Discusses the reasons French people left their homeland to come to America, the experiences the immigrants had in the new country, and the contributions this cultural group made to American society. Includes sidebars and activities.

This landmark collection by an international group of scholars and public intellectuals represents a major reassessment of French colonial culture and how it continues to inform thinking about history, memory, and identity. This reexamination of French colonial culture, provides the basis for a revised understanding of its cultural, political, and social legacy and its lasting impact on postcolonial immigration, the treatment of ethnic minorities, and national identity.

Discusses the reasons Polish people left their homeland to come to America, the experiences the immigrants had in the new country, and the contributions this cultural group made to American society. Includes sidebars and activities.

Belgium has a unique place in the history of migration in that it was the first among industrialized nations in Continental Europe to develop into an immigrant society. In the nineteenth century Italians, Jews, Poles, Czechs, and North Africans settled in Belgium to work in industry and commerce. They were followed by Russians in the 1920s and Germans in the 1930s who were seeking a safe haven from persecution by totalitarian regimes. In the nineteenth century immigrants were to a larger extent integrated into Belgian society: they were denied political rights but participated on equal terms with Belgians in social life. This changed radically in the twentieth century; by 1940 the rights of aliens were severely curtailed, while those of Belgian citizens, in particular in the social domain, were extended. While the state evolved into a "welfare state" for its citizens it became more of a police state for immigrants. The state only tolerated immigrants who were prepared to carry out those jobs that were shunned by the Belgians. Under the pressure of public opinion, an exception was made in the cases of thousands of Jewish refugees that had fled from Nazi Germany. However, other immigrants were subjected to harsh regulations and in fact became the outcasts of twentieth-century Belgian liberal society. This remarkable study examines in depth and over a long time span how (anti-) alien policies were transformed, resulting in an illiberal exclusion of foreigners at the same time as democratization and the welfare state expanded. In this respect Belgium is certainly not unique but offers an interesting case study of developments that are characteristic for Europe as a whole.

Since the 1980s, anti-immigrant discourse has shifted away from the color of immigrants to their religion and culture, focusing on newcomers from Muslim countries who are feared as terrorists and the products of tribal societies with values fundamentally opposed to those of secular western Europe. Leo Lucassen's The Immigrant Threat tackles the question of whether it is reasonable to believe that the integration process of these new immigrants will indeed be fundamentally different in the long run (over multiple generations) from ones experienced by similar immigrant groups in the past.

This six-volume set focuses on Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigration, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of all new immigration to the United States. The volumes contain the essential scholarship of the last decade and present key contributions reflecting the major theoretical, empirical, and policy debates about the new immigration. The material addresses vital issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status as they intersect with the contemporary immigration experience. Organized by theme, each volume stands as an independent contribution to immigration studies, with seminal journal articles and book chapters from hard-to-find sources, comprising the most important literature on the subject. The individual volumes include a brief preface presenting the major themes that emerge in the materials, and a bibliography of further recommended readings. In its coverage of the most influential scholarship on the social, economic, educational, and civil rights issues revolving around new immigration, this collection provides an invaluable resource for students and researchers in a wide range of fields, including contemporary American history, public policy, education, sociology, political science, demographics, immigration law, ESL, linguistics, and more.

Amidst claims of threats to national identities in an era of increasing diversity, should we be worried about the upsurge in religious animosity in the United States, as well as Europe? This book explores how French society is divided along conflicts about religion, increasingly visible in public schools, and shows the effect that this has had.