Immigrant America: A Portrait - Hardcover

by Alejandro Portes (Author), Rubén G. Rumbaut (Author)

This revised and updated fifth edition of Immigrant America: A Portrait provides a comprehensive and current overview of immigration to the United States, including its history, the principal theories seeking to account for its diverse origins, the main types of immigrants, and the various forms of immigrants' incorporation within American society.

With the latest available data, Immigrant America further explores the economic, political, regional, linguistic, and religious aspects of immigration. It offers detailed analyses of the adaptation process experienced by adult children of immigrants and adds an updated and expanded concluding chapter on changing immigration policy regimes both past and present.

Back Jacket

Praise for previous editions of IMMIGRANT AMERICA:

"This text remains one of the definitive texts on US immigration and illustrates the paradox of America's immigration story, one that is on the surface as inclusive and welcoming . . . but also one that hides a deeper contradiction and truth about how immigration to the United States has effectively--and unequally--been received in some communities. That story is one that the authors refuse to shy away from."--International Sociology

"The authors have written a comprehensive and coherent synthesis of researchers' best answers to the most common questions asked about contemporary immigration and the extent to which the current immigrant experiences are an echo of history. The new edition of Immigrant America puts to rest lingering myths about immigrant assimilation, identity, politics, educational aspiration, and much more. Students are carefully guided toward the most judicious use of competing theories, which can lead to a deeper understanding of each of these different issues."--Lourdes Gouveia, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Latino/Latin American Studies, University of Nebraska Omaha

"In engagingly written prose, and supported with innovative theoretical analysis and comprehensive data, Immigrant America explains how political economy, history, and legislation shape diverse outcomes for immigrant mobility, politics, education, language use, and religion. Updated with recent data and fortified with a new theoretical overview, this book is the indispensable text for students, scholars, and anyone wishing to go beyond facile popular perceptions of immigration. Immigrant America remains a foundation for reasoned debate and future research."--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens

Author Biography

Alejandro Portes is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Princeton University and Research Professor of Law and Distinguished Scholar of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami. Rubén G. Rumbaut is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and founding chair of the American Sociological Association's International Migration Section. They are the coauthors of Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation and coeditors of Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America.