Contemporary Conversations on Immigration in the United States
The View from Prince George's County, Maryland
By (author) Judith Noemà Freidenberg University of Maryland, College Park
Publication date:
20 May 2016Length of book:
212 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
238x160mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780739182628
Contemporary Conversations on Immigration in the United States: The View from Prince George’s County, Maryland contextualizes the narratives of international migrants arriving to Prince George’s County, Maryland from 1968 to 2009. The life course trajectories of seventy individuals and their networks, organized chronologically to include life in the country of origin, the journey, and settlement in the county, frame migration as social issue rather than social problem. Having internalized the American dream, immigrants toil to achieve upward social mobility while constructing an immigrant space that nurtures well-being. This book demonstrates that an immigrant’s experience is grounded in personal, social, economic, and political spheres of influence, and reflects the complexity of migrants’ stories to help demystify homogenous categorization.
Anthropologist Freidenberg seeks to contribute to a growing body of literature making a case for understanding the US immigrant experience through local contexts, using interviews with more than 70 international migrants who settled in Prince George’s County, Maryland (an eastern suburb of Washington, D.C.) between 1968 and 2009. The book’s purview is promising and the author offers a fine history of Prince George’s County going back to before European contact, a solid sociological and demographic portrayal of the area, and a rich wealth of ethnographic interview narratives with immigrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia.... Freidenberg seeks to frame immigration as a complex societal issue that Americans must own and embrace as part of the nation’s heritage, rather than as a problem to be blamed on others; this goal is commendable.... Summing Up: Recommended ... Academic and regional collections.