Becoming New Yorkers

Becoming New Yorkers PDF Author: Philip Kasinitz
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610443284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
More than half of New Yorkers under the age of eighteen are the children of immigrants. This second generation shares with previous waves of immigrant youth the experience of attempting to reconcile their cultural heritage with American society. In Becoming New Yorkers, noted social scientists Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters bring together in-depth ethnographies of some of New York's largest immigrant populations to assess the experience of the new second generation and to explore the ways in which they are changing the fabric of American culture. Becoming New Yorkers looks at the experience of specific immigrant groups, with regard to education, jobs, and community life. Exploring immigrant education, Nancy López shows how teachers' low expectations of Dominican males often translate into lower graduation rates for boys than for girls. In the labor market, Dae Young Kim finds that Koreans, young and old alike, believe the second generation should use the opportunities provided by their parents' small business success to pursue less arduous, more rewarding work than their parents. Analyzing civic life, Amy Forester profiles how the high-ranking members of a predominantly black labor union, who came of age fighting for civil rights in the 1960s, adjust to an increasingly large Caribbean membership that sees the leaders not as pioneers but as the old-guard establishment. In a revealing look at how the second-generation views itself, Sherry Ann Butterfield and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida point out that black West Indian and Russian Jewish immigrants often must choose whether to identify themselves alongside those with similar skin color or to differentiate themselves from both native blacks and whites based on their unique heritage. Like many other groups studied here, these two groups experience race as a fluid, situational category that matters in some contexts but is irrelevant in others. As immigrants move out of gateway cities and into the rest of the country, America will increasingly look like the multicultural society vividly described in Becoming New Yorkers. This insightful work paints a vibrant picture of the experience of second generation Americans as they adjust to American society and help to shape its future.

The Suburbanization of New York

The Suburbanization of New York PDF Author: Jerilou Hammett
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 161689069X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The city that never sleeps also never stops changing. And while New Yorkers are renowned for their trendsetting, this thought-provoking book argues that New York City itself has become a follower rather than a leader. Once-distinctive streets and neighborhoods have become awash in generic stores, apartment boxes, and garish signs and billboards. Legendary neighborhoods (Little Italy, Hell's Kitchen, Harlem, the Lower East Side) have been smoothed over with cute monikers, remade for real-estate investment and for sale to the highest bidder.

Inheriting the City

Inheriting the City PDF Author: Philip Kasinitz
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610446550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
The United States is an immigrant nation—nowhere is the truth of this statement more evident than in its major cities. Immigrants and their children comprise nearly three-fifths of New York City's population and even more of Miami and Los Angeles. But the United States is also a nation with entrenched racial divisions that are being complicated by the arrival of newcomers. While immigrant parents may often fear that their children will "disappear" into American mainstream society, leaving behind their ethnic ties, many experts fear that they won't—evolving instead into a permanent unassimilated and underemployed underclass. Inheriting the City confronts these fears with evidence, reporting the results of a major study examining the social, cultural, political, and economic lives of today's second generation in metropolitan New York, and showing how they fare relative to their first-generation parents and native-stock counterparts. Focused on New York but providing lessons for metropolitan areas across the country, Inheriting the City is a comprehensive analysis of how mass immigration is transforming life in America's largest metropolitan area. The authors studied the young adult offspring of West Indian, Chinese, Dominican, South American, and Russian Jewish immigrants and compared them to blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans with native-born parents. They find that today's second generation is generally faring better than their parents, with Chinese and Russian Jewish young adults achieving the greatest education and economic advancement, beyond their first-generation parents and even beyond their native-white peers. Every second-generation group is doing at least marginally—and, in many cases, significantly—better than natives of the same racial group across several domains of life. Economically, each second-generation group earns as much or more than its native-born comparison group, especially African Americans and Puerto Ricans, who experience the most persistent disadvantage. Inheriting the City shows the children of immigrants can often take advantage of policies and programs that were designed for native-born minorities in the wake of the civil rights era. Indeed, the ability to choose elements from both immigrant and native-born cultures has produced, the authors argue, a second-generation advantage that catalyzes both upward mobility and an evolution of mainstream American culture. Inheriting the City leads the chorus of recent research indicating that we need not fear an immigrant underclass. Although racial discrimination and economic exclusion persist to varying degrees across all the groups studied, this absorbing book shows that the new generation is also beginning to ease the intransigence of U.S. racial categories. Adapting elements from their parents' cultures as well as from their native-born peers, the children of immigrants are not only transforming the American city but also what it means to be American.

Becoming American, Being Indian

Becoming American, Being Indian PDF Author: Madhulika S. Khandelwal
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722026
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Since the 1960s the number of Indian immigrants and their descendants living in the United States has grown dramatically. During the same period, the make-up of this community has also changed—the highly educated professional elite who came to this country from the subcontinent in the 1960s has given way to a population encompassing many from the working and middle classes. In her fascinating account of Indian immigrants in New York City, Madhulika S. Khandelwal explores the ways in which their world has evolved over four decades.How did this highly diverse ethnic group form an identity and community? Drawing on her extensive interviews with immigrants, Khandelwal examines the transplanting of Indian culture onto the Manhattan and Queens landscapes. She considers festivals and media, food and dress, religious activities of followers of different faiths, work and class, gender and generational differences, and the emergence of a variety of associations.Khandelwal analyzes how this growing ethnic community has gradually become "more Indian," with a stronger religious focus, larger family networks, and increasingly traditional marriage patterns. She discusses as well the ways in which the American experience has altered the lives of her subjects.

