Abstract
The Anti-Defamation League approached John F. Kennedy while he was still a U.S. senator to write a pamphlet for their “One America” series on the subject of immigration, as a counter to rising xenophobia. Kennedy characterized the United States as “A Nation of Immigrants” in his 1958 address to the Anti-Defamation League and then expanded and supported the claim in his posthumously published book (1964; reissued in 2018). The thesis he advanced referred to the incredible achievements that followed historical waves of immigration.
In the intervening years, JFK’s characterization of the United States as a proud immigrant nation has not held, supplanted by a distinctively anti-immigration stance among many Americans. Suspicion and antipathy toward immigrants are not new—it was, after all, why the ADL asked Kennedy to write his pamphlet on immigration in the first place—but the current circumstances of the U.S.-versus-them anti-immigration ideology have been a catalyst and rich fodder for Nancy Foner’s illustrious career as an immigration scholar. Currently a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York, Foner has been analyzing and writing about immigration since the 1970s. In one important book after another, Foner has put her formidable skills to work to understand how immigration since 1965—the year after JFK’s book was first published—has changed and shaped the United States. Foner’s latest book, One Quarter of the Nation: Immigration and the Transformation of America, notes that immigrants and their children accounted for 26 percent of the U.S. population in 2020. As in other work in her oeuvre, in One Quarter of the Nation Foner focuses on the relationships among immigration and race, cities, the economy, and politics.
Immigration is central to many ongoing debates in the United States. Yet most Americans seem to simply be unaware that if first- and second-generation immigrants are counted, they are more than a quarter of the entire U.S. population. A short anecdote might suffice to make the point: Someone in my office saw the book on my desk and asked about it. I spoke briefly about the book, and the person was surprised that immigrants make up such a large proportion of the U.S. population. That is but one reason why this book is needed: The big picture is rarely communicated as clearly as Foner does in One Quarter of the Nation. Another reason is the insightful use of data and analysis to support her thesis that the United States is still a nation of immigrants.
In the short overview of the book provided in Chapter One, Foner emphasizes her agenda, which is a focus on the “ways immigration has been transforming the United States” since 1965 (p. 5). This is a particularly useful chapter to establish the broader context of immigration for readers who may lack familiarity with the history of U.S. immigration. As Foner notes, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 removed national quotas that had been imposed on prospective immigrants ever since a series of anti-immigrant legislation was passed in the 1920s that restricted newcomers, especially those from countries outside of Europe. While the Hart-Celler Act has been modified legislatively since then, the Act nonetheless opened up the United States to immigrants from countries in Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the world.
Foner is at home as she tackles issues of race and immigration in the book’s second chapter, building on an area of scholarship with deep roots in her earlier books such as Not Just Black and White (2004) and Strangers No More (2015). She explores, in an overview of the literature, how processes associated with immigration have also changed the meanings of race in a number of ways—with Asians moving from the “yellow peril” to the “model minority” to “The Invention of Hispanics” and the new meanings of being Black or the “flux” of whiteness. Foner’s treatment of race in the context of immigration may be at its most interesting in her predictions of the future (I find it fascinating when we social scientists try to predict the future). Foner argues that interracial marriage and relationships—and the subsequent generations that will follow—will modify how individuals are identified, and how they themselves identify racially. However, even these and other changes and a shifting of the racial order, Foner suggests, will be insufficient to end the stickiness of anti-Black racism. This is a common finding in research about immigration and race and, specifically, in scholarship that contrasts the native- and foreign-born. Foner writes, “The barrier dividing those with visible African ancestry from other Americans seems especially intractable, and will make it harder for their racial identity to fade into the background” (p. 40).
Foner has long focused on New York City as a site to study immigration. In one of my favorite of her books, From Ellis Island to JFK (2000), Foner compares the waves of immigrants who arrived from the 1880s to the 1920s to the post-1965 wave of immigrants (see also New Immigrants in New York [2001]). She has been especially interested in how New York City was altered by immigrants over time. Extending her work, Foner homes in on the ways in which immigrants transform communities, neighborhoods, cities, and towns in the third chapter of One Quarter of the Nation.
Moving beyond New York City, Foner examines the “new urban geography” by focusing on immigrants in places such as the Atlanta metropolitan area and other, smaller cities. As she and others have observed, New York City is no longer the dominant destination for immigrants. Rather, places in the South and West absorbed over half of all immigrants by 2010 (p. 51). I especially like that Foner identifies rural areas, too, as places that have been transformed by the presence of immigrants. Through both their economic (e.g., more jobs) and social (e.g., less crime) contributions, immigrants writ large have changed the contours of almost every part of the nation in positive ways.
