Full Description
This collection explores, from a variety of angles, the beliefs of citizens and noncitizens about the impact that contemporary migration to the USA is having on American culture and on national solidarity. As in other liberal democracies that have experienced mass migration during the past several decades, there is considerable fear and anxiety in the USA about what newcomers are doing to the nation—economically, politically, and (especially) culturally. At the symbolic level, Americans largely embrace the idea that theirs is a nation composed of people from many different origins, but recent arrivals put to the test the extent to which the nation is actually prepared to embrace diversity.
The six empirical studies in this volume are divided between those examining how citizens respond to immigrants—including right-wing populists, pragmatic multiculturalists, and immigrant advocates—and how immigrants in turn attempt to integrate into the receiving society. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.
Contents
Introduction - National Identity in an Age of Migration: The US Experience 1. Floods, Invaders, and Parasites: Immigration Threat Narratives and Right-Wing Populism in the USA, UK and Australia 2. Multiculturalism as the Normative Context of Immigrant Reception: Somali Immigrant Inclusion in Lewiston, Maine 3. Disclaimed or Reclaimed? Muslim Refugee Youth and Belonging in the Age of Hyperbolisation 4. Mobilising for Immigrant Rights Online: Performing 'American' National Identity through Symbols of Civic-Economic Participation 5. Personal and Cultural Trauma and the Ambivalent National Identities of Undocumented Young Adults in the USA 6. Practicing Citizenship: Bolivian Migrant Identities and Space of Belonging in Washington DC
