Journal articles on the topic 'New York Ellis Island Immigration Station'

Lewis Hine first went to New York’s Ellis Island Immigration Station to take photographs that would elicit sympathy from his students at the Ethical Culture School toward the new immigrants. Since then, the photographs, dating from 1905 to 1926, have visually defined his sitters as foreigners in classrooms, in print, and at museums. Produced at a time when the so-called race of the foreign-born was deemed indicative of their overall character and abilities, the photographs both sustained and countered turn-of-the-century racialized conceptualizations of newcomers. More recently, contemporary artists including JR and Tomie Arai have returned to Hine’s Ellis Island work for installations that bring the past into direct dialogue with the present, confronting contemporary viewers with enlarged versions of his photographs. Hine’s pro-immigrant intentions and reputation as a social reform photographer, however, have clouded how these photographs also racialized their sitters. This article traces the circulation of a selection of Hine’s works in different contexts dating from 1905 to today, and considers them within the broader histories and theories of photography, race, and immigration.

For many immigrants to the United States, between 1892 and 1924, admission was contingent upon a medical inspection at an immigration centre, such as the one located at Ellis Island in the harbour of New York City. Much like passing through customs or security at airports today, these medical inspections were dreaded by immigrant travellers, and United States Government and Public Health Service (PHS) publications show that these medical inspections were escalating in intensity and emphasis during the early twentieth-century. The purpose of the PHS inspections becomes especially evident when looking at the gender considerations, or lack thereof, which arose during medical inspections at Ellis Island. A gender analysis of the PHS medical inspections, examined through the use of oral histories and photographs, provides a window into understanding the primary concern of the United States Public Health Service.

This article seeks to bring the “urban” back into immigration research. Each immigrant receiving area has its own particular group of newcomers, and the economic and political structures of the immigrant receiving areas are also distinctive. Those structures are not all determining, as immigrant trajectories are shaped by the interaction between distinctive urban institutions and the specific characteristics of the relevant ethnic groups. But in the last analysis, the urban context makes a difference, as this study shows by examining the leading immigrant destinations – New York and Los Angeles.

The origin of Lewis Hine's invention of social documentary photography can be found in his intellectual alliance to pragmatism. Reading Hine's photographs as primary sources of the author's intent, in context with Hine's progressive intellectual milieu and in contrast with his contemporaries, Jacob Riis and Alfred Steiglitz, reveals Hine as a self-conscious and tolerant commentator on the lives of individual immigrants and workers. Although Hine left the objects of his portraits mostly unnamed, through his documentary style, he conferred upon them individual identity in contrast to the nativism, exploitation, and social Darwinism that surrounded immigration issues in the early 1900s. Through his images, Hine transmitted his own perceptions of 1900s New York City, especially Ellis Island. Since Hine was inspired by William James's formulation of “lived experience,” the historian can read Hine through a lens of James's philosophy, solving the pragmatist problem of communicated language by replacing words with images.

This research examines the historical role news elites have played in shaping public perceptions of immigrants as a distinct social group. To that end, we identify the discursive strategies used by The New York Times to construct the ‘American immigrant’ during the Ellis Island years (1892–1924), a pivotal period when some of the nation’s earliest immigration restriction laws were established. Data were collected from front page newspaper articles and analysis was developed using the techniques of critical discourse analysis. Drawing on Foucault’s (1977) theoretical understanding of the enmeshment of power relations in discourse as well as Blumer’s (1958) group position model, we develop and test five hypotheses about the role of news elites in constructing this social group. Finding support for all hypotheses, we show how the article’s discursive choices dehumanized immigrants, trivialized their experiences, silenced their voices and helped legitimate an unequal social hierarchy that positions immigrants beneath non-immigrants.