The research literature about the relationship between immigration and its effects on the American economy is immense and sometimes contentious. As Foner points out, at its core are questions of wages and employment for “American” workers. Do immigrants replace or displace native-born workers, especially in jobs that pay relatively low wages and that impose difficult working conditions? Or is the fear of wage and employment suppression by “foreign workers” misplaced? Foner answers: “There is little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers” (p. 96). While this massive literature generally shows more positive than negative effects, Foner does an especially careful job of describing the ways in which the debate persists. Foner finishes Chapter Four pondering the future, raising a series of questions about the potential long-term influence of the coronavirus epidemic on immigrants and the economy. In the short term, immigration mostly shuddered to a halt during COVID-19; but what will happen, Foner wonders, to jobs and industries with heavy concentrations of immigrants? From the vantage point of early 2023, it remains to be seen whether jobs and immigrants in, say, the hotel industry will return to their pre-COVID form.
In the book’s fifth chapter, Foner turns to the relationship between culture and immigration, a topic that has received less scholarly attention than the other issues she raises in this book. Taking foodways as an example of a growing interest among social scientists, Foner shows the many ways in which immigration has culturally and culinarily transformed the United States. Among many interesting points Foner makes about the influences of immigration on broader American food culture, she notes that there are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Kentucky Fried Chickens combined. This is the sort of data point that is embedded in American communities from coast to coast, but which most Americans have likely not fully digested.
Even more broadly than immigration’s effects on foodways, Foner discusses the “new faces” on television, in the movies, in the theater, and in music. She notes, for example, the ways in which Asian Americans participate in the classical music scene. From the music in Hamilton to the top pop songs of the day, immigrants are changing culture everywhere: “immigrants and their children have been adding vitality, dynamism, and new features to popular culture and the arts in this country” (p. 121).
Unfortunately, no discussion of contemporary immigration can ignore the proclivities of the former Trump administration and the MAGA tropes that continue to permeate American political discourse. Thus, in Chapter Six, Foner spends considerable time delineating the interactions among immigration, local and national politics, and the future of immigrants in politics. Foner observes that current themes of nativism are nothing new—the history of nativist thought in the United States has been repeated over and over. The Trump administration did not develop its anti-immigrant rhetoric out of whole cloth. Rather, Foner argues that clear lines can be drawn from one era to the next: “Even Trump’s xenophobic focus on the undocumented and Mexican immigrants has strong echoes from the past. Animosity to Mexicans is nothing new” (p. 133). Of course, other presidents, Democrat and Republican, have made political decisions making it more difficult for potential immigrants to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and have spearheaded federal efforts to deport immigrants. However, Foner argues that it is fair to say that Trump took existing anti-immigration policies and rhetoric to new levels starting immediately with his ban on immigrants from several Muslim-dominated countries. This is a strong chapter.
Foner asks, in her final chapter, if the United States is unique in terms of its stance on immigration. Building on her comparative work over the years (see, for example, Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity [2015] and Strangers No More [2015]), placing the United States in a broader context seems a fitting way to end the book. Of course, there are similarities and differences when comparing Western European countries’ treatment of immigrants to that in the United States, given the specific contexts of institutional and cultural forces. For economically developed societies, the allure of immigration for people from poorer places will doubtless continue to make immigration a major issue for many governments to reckon with for the foreseeable future. Foner does an outstanding job providing crucial insights about immigration as a social force that is intergenerationally tied to the future.
One Quarter of the Nation is a timely and important work because immigration is central to so many ongoing sociocultural, economic, and political debates in the United States. Each chapter can stand alone in its analytic and empirical acumen; taken holistically, the book provides a primer on the state of immigration since 1965. This book is accessible enough that it could easily capture the imagination of students in undergraduate courses. At the same time, the arguments articulated are nuanced and empirically supported in ways that make this a great book for graduate courses too. Rarely has the big picture about recent American immigration been communicated in such a straightforward and enlightening way. I strongly recommend One Quarter of the Nation to scholars who have been studying immigration for years and to readers who are new to the subject. Foner brings her years of experience and expertise to a subject matter of immense relevance to everyday American life.