German and Irish Immigrants in the Midwestern United States, ... by Regina Donlon

From the first interactions between the Native Americans and English colonizers at Jamestown, to the present-day debates over unauthorized immigration, the book helps students chart the evolution of American attitudes towards immigration and immigration policies and better contextualize present-day debates over immigration. Organized chronologically, this book highlights how the migration experience evolved over time and examines the interactions that occurred between different groups of migrants and the native-born. immigration history, keeping issues of race and power at the center of the book. The most recent scholarship on immigration is integrated into an accessible narrative that embraces the multicultural nature of U.S. Immigration in American History is a concise examination of the experiences of immigrants from the founding of the British colonies through the present day. This unique multi-ethnic approach illuminates overlooked dimensions of the immigrant experience in the American Midwest. Drawing comparisons between large, industrial St Louis and small, established Fort Wayne and between the different communities which took root there, Donlon offers new insights into the factors which shaped their experiences-including the impact of city size on the preservation of ethnic identity, the contrasting concerns of the German and Irish Catholic churches and the roles of women as social innovators. Focusing on the cities of Fort Wayne, Indiana and St Louis, Missouri, Regina Donlon employs comparative and transnational methodologies in order to trace their journeys from arrival through their emergence as cultural, social and political forces in their communities. Many settled in the Northeast, but some boarded trains and made their way west. In the second half of the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of German and Irish immigrants left Europe for the United States.

German and Irish Immigrants in the Midwestern United States, ... by Regina Donlon