International Express

International Express PDF Author: Stéphane Tonnelat
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Nicknamed the International Express, the New York City Transit Authority 7 subway line runs through a highly diverse series of ethnic and immigrant neighborhoods in Queens. People from Andean South America, Central America, China, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, and Vietnam, as well as residents of a number of gentrifying blue-collar and industrial neighborhoods, fill the busy streets around the stations. The 7 train is a microcosm of a specifically urban, New York experience, in which individuals from a variety of cultures and social classes are forced to interact and get along with one another. For newcomers to the city, mastery of life in the subway space is a step toward assimilation into their new home. In International Express, the French ethnographer Stéphane Tonnelat and his collaborator William Kornblum, a native New Yorker, ride the 7 subway line to better understand the intricacies of this phenomenon. They also ask a group of students with immigrant backgrounds to keep diaries of their daily rides on the 7 train. What develops over time, they find, is a set of shared subway competences leading to a practical cosmopolitanism among riders, including immigrants and their children, that changes their personal values and attitudes toward others in small, subtle ways. This growing civility helps newcomers feel at home in an alien city and builds what the authors call a "situational community in transit." Yet riding the subway can be problematic, especially for women and teenagers. Tonnelat and Kornblum pay particular attention to gender and age relations on the 7 train. Their portrait of integrated mass transit, including a discussion of the relationship between urban density and diversity, is invaluable for social scientists and urban planners eager to enhance the cooperative experience of city living for immigrants and ease the process of cultural transition.

Becoming German

Becoming German PDF Author: Philip L. Otterness
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Becoming German tells the intriguing story of the largest and earliest mass movement of German-speaking immigrants to America. The so-called Palatine migration of 1709 began in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, where perhaps as many as thirty thousand people left their homes, lured by rumors that Britain's Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America. They journeyed down the Rhine and eventually made their way to London, where they settled in refugee camps. The rumors of free passage and land proved false, but, in an attempt to clear the camps, the British government finally agreed to send about three thousand of the immigrants to New York in exchange for several years of labor. After their arrival, the Palatines refused to work as indentured servants and eventually settled in autonomous German communities near the Iroquois of central New York.Becoming German tracks the Palatines' travels from Germany to London to New York City and into the frontier areas of New York. Philip Otterness demonstrates that the Palatines cannot be viewed as a cohesive "German" group until after their arrival in America; indeed, they came from dozens of distinct principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in refusing to assimilate to British colonial culture—instead maintaining separate German-speaking communities and mixing on friendly terms with Native American neighbors—that the Palatines became German in America.

Becoming New York's Finest

Becoming New York's Finest PDF Author: A. Darien
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137321946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
After excluding women and African Americans from its ranks for most of its history, the New York City Police Department undertook an aggressive campaign of integration following World War II. This is the first comprehensive account of how and why the NYPD came to see integration as a highly coveted political tool, indispensable to policing.

One Out of Three

One Out of Three PDF Author: Nancy Foner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231159374
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This absorbing anthology features in-depth portraits of diverse ethnic populations, revealing the surprising new realities of immigrant life in twenty-first-century New York City. Contributors show how nearly fifty years of massive inflows have transformed New York City's economic and cultural life and how the city has changed the lives of immigrant newcomers. Nancy Foner's introduction describes New York's role as a special gateway to America. Subsequent essays focus on the Chinese, Dominicans, Jamaicans, Koreans, Liberians, Mexicans, and Jews from the former Soviet Union now present in the city and fueling its population growth. They discuss both the large numbers of undocumented Mexicans living in legal limbo and the new, flourishing community organizations offering them opportunities for advancement. They recount the experiences of Liberians fleeing a war torn country and their creation of a vibrant neighborhood on Staten Island's North Shore. Through engaging, empathetic portraits, contributors consider changing Korean-owned businesses and Chinese Americans' increased representation in New York City politics, among other achievements and social and cultural challenges. A concluding chapter follows the prospects of the U.S.-born children of immigrants as they make their way in New York City.

Becoming a Man

Becoming a Man PDF Author: P. Carl
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1982105100
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A “scrupulously honest” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut memoir that explores one man’s gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America. Becoming a Man is a “moving narrative [that] illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of gender transition” (Kirkus Reviews). For fifty years P. Carl lived as a girl and then as a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout—the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement. He writes intimately about how transitioning reconfigures both his own inner experience and his closest bonds—his twenty-year relationship with his wife, Lynette; his already tumultuous relationships with his parents; and seemingly solid friendships that are subtly altered, often painfully and wordlessly. Carl “has written a poignant and candid self-appraisal of life as a ‘work-of-progress’” (Booklist) and blends the remarkable story of his own personal journey with incisive cultural commentary, writing beautifully about gender, power, and inequality in America. His transition occurs amid the rise of the Trump administration and the #MeToo movement—a transition point in America’s own story, when transphobia and toxic masculinity are under fire even as they thrive in the highest halls of power. Carl’s quest to become himself and to reckon with his masculinity mirrors, in many ways, the challenge before the country as a whole, to imagine a society where every member can have a vibrant, livable life. Here, through this brave and deeply personal work, Carl brings an unparalleled new voice to this conversation.

Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York

Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York PDF Author: Paula Wheeler Carlo
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Drawing comparisons with the broader Huguenot diaspora, this book reassesses the prevailing view that Huguenots in North America quickly conformed to Anglicanism and abandoned the French language and other distinctive characteristics in order to assimilate into Anglo-American culture. Although the standard interpretation may still be true for Huguenots in heterogeneous urban communities, it should be modified for Huguenots in ethnically and religiously homogeneous rural settlements like New Paltz and New Rochelle, where the process was more akin to a gradual acculturation.