Ethnicity in Contemporary America

Book excerpt: Thoroughly revised and updated in this second edition, this clear and thoughtful text offers a geographical analysis of the history of U.S. immigration patterns and the development of selected ethnic minority groups. The book focuses especially on their origin, diffusion, socioeconomic characteristics, and settlement patterns within the United States. The book sets the context with opening chapters that discuss migration theory and the history of U.S. migration from 1607 to the present, including major U.S. immigration legislation, and provide a background for the time of entry, volume, and spatial distribution of various groups. Case-study chapters then analyze each of those groups, including Native Americans and those of African, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban, Jewish, Japanese, Chinese, and Indochinese origin. The final section of the book explores rural and urban ethnic enclaves, focusing especially on immigrant groups of European heritage and their impacts on the cultural landscape of the United States.