Doctoral Dissertation Research: New American Diversity in Interactions, Interpretations, and Institutions

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the foreign born population of the United States expanded dramatically. Although the majority of immigrants reside in major cities within a few states, new Americans increasingly settle outside of traditional entry points and major urban centers, and in states that have not, at least in recent history, been home to large foreign-born populations. The new wave of immigrants includes what is arguably the first substantial influx of native Africans since the end of the slave trade. These trends make this research project examining "diversity struggles" in Lewiston, an overwhelmingly-white Maine town thrust into the spotlight by tensions arising from a recent influx of Somali immigrants, timely and relevant. Through ethnographic work including interviews with Lewiston's public officials, new and longtime residents, in-depth analysis of interactions in local businesses, and comparative fact-finding in other communities that are home to large Somali populations, this study addresses the following questions: How do changes in the city population affect community members? How do old and new residents construct racial, cultural, and religious "difference" in their interactions? Do residents use experiences with "difference" to make sense of their community and new neighbors? How and when do they orient their approach to "difference" to widely available notions of "cultural sensitivity?" The broader impacts of this project include the following. This project will contribute to sociological understanding of cultural assimilation and integration, race, and immigration by exposing the assumptions, experiences, and sense-making practices by which old and new city inhabitants comprehend and construct community. Through the dissemination of findings in multidisciplinary workshops and conferences and the publication of results, this research will have a broader impact on the formulation of immigration and refugee policy at the local and national levels, prove useful to service providers in rapidly diversifying areas, and suggest new approaches to dealing with diversity that allow communities experiencing new immigration to develop and implement techniques designed to avoid problems, such as persistent economic inequality and intractable residential and social segregation, faced in many immigration centers.