Ewa Morawska

Exploring Diversity in Immigrant Assimilation and Transnationalism: Poles and Russian Jews in Philadelphia1

This article investigates different patterns of coexistence of assimilation and transnational engagements (A/T) among recent Polish and Jewish Russian immigrants in Philadelphia and the particular constellations of circumstances that generate these outcomes. It then integrates this analysis into a broader comparative examination of the simultaneity of A/T among residentially dispersed Asian Indians, first-wave Cubans in Miami, and Jamaicans, undocumented Chinese, and Dominicans in New York. The main factors shaping the most common A/T patterns in these seven immigrant groups at the global, sending and receiving society national, and local levels are identified.

Disciplinary Agendas and Analytic Strategies of Research on Immigrant Transnationalism: Challenges of Interdisciplinary Knowledge

To be successful, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of immigration and transnationalism should begin by making different disciplinary languages about this phenomenon informed by mutual understanding of the conceptual frameworks, epistemological assumptions, and explanatory strategies used in research in particular academic fields. Drawing on studies in anthropology, sociology, history, and political science, I review here these taken-for-granted assumptions about “what is knowable and how” that underlie research on immigration and transnationalism in these disciplines. In conclusion, I suggest some avenues for mutual education in different disciplinary approaches and the epistemic gains derived therefrom.

Labor Migrations of Poles in the Atlantic World Economy, 1880–1914

The recent influx to the United States of a new large wave of immigrants from Hispanic America and Asia has reinvigorated immigration and ethnic studies, including those devoted to the analysis of the origins and process of international migrations. The accumulation of research in this field in the last fifteen years has brought about a shift in the theoretical paradigm designed to interpret these movements. The classical approach explains the mass flow into North America of immigrants (from Southern and Eastern Europe, in the period 1880 to 1914), as an international migration interpreted in terms of push and pull forces. Demographic and economic conditions prompted individuals to move from places with a surplus of population, little capital, and underemployment, to areas where labor was scarce and wages were higher (Jerome, 1926; Thomas, 1973; Piore, 1979; Gould, 1979). This interpretation views individual decisions and actions as the outcome of a rational economic calculation of the costs and benefits of migration. Recent studies of international population movements have reconceptualized this problem, recasting the unit(s) of analysis from separate nation-states, linked by one-way transfer of migrants between two unequally developed economies, to a comprehensive economic system composed of a dominant core and a dependent periphery — a world system that forms a complex network of supranational exchanges of technology, capital, and labor (Castells, 1975; Cardoso and Faletto, 1979; Kritz, 1983; Sassen-Koob, 1980; Portes, 1978; Portes and Walton, 1981; Wood, 1982). In this conceptualization, the development of the core and the underdevelopment of the peripheral societies are seen not as two distinct phenomena, but as two aspects of the same process—the expanding capitalist world system, explained in terms of each other. Generated by the economic imbalances and social dislocations resulting from the incorporation of the peripheries into the orbit of the core, international labor migrations between the developing and industrialized regions are viewed as part of a global circulation of resources within a single system of world economy. This interpretation shifts the central emphasis from the individual (and his/her decisions) to the broad structural determinants of human migrations within a global economic system.

Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States: Policies and Practices

This volume surveys a new trend in immigration studies, which one could characterize as a turn away from multicultural and postnational perspectives, toward a renewed emphasis on assimilation and citizenship. Much scholarship in the past fifteen years or so, enticed by the discovery of “globalization,” has looked at contemporary immigration as obliterating and undermining some traditional principles of nation-states, such as the congruence of political and cultural boundaries and citizenship. In this new orthodoxy, multiculturalism had replaced assimilation as a mode of immigrant integration, and post- or transnational identities, affiliations, and protections had devalued, perhaps even rendered obsolete traditional citizenship. Immigrants were thus depicted as harbingers of a new multicultural and postnational world, in which the national fixity of identity, rights, and organizational capacity had dissolved (for influential statements, see Soysal 1994 and Basch et al. 1994).

