Ethnic Consciousness Among Immigrants

Abstract

For the historian, to chronicle and analyze ethnic consciousness among immigrants is a task of great difficulty. Let us take “consciousness” first: the historian’s insight into people’s minds often lacks the expertise of the psychologist, particularly of the social psychologist. Besides, “consciousness” of one kind or another is not always well documented, although this can be remedied in a number of ways; through indirect testimony for periods past (court and administrative records, newspaper articles, books) and oral questioning since the 1930s (and thus oral history has come to exist, extremely useful for anyone interested in the history and psychology of immigration). Dealing with immigrants, one encounters all the difficulties which go with studying minorities: e.g., inadequate documentation and prejudice. The question of where one stands seems essential: will immigrants be studied as part of the society at large, which entails playing down their distinct identity (one avenue has proved very fruitful in this respect: that of studying responses to groups of immigrants, nativism, for instance, as studied by Higham (10), or will they be studied as “Italians,” “Slovaks,” “Jews,” etc., at the risk of losing the general problem en route, that of the existential realities of immigration in a given society, at a given point in its history?