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ABSTRACT
Studies of contemporary immigrants in the United States typically focus on how immigrants change as they adapt to and create new lives in their new home. We know far less about how immigrants and their descendants have been remaking American society and culture. The 87 million immigrants and their children have been a prominent source of profound and far-reaching changes that go to the heart of the country’s institutions, altering the social, economic, cultural, and political landscape in many significant ways as they redefine modern America. This article zeroes in on three important, though quite different, domains: businesses and industries in the economy, national political party alignments, and popular culture and the arts. I bring in a comparative historical dimension, showing that despite similarities with the past, much is distinctive today. I also point out that immigration often operates as a force for change in combination with other factors, and indicate that innovations in the arts and popular culture, in particular, frequently entail mixtures that blend elements from home-country, immigrant, and established American cultures. The concluding comments offer some reflections on the future, considering further institutional and cultural changes that may lie ahead in the years to come.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This article draws on my larger and more comprehensive study of immigration and the transformation of American society in the past fifty years, including fuller accounts of the role of post-1965 immigrants and the U.S-born second generation in changes in the U.S. economy, electoral politics, and popular culture as well as the racial order and cities, towns, and suburbs (Foner Citation2022).
2 The figure was close to 27% to be exact. I use the terms immigrant and foreign-born interchangeably to refer to those who are not U.S. citizens at birth. In the contemporary era, they include lawful permanent residents, naturalized citizens, refugees and asylees, people on certain temporary visas, and unauthorized immigrants (Ward and Batalova Citation2022).
3 To the extent that scholars have explored immigrants’ impact on contemporary American society, they tend to focus on one particular domain or institutional sphere such as race or the economy. The studies examining a range of institutional domains in some depth nearly always center on specific places, typically one city or one type of immigrant destination (see, for example, Foner Citation2013b on New York City; Portes and Armony Citation2018 on Miami; Winders Citation2013 on Nashville; and Massey Citation2008 and Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell Citation2008 on new destinations).
4 The great majority of Asian American and Hispanic congressional representatives and senators are Democrats, although some leading lights of the Republican Party are of immigrant origin, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, second generation Cubans among the best known. Donald Trump, it is well to remember, is also the child of an immigrant, his mother having been born on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland (see Foner Citation2022 on ethnic succession in U.S. politics).
5 For a beginning attempt at such an analysis see Foner (Citation2022, 154–161), where I discuss how, and why, a number of significant institutional changes, such as changes in basic principles of citizenship law, occurred in many European countries, but not in the United States, in the wake of the huge postwar immigration.
6 According to the same projection, White Americans generally will make up 59% of eligible voters in the 2036 election.