Distant Magnets: Expectations and Realities in the Immigrant Experience, 1840-1930 (Ellis Island)

This volume documents experiences of the many peasant and working-class emigrants from England, Ireland, Scandinavia, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and East European Jewish communities. The comparative perspectives enables the authors to distinguish similarities and differences among diverse immigrant groups, experiences, and destinations. Drawing on rare first-hand accounts and moving personal documents-letters, diaries, guidebooks, the labour and immigrant press, songs, poems, plays, novels-essays chronicle the psychological and social as well as economic and politics aspects of the immigrant experience. Evoking the rich texture and diversity of immigrant experience and mentalities, this unique and engaging work makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complex processes of migration and acculturation.