The theme of this year’s meeting, “International Perspectives on Social Science History,” rises out of two realities. The first is the recognized international character of phenomena under study, such as fertility decline, political contention, family strategies in response to changing conditions, gendered work, migration, labor, and policing. The second is the way in which the Social Science History Association (SSHA) operates across borders and among scholars in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to investigate common scholarly problems. The attention of migration scholars is now focused on global movements of people and international migrations, particularly immigration. The politics and policies of receiving newcomers are very important now–in the Americas and in Europe. The SSHA is giving its attention to the old and new international immigrants to the United States, as in last year’s session on Nancy Foner’s fine book on New York,From Ellis Island to JFK(2000), and the presidential address by Caroline Brettell (2002) on the quantitative and qualitative methods by which we can understand human movement.

-Chuck Meide, Kathleen Deagan ,Columbus's outpost among the Taínos: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2002. x + 294 pp., José María Cruxent (eds)-Lee D. Baker, George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A short history. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. x + 207 pp.-Evelyn Powell Jennings, Sherry Johnson, The social transformation of eighteenth-century Cuba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. x + 267 pp.-Michael Zeuske, J.S. Thrasher, The island of Cuba: A political essay by Alexander von Humboldt. Translated from Spanish with notes and a preliminary essay by J.S. Thrasher. Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener; Kingston: Ian Randle, 2001. vii + 280 pp.-Matt D. Childs, Virginia M. Bouvier, Whose America? The war of 1898 and the battles to define the nation. Westport CT: Praeger, 2001. xi + 241 pp.-Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Antonio Santamaría García, Sin azúcar no hay país: La industria azucarera y la economía cubana (1919-1939). Seville: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universidad de Sevilla y Diputación de Sevilla, 2001. 624 pp.-Charles Rutheiser, Joseph L. Scarpaci ,Havana: Two faces of the Antillean Metropolis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. x + 437 pp., Roberto Segre, Mario Coyula (eds)-Thomas Neuner, Ottmar Ette ,Kuba Heute: Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Vervuert, 2001. 863 pp., Martin Franzbach (eds)-Mark B. Padilla, Emilio Bejel, Gay Cuban nation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. xxiv + 257 pp.-Mark B. Padilla, Kamala Kempadoo, Sun, sex, and gold: Tourism and sex work in the Caribbean. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. viii + 356 pp.-Jane Desmond, Susanna Sloat, Caribbean dance from Abakuá to Zouk: How movement shapes identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. xx + 408 pp.-Karen Fog Olwig, Nina Glick Schiller ,Georges woke up laughing: Long-distance nationalism and the search for home. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2001. x + 324 pp., Georges Eugene Fouron (eds)-Karen Fog Olwig, Nancy Foner, From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's two great waves of immigration. Chelsea MI: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000. xvi + 334 pp.-Aviva Chomsky, Lara Putnam, The company they kept: Migrants and the politics of gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xi + 303 pp.-Rebecca B. Bateman, Rosalyn Howard, Black Seminoles in the Bahamas. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. xvii + 150 pp.-Virginia Kerns, Carel Roessingh, The Belizean Garífuna: Organization of identity in an ethnic community in Central America. Amsterdam: Rozenberg. 2001. 264 pp.-Nicole Roberts, Susanna Regazzoni, Cuba: una literatura sin fronteras / Cuba: A literature beyond boundaries. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Vervuert, 2001. 148 pp.-Nicole Roberts, Lisa Sánchez González, Boricua literature: A literary history of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2001. viii + 216 pp.-Kathleen Gyssels, Ange-Séverin Malanda, Passages II: Histoire et pouvoir dans la littérature antillo-guyanaise. Paris: Editions du Ciref, 2002. 245 pp.-Sue N. Greene, Simone A. James Alexander, Mother imagery in the novels of Afro-Caribbean women. Columbia MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001. x + 215 pp.-Gert Oostindie, Aarón Gamaliel Ramos ,Islands at the crossroads: Politics in the non-independent Caribbean., Angel Israel Rivera (eds)-Katherine E. Browne, David A.B. Murray, Opacity: Gender, sexuality, race, and the 'problem' of identity in Martinique. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. xi + 188 pp.-James Houk, Kean Gibson, Comfa religion and Creole language in a Caribbean community. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. xvii + 243 pp.-Kelvin Singh, Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad: Muharram performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. viii + 305 pages.-Lise Winer, Kim Johnson, Renegades: The history of the renegades steel orchestra of Trinidad and Tobago. With photos by Jeffrey Chock. Oxford UK: Macmillan Caribbean Publishers, 2002. 170 pp.-Jerome Teelucksingh, Glenford Deroy Howe, Race, war and nationalism: A social history of West Indians in the first world war. Kingston: Ian Randle/Oxford UK: James Currey, 2002. vi + 270 pp.-Geneviève Escure, Glenn Gilbert, Pidgin and Creole linguistics in the twenty-first century. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002. 379 pp.-George L. Huttar, Eithne B. Carlin ,Atlas of the languages of Suriname. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press/Kingston: Ian Randle, 2002. vii + 345 pp., Jacques Arends (eds)

