The United States: A Nation of Migrants

While reading the works of Adam Goodman, Donna Gabaccia, and Gary Gerstle, I noticed that there is a consensus among the authors. That consensus is that to only use the terms immigrant and immigration, is to exclude anyone who was not a White European that became a U.S citizen. This means that Asians, African Americans, Latin Americans, and Native Americans are all excluded from the historiography of the United States and immigration. What’s also excluded is that many people who went to the U.S were in fact not immigrants, but were actually migrants. These migrants would only live in the U.S for a period of their lives and then return from there homeland or go elsewhere to another country. For example,  Gabaccia claims that for Italian migrants, “Rates of return from the United States were high… Estimated at 49 percent 1905-1920… return rates from the United States rose sharply thereafter. Between 1920 and 1945, returners soared to 83 percent of new arrivals in the United States, while return rates from Europe and South America instead dropped” (1131). Framing it this context,  I have come to realize that a lot of people left the United States during this time period.

While it is obvious that some migrants left the United States to return home, it is the scale of people that left the United States that is surprising, mostly because it is not taught in high school. Naturally this is only one statistic for the Italian migrants and does not include internal migration inside the U.S, nor does it factor in other ethnicities that migrated to and from the U.S.  All that this statistic means is that, “It helps us see the United States for what it is: a nation of migrants, rather than a nation of immigrants” (Goodman 9).  From what I gather, none of this is meant to not include the European immigrants, but rather to add in all of the migrants that have visited and lived in the United States. I think this will be useful for all of us going into our projects because it helps us re-frame the discussion of our projects under migrants and not as immigrants. To use the term migrant over immigrant includes everyone who was visited to the U.S and not just White Europeans.

Adam Goodman, “Nation of Migrants, Historians of Migration,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2015): 7-16.

Donna Gabaccia, “‘Is Everywhere No Where?’ Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of American History,” Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 3 (December 1999): 1115-34.

Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 2017).