Assimilation

"A stunningly original, provocative, and transdisciplinary take on the concept of assimilation.  Moving beyond classical social scientific definitions, Ramírez surveys the multiple ways the concept has been articulated, understood, and deployed in establishing political and cultural boundaries.  It’s an account that compellingly illustrates the deep and ongoing connection between racialization and who is deemed unassimilable, or partially assimilable, by the nation-state."—Michael Omi, author of Racial Formation in the New Millennium

"Ramirez shows how American theories of immigration and assimilation work hand in glove with other key mechanisms of racial formation, including native genocide and settler colonialism, slavery, white supremacy, and empire-building. This important work reveals the relational processes that underlie all race-making and American identity itself."—Natalia Molina, author of How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts

"This is a crucial intervention in understanding assimilation in the United States. Whereas previously the process of assimilation has been described as a form of adaption for white immigrants entering the US, Catherine S. Ramírez shows how it is also connected to belonging and deservedness for those deemed denizens and probationary citizens whose lives have now become increasingly precarious. This book will change future conversations."—Rebecca Schreiber, author of The Undocumented Everyday: Migrant Lives