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Transnational migration is a controversial and much-discussed issue in both the popular media and the social sciences, but at its heart migration is about individual people making the difficult choice to leave their families and communities in hopes of achieving greater economic prosperity. Vicente Quitasaca is one of these people. In 1995 he left his home in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca to live and work in New York City. This anthropological story of Vicente's migration and its effects on his life and the lives of his parents and siblings adds a crucial human dimension to statistics about immigration and the macro impact of transnational migration on the global economy.

Anthropologist Ann Miles has known the Quitasacas since 1989. Her long acquaintance with the family allows her to delve deeply into the factors that eventually impelled the oldest son to make the difficult and dangerous journey to the United States as an undocumented migrant. Focusing on each family member in turn, Miles explores their varying perceptions of social inequality and racism in Ecuador and their reactions to Vicente's migration. As family members speak about Vicente's new, hard-to-imagine life in America, they reveal how transnational migration becomes a symbol of failure, hope, resignation, and promise for poor people in struggling economies. Miles frames this fascinating family biography with an analysis of the historical and structural conditions that encourage transnational migration, so that the Quitasacas' story becomes a vivid firsthand illustration of this growing global phenomenon.

Nearly half the 2.3 million residents of Queens, New York are foreign-born. Immigrants in Queens hail from more than 120 countries and speak more than 135 languages. As an epicenter of immigrant diversity, Queens is an urban gateway that exemplifies opportunities and challenges in shaping a multi-racial democracy. 

The editors and contributors to Immigrant Crossroads examine the social, spatial, economic, and political dynamics that stem from this fast-growing urbanization. The interdisciplinary chapters examine residential patterns and neighborhood identities, immigrant incorporation and mobilizations, and community building and activism.

Essays combine qualitative and quantitative research methods to address globalization and the unprecedented racial and ethnic diversity as a result of international migration. Chapters on incorporation focus on immigrant participation and representation in electoral politics, and advocacy for immigrant inclusion in urban governance and service provision. A section of Immigrant Crossroads concerns placemaking, focusing on the production of neighborhood spaces and identities as well as immigrant activism and community development and control.

Based on engaged and robust analysis, Immigrant Crossroads highlights the dynamics of this urban gateway.

Once wetlands, Queens today is a crowded cityscape of dense urban neighborhoods and suburban sprawl. The largest of New York City’s five boroughs by area, it has a larger population than every American city except Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City itself. It possesses the most culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse population in the United States and possibly the world. This is the story of Queens, “the world’s borough,” and how it transformed, in less than one hundred years, from an agricultural hinterland to a vital urban corridor.
 
Rural County, Urban Borough is a history of place, charting the rapid transformation of the Queens landscape. It identifies what drove the borough’s development, from public infrastructure, architecture, and transportation to technological innovation and urban planning. New York historian Jeffrey A. Kroessler takes us inside the backrooms and boardrooms where local powerbrokers shaped the borough’s future, chronicling how its relationship with the city has evolved. He also shows the steps Queens residents from all backgrounds took to care for their neighborhoods and build their communities. Richly illustrated, this book underscores why Queens is integral to New York City and the wider world and reveals how, in its evolution, we see the whole arc of American urban history.