‘Diaspora’ diasporas' representations of their homelands: exploring the polymorphs

Abstract This essay attempts to make more pliable three overly rigid claims persistent in the diaspora literature: that diaspora members’ imaginations of the homeland are either beautifying/idealizing or unequivocally inimical; that their relations with the host country are inherently distant – they are in it but not of it; and that diasporism and (im)migrant transnationalism constitute two distinct phenomena. It also aims at genderizing the stubbornly genderless study of diasporas. The empirical analysis compares representations of the homeland among turn-of-the-twentieth-century and present-day lower-class Polish émigrés in the United States and the United Kingdom, first-wave (1959–61) Cuban refugees in Miami and 1956 Hungarian political refugees dispersed into different west European countries, and contemporary Mexican men and women migrants in the American Southwest. On the basis of these comparative assessments, the author identifies the major circumstances that shape diaspora members’ portrayals of the homeland.

Intended and Unintended Consequences of Forced Migrations: A Neglected Aspect of East Europe's Twentieth Century History

The article examines the consequences, thus far under-investigated in transnational migration studies, of forced population movements for the societies and cultures of the sending/expelling countries. The cases considered are immense forced migrations, involving over 80 million people, across and outside Eastern Europe during the twentieth century. The discussion focuses on the consequences of these involuntary movements in the public sphere, including effects on the collective (group) self-perceptions and representations of others (non-group) and inter- and intra-group relations; on national/ethnic culture (collective memory, customs, value orientations); on domestic and international relations; and on human resources (skills, abilities) and economic growth.

Research on Immigration/Ethnicity in Europe and The United States: A Comparison

The article compares the main research agendas and methodological and theoretical approaches informing current studies of immigration and ethnicity in the United States and Europe (represented by six countries: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden). The European part of the report focuses on the common features of immigration and ethnic research in the countries selected for examination as compared with the American studies. In accounting for the reported similarities and differences between the two continents, I identify the contributing circumstances in the examined societies at large as well as in the characteristics of the scholarly environment in which the research in question is conducted.

Composite meaning, flexible ranges, and multi-level conditions of conviviality: Exploring the polymorph

In this article, I present, first, a composite definition of conviviality whose constitutive components are conceived in terms of degrees rather than as present-or-absent conditions. Next, I offer a preliminary list of macro-, micro- and individual-level circumstances which co-shape conviviality into different arrangements and intensities. Within the framework of the structuration theory which informs my discussion, I then identify the characteristics of cultures of conviviality as different from the orientations and practices of the individuals who (re)create them, and I propose a distinction between the conditions contributing to the emergence of cultures of conviviality and the circumstances responsible for their endurance over time. In the last part of the article, I identify different goals of case-based investigations and propose some strategies of comparative analysis of the contributing circumstances and different forms and ‘contents’ of conviviality, and I illustrate it with examples taken from my previous studies of ground-level multiculturalism in different locations.

The Recognition Politics of Polish Radio MultiKulti in Berlin

Initiated in 1988 by the Grüne (Green) faction of the Berlin Public Media Council as the programme ‘for and about the citys immigrants’, Radio MultiKulti has since come under the independent co-management of Berlins major immigrant groups and has gained city-wide prestige and recognition as the ‘alternative’ source of cultural entertainment and political information. The paper examines the programmes of the Polish section of Radio MultiKulti in terms of recognition politics or claims for public recognition of Berlins (and Germanys) de facto multiculturalism. The assessment of Polish Radio MultiKulti is based on the authors interviews with members of the editorial staff and the content analysis of the radios programmes.

Qualitative Migration Research: Viable Goals, Open-Ended Questions, and Multidimensional Answers

Following a brief review of the epistemological premises informing qualitative methodologies, I identify the key features of qualitative research undertaken in the verstehende or interpretative social-science tradition, which render it particularly well suited to capturing the inherent dynamics of the lived experience of human beings in general and, in our case, of immigrants: its multi-dimensionality; its ability to accommodate ambiguity and outright contradictions; its emphasis on the temporality and fluidity of social phenomena; and its insistence on the contextual and situational nature of human perceptions and agency. Next, I argue that the research goals appropriate for qualitative investigations as proposed by Charles Ragin (Constructing social research. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, 1994) – exploring diversity, giving voice, testing/refining theories or guiding concepts, and generating new research questions – can be realized by asking questions and gathering answers related to these issues in the context of (im)migrants’ experience. These claims are illustrated with questions asked and answers obtained through three standard methods of qualitative research: interviewing, observation, and document analysis. The examples draw from the current and emerging problem agendas in migration studies. I also discuss the strengths and limitations of research questions probing the complexity and un(der)determinacy of (im)migrants’ lives and the answers they generate.