, 1920-1923 E. Kyle Romero Polish Vacationers: American Dream or Nightmare? Joanna Wojdon Contributors Index
"The discussion of immigration in the United States today often assumes that earlier European immigrants were lawfully admitted, presenting unauthorized entry as a new problem committed by recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia. By revealing that numerous Europeans entered the country through unauthorized channels, this volume challenges the myth of European legality in U.S. immigration history."--Hidetaka Hirota, author of Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy
