This book provides a comprehensive, comparative overview of immigration to Latin America, and presents original insight into the significance of immigration for regional national identities. The book is divided into two sections. Part one examines different spaces of migration, with chapters on the Greater Caribbean, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Part two focuses on migrating peoples, with chapters on Jewish, German, Chinese, British Caribbean, Italian, and Middle Eastern immigrants. The volume is framed by a theoretically engaged introduction and conclusion, which locate the case-studies in ... More

This book provides a comprehensive, comparative overview of immigration to Latin America, and presents original insight into the significance of immigration for regional national identities. The book is divided into two sections. Part one examines different spaces of migration, with chapters on the Greater Caribbean, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Part two focuses on migrating peoples, with chapters on Jewish, German, Chinese, British Caribbean, Italian, and Middle Eastern immigrants. The volume is framed by a theoretically engaged introduction and conclusion, which locate the case-studies in important debates within nationalism and migration studies. Conceptual themes examined include assimilation, race formation, xenophobia, the negotiation of citizenship, informal empire, diaspora nationalism, and transnationalism. The volume demonstrates conclusively that nation-building processes and ideas about nationality in Latin America were intimately entwined with immigration and cannot be fully understood without them. It also makes an important theoretical contribution by bringing migration studies and nationalism studies–which have historically developed along separate paths–into a single and coherent analytical framework.