Ellis Island in New York, USA, served as a center accepting the entry of people who immigrated to the United States between 1892 and 1954. Afterwards, it lost its function due to the changing laws, and today a part of the island has turned into a place of visit telling the history of immigration to America. In this article, the functioning of the island when it was active as an immigration reception office, the admission conditions, the approach to immigrants and the importance of the island as a memory place today are discussed in three parts. The first is the Ellis Island immigrant photographs taken by Lewis Hine in the early 1900s; the other is the text of author Georges Perec's memory research on being a migrant during his 1978 visit to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum; Finally, photographer and street artist JR placed photographs of immigrants who entered the island and their families living today in the interiors of Ellis Island in 2014 and interpreted the place and the phenomenon of migration in the context of contemporary art. The importance of Ellis Island, which has turned into a symbol of immigration to America and a place of memory today, has been discussed in related studies.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0946/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

RÉSUMÉ En tant qu’institutions mémorielles, les musées jouent un grand rôle dans la construction identitaire. Les représentations du passé et du patrimoine culturel local sont essentielles pour le développement de l’identité nationale ou régionale. La transformation d’anciennes installations qui accueillaient les immigrés - comme Ellis Island à New York - dans des sites mémoriels (lieux de mémoire) qui mettent en scène leurs histoires. Grâce à cette patrimonialisation des mémoires d’immigrés, un nouveau discours sur l’immigration et l’identité se met en place: les mémoires souvent oubliées - un oubli volontaire parfois - trouvent leur place dans les musées et permettent de créer un récit narratif sur l’immigration à partir de récits personnels. Pourtant, la mise en musée de l’histoire de l’immigration reste un défi dans le paysage muséal international. Ainsi, plusieurs questions se posent: En quoi consiste le patrimoine de l’immigration? Comment mettre en musée l’immigration? Les tentatives de représentation des immigrés dans l’espace muséal reflètent-elles un paradigme national? Les musées d’immigration représentent une variante du musée de société par leur approche participative et par la volonté de créer un lien envers les communautés d’origine immigrée. À travers la constitution d’un patrimoine de l’immigration, le musée développe une démarche participative auprès des différentes communautés pour mettre en valeur leurs récits et aussi devenir un facilitateur d’une identité plus inclusive. Une approche interdisciplinaire est donc souvent favorisée par ces musées apportant ainsi des nouveaux regards qui peuvent remettre en question nos propres paradigmes sur la société ou groupe représenté. Dans cet article, il s’agit de mettre en perspective les caractéristiques constitutives des musées de l’immigration ainsi que l’importance de l’histoire orale (récits personnels d’immigrés), objets-mémoires et l’art contemporain dans l’élaboration d’expositions qui souhaitent créer une certaine forme d’empathie chez le visiteur.