A01=Sarah J. Mahler
African Americans
Americans
Anthropologist
Apartment
Author_Sarah J. Mahler
Authorization
Category=JBFH
Category=JBSR
Category=JPVC
Category=NHTB
Central America
Colombians
Competition
Criticism
Debt
Deindustrialization
Deportation
Economics
Economy
Employment
Entrepreneurship
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ethnography
Exclusion
Expense
Field research
Household
I Wish (manhwa)
Illegal immigration
Immigration
Immigration law
Immigration to the United States
Income
Informal sector
Informant
Institution
Insurance
Katherine Newman
Laborer
Landlord
Latin America
Legalization
Mexicans
Middle class
Month
Nationality
Newspaper
Obstacle
Opportunism
Opportunity structures
Payment
Peasant
Peruvians
Pseudonym
Puerto Ricans
Refugee
Remittance
Requirement
Right of asylum
Russell Sage Foundation
Salary
Salvadorans
Saskia Sassen
Saving
Sibling
Small business
Social relation
Social Security number
Social status
Spouse
Supermarket
Tax
Travel
Travel visa
Unemployment
Welfare
Product details
- ISBN 9780691037820
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 05 Nov 1995
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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American Dreaming chronicles in rich detail the struggles of immigrants who have fled troubled homelands in search of a better life in the United States, only to be marginalized by the society that they hoped would embrace them. Sarah Mahler draws from her experiences living among undocumented Salvadoran and South American immigrants in a Long Island suburb of Manhattan. In moving interviews they describe their disillusionment with life in the United States but blame themselves individually or as a whole for their lack of economic success and not the greater society. As she explores the reasons behind this outlook, the author argues that marginalization fosters antagonism within ethnic groups while undermining the ethnic solidarity emphasized by many scholars of immigration. Mahler's investigation leads to conditions that often bar immigrants from success and that they cannot control, such as residential segregation, job exploitation, language and legal barriers, prejudice and outright hostility from their suburban neighbors.
Some immigrants earn surplus income by using private cars as taxis, subletting space in apartments to lower rent burdens, and filling out legal forms and applications--in essence generating institutions largely parallel to those of the mainstream society whereby only a small group of entrepreneurs can profit. By exacting a price for what used to be acts of reciprocal good will in the homeland, these entrepreneurs leave people who had expected to be exploited by "Americans" feeling victimized by their own.
Sarah J. Mahler is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont.
