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Old and New Immigrants: On Nancy Foner's From Ellis Island to JFK

Introduction

LEO LUCASSEN

AFTER YEARS OF fierce discussion concerning the extent to which the "new" post-1965 immigrants in the United States are following the paths that earlier (mainly European) migrants took a century earlier. Nancy Foner's From Ellis Island to JFK was soon acknowledged as an important benchmark in this ongoing debate. Focusing on New York as a case study, the author successfully integrated the insights of both the historical and social sciences literature into a new challenging paradigm. Without downplaying the important recent changes in both the composition of the immigrant population and in the opportunity structure of the receiving society, stressed by leading sociologists such as Alejandro Portes and others, Foner's book also elaborately shows the structural similarities in the long term integration patterns. Being an anthropologist, she has edged her way through historical research. In this sense, Foner's book is not only important in linking the two fields, but also in exemplifying the future of the migration field: well-structured comparisons, treating history as a social science specialized in the long-term developments, as Charles Tilly, Ewa Morawska and others have advocated for so long.