The chapters in this section offer a number of important lessons for understanding immigration. The first lesson is the importance of historical continuity; we cannot understand contemporary immigration to Philadelphia without looking at its history. Vazquez-Hernandez (Chapter 4) reminds us that the “Latino” community in Philadelphia dates back at least to the 1890s. Sze (Chapter 5) also argues that today’s influx of immigrants in Philadelphia “has roots in prior periods of Philadelphia’s history and earlier global economic and political shifts” (p. 97). These chapters together address the importance of personal networks that have shaped immigration throughout the centuries. Saverino (Chapter...

It is an afternoon in July 1997, and I am sitting and recording a conversation in Tsine’s South Philadelphia home of fifty years, down the street from her family’s house of almost seventy years, the building in which she grew up, where her parents lived when they were alive and which her younger sister still occupies. Tsine was born in South Philadelphia in 1924 and never left the neighborhood. At several junctions, her husband wanted to leave the neighborhood, but Tsine felt too close to her mother to be able to leave. “I don’t think that I could stay away—...

In October 2004, I attended the eightieth anniversary celebration banquet of the Venetian Social Club in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood in the northwest corner of Philadelphia (see Figure 3.1). For the benefit of the multigenerational gathering, the second floor hall had been transformed into a mini exhibition of early photographs of the community on the Hill. At one end of the room was a monitor that endlessly replayed a vacation video taken by one of the members during the annual celebration in Poffabro, a northern Italian village in the Dolomite Mountains of the Friuli region, from which this Italian American...

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey, the Puerto Rican population of Philadelphia was 97,689 out of a total Latino population of 146,856. While the Puerto Rican portion of the Latino population was still large (66.5 percent), the survey found a steady increase in and diversification of the Latino presence in the city.¹ This supposedly “new” phenomenon of a growing varied Latino community is actually not so new—a diverse Latino population in Philadelphia was evident as early as the 1890s. This chapter describes how these early pan-Latino enclaves made up of Spaniards, Cubans, Mexicans, and other...

A report produced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government notes: “The Philadelphia area generally attracts around 2% of Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants each year. Chinese have remained remarkably consistent at that level” (Patusky and Ceffalio 2004 [cited hereafter as “Fels Report”]). Among foreign-born nationalities, the Chinese population, excluding those from Hong Kong and Taiwan, ranks number three in Philadelphia following immigrants from Vietnam and Ukraine, respectively (Fels Report: 24). In a city otherwise struggling to attract and retain residents, what, then, helps to explain the steady immigration of Chinese to the Philadelphia region? How does Philadelphia’s particular...

Religious, ethnic, and social service institutions played a major role in the experiences of immigrants from the First and Second Great Waves, as well as for those who came after the passage of the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965, opening the door to populations from Global South nations. Such organizations facilitated the adaptation of these groups to their new “host” society, helped them establish communities and ultimately to “become American.” While such associations generally assisted immigrant populations in their quest for social mobility in Philadelphia, their effect was somewhat tempered by the time period in which these newcomers arrived in the...

The journey of theCharming Mollyfrom Rotterdam to Philadelphia in the fall of 1773 ended catastrophically for the family of Jacob Uleckinger. After a stopover in Portsmouth, England, theCharming Mollytook ten weeks to cross the Atlantic.¹ Jacob and three of his five children died on route before reaching the New World. His wife succumbed just as the ship arrived in Philadelphia. Jacob’s brother-in-law, George Seess, survived but had to be brought to the sick house, where he reported that money his late sister had given to a fellow passenger to exchange for local currency had disappeared. It...

Irish immigration to the Philadelphia area has a long and diversified history. Two thousand Irish Quakers came to Pennsylvania between 1682 and 1750. By the early eighteenth century in the mid-Atlantic region, the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish became the predominant group of Irish immigrants and this pattern continued until about 1815.¹ Most of our attention is given to the still later Catholic Irish who with the Great Famine made the United States their prime destination and were the main immigrant group there in the mid-nineteenth century.

One hundred fifty-two years have passed since the Great Famine was an unwelcome visitor to Irish...

The number of Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia has increased rapidly over the past decade. In 2000, the U.S. Census estimated that there were approximately 6,220 Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia.¹ Just three years later, the Mexican Consulate estimated that over 12,000 Mexican immigrants called the city of Philadelphia home, making the Mexican population the second largest Latino immigrant group after Puerto Ricans.² The recent growth of the Mexican population in Philadelphia has far outpaced the social services available, with the shortage of services manifesting itself most acutely in the area of health care.

Healthcare services that are both culturally competent and...

Immigrants who came to the United States in the post-1965 period, particularly from Global South nations, have largely developed transnational identities, that is, they have maintained critical ties to their home nations while also developing strong relationships with populations and communities in their host society. With respect to one’s nation of origin, these transnational ties often involve the sending of remittances, visiting home, frequent communication, and building family residences. Transnational linkages can also refer to the support of family businesses or establishing enterprises in one’s “home” country. For those who are precluded from visiting home because of lack of resources...

On a cold fall Sunday evening, after a church service conducted in Haitian Creole, about fifty Haitians gathered in the annex of a Catholic Church in West Philadelphia waiting to hear a renowned Haitian poet—now living in New York City—discuss the beauty of the Creole language and the glories of Haitian culture. The audience consisted mostly of Haitian immigrant families and their children. The children were running around speaking English with a dab of Creole; the parents, in contrast, were trying to control their children, speaking mostly in Creole with a dab of English. It was a typical...

Over the past twenty-five years, the United States has been witnessing the growth of a new African Diaspora with an increase in immigration from Africa and the Caribbean. Although the Greater Philadelphia area has been an understudied site in the general literature on immigration, it is becoming an increasingly important location for Africans, ranking among the top ten metropolitan areas with respect to the percentage of the African-born in the population. The above quotation from an African entrepreneur in Philadelphia begins to indicate the significant presence and commitment of African immigrants to business ownership and community development, particularly in a...

Between 1972 and 1976, three South Indian women came to the United States in search of economic opportunity and a gateway for the immigration of their families. The following is a look into the lives of Malayalee nurses in America, as well as the complexities surrounding ethnic identity and adaptation in Indian immigrant populations.

The portrait of Indian Americans in much of the scholarly literature and in the mass media fails to acknowledge the diversity of the community and the unique experiences and challenges of subgroups within Indian America. The ethnic label “Indian American” encompasses all of the various regional...

Images of Philadelphia typically include glistening skyscrapers or restored colonial architecture, discussions of the robustness of center city’s business district or the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Similarly, Asian Americans are typically discussed in relation to educational and economic success on the one hand or in terms of traditional values that have provided the foundation for achieving in a new land. Ong has suggested that immigrant and refugee discourses that have at times focused on long-standing cultural traditions or the strife that groups have encountered before arriving in the United States have been replaced by discourses that focus on any...