Research: Book extract



 Here is an extract from the book Immigration written by Ilan Stavans.


The part that interested me most was this part:
"While on the surface these developments of political incorporation seem to reflect patterns of Americanization among earlier European immigrant groups to the United States, this is a decidedly ambivalent Americanism borne of racial tension and antiforeign sentiment. One 1994 statewide poll in California found that 25 percent of immigrants in the state personally feared discrimination and violence directed at them by virtue of looking foreign. As sociologist Rubén Rumbaut has put it, “the moral of the story is we reap what we sow. When you welcome people to a community, you encourage them to feel they matter and that they have a stake here. But if you sow hate, you’ll reap the products of hate.”

This showed me that many immigrants fear discrimination and violence, and showed me that not a lot has improved since 1994, as people still fear these things, even though society is claimed to be more accepting by many. It also suggested to me that immigration is perhaps an even bigger issue now, since when voting for Trump and for Brexit, many had the intention of 'getting rid of' immigrants in mind, and it was one of the major issues that concerned voters. Here are two pieces of text that support this statement.


 'Why Trump?' by George Lakoff in Political Leave a Comment, 2016

'Why Brexit? The Toxic Mix of Immigration and Austerity' by Stuart Gietel-Basten in Wiley Periodicals, 2016
In these excerpts, we can see that immigration was a major issue in both the UK and the US which is why Trump and Brexit was voted, as voters who voted for them thought that the amount of immigrants would be decreased, some might even think fully stopped, as promised by their campaigns.

Back to the book extract, it really interested me because personally, I have experienced prejudice too because of my family and I immigrating to England. It helped me think about questions for the interview that I am going to make.

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