Sharon M. Quinsaat
University of Chicago Press, 2024
Jane Juffer
Temple University Press, 2013
Examining how encounters produced by migration lead to intimacies-ranging from sexual, spiritual, and neighborly to hateful and violent, Jane Juffer considers the significant changes that have occurred in small towns following an influx of Latinos to the Midwest.
Intimacy across Borders situates the story of the Dutch Reformed Church in Iowa and South Africa within a larger analysis of race, religion, and globalization. Drawing on personal narrative, ethnography, and sociopolitical critique, Juffer shows how migration to rural areas can disrupt even the most thoroughly entrenched religious beliefs and transform the schools, churches, and businesses that form the heart of small-town America. Conversely, such face-to-face encounters can also generate hatred, as illustrated in the increasing number of hate crimes against Latinos and the passage of numerous anti-immigrant ordinances.
Juffer demonstrates how Latino migration to new areas of the U.S. threatens certain groups because it creates the potential for new kinds of families—mixed race, mixed legal status, and transnational—that challenge the conservative definition of community based on the racially homogeneous, coupled, citizen family.
Ella Parry-Davies
Northwestern University Press, 2025
Toyota, Tritia
Temple University Press, 2023
Sarah E. Chinn
Rutgers University Press, 2008
Benjamin A.T. Graham
University of Michigan Press, 2019
By Mohsen M. Mobasher
University of Texas Press, 2012
Thousands of Iranians fled their homeland when the 1978–1979 revolution ended the fifty-year reign of the Pahlavi Dynasty. Some fled to Europe and Canada, while others settled in the United States, where anti-Iranian sentiment flared as the hostage crisis unfolded. For those who chose America, Texas became the fourth-largest settlement area, ultimately proving to be a place of paradox for any Middle Easterner in exile. Iranians in Texas culls data, interviews, and participant observations in Iranian communities in Houston, Dallas, and Austin to reveal the difficult, private world of cultural pride, religious experience, marginality, culture clashes, and other aspects of the lives of these immigrants.
Examining the political nature of immigration and how the originating and receiving countries shape the prospects of integration, Mohsen Mobasher incorporates his own experience as a Texas scholar born in Iran. Tracing current anti-Muslim sentiment to the Iranian hostage crisis, two decades before 9/11, he observes a radically negative shift in American public opinion that forced thousands of Iranians in the United States to suddenly be subjected to stigmatization and viewed as enemies. The book also sheds light on the transformation of the Iranian family in exile and some of the major challenges that second-generation Iranians face in their interactions with their parents.
Bringing to life a unique population in the context of global politics, Iranians in Texas overturns stereotypes while echoing diverse voices.
Mohsen Mostafavi MobasherForeword by Nestor Rodriguez
University of Texas Press, 2025
An exploration of the link between politics of migration, prospects of integration, and ethnic identity among Iranian immigrants and their descendants in the United States, spanning from the 1970s to the present day.
Thousands of Iranians fled their homeland when the 1978–1979 revolution ended the fifty-year reign of the Pahlavi dynasty. Some fled to Europe and Canada, while others settled in the United States, where anti-Iranian sentiment flared as the hostage crisis unfolded. For those who chose America, Texas became the fourth-largest settlement area. Iranians in Texas culls data, interviews, and participant observations in Iranian communities in Houston, Dallas, and Austin to reveal the difficult, private world of cultural pride, religious experience, marginality, culture clashes, and other aspects of the lives of these immigrants.
Examining the political nature of immigration between Iran and the United States and social, cultural, and economic life for Iranian immigrants and their American-born children, Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher incorporates his own experience as a Texas scholar born in Iran. In this revised edition, two new chapters and a new introduction and conclusion provide updates on what has happened in the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, including the Iran nuclear deal and resulting controversy, the Muslim ban, and the global protests over the death of twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini for not wearing a hijab. Bringing to life a unique immigrant population in the context of global politics, Iranians in Texas overturns stereotypes and echoes diverse voices.
Malcolm Campbell
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Malcolm Campbell
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007
Ken Egan Jr.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2026
Born to poverty in the Irish county of Tipperary, John Egan participated in some of the most dramatic events of the nineteenth century, including mass migration to the United States during a catastrophic famine, the “opening” of Japan via gunboat diplomacy, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and homesteading in the Upper Midwest. In Irish Born, American Made, his great-grandson examines the processes by which a scorned British subject became a proud American citizen.
Although Egan’s life was filled with epic drama, the author does not shy away from unsavory truths, such as his ancestor’s doubts about the virtues of abolition or his enthusiastic participation in settling land appropriated from Indigenous peoples. Equally, Egan recognizes the real hardships his ancestor faced in assimilating to American society, from the prejudices of the ascendant Know-Nothing movement to the condescending caricatures of Irish soldiers by his Union compatriots during and after the Civil War. The result is both a moving reminder of the hardships of immigration and a timely reckoning with the imperfections of our forebears.
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel
Rutgers University Press, 2023
Francisco Rivera-Batiz
Russell Sage Foundation, 1996
JoAnna Poblete
University of Illinois Press, 2014
Jeffrey S. Kahn
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Tomoe Moriya
University of Illinois Press, 2010
Edited by George J. Borjas
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Joel Perlmann
Russell Sage Foundation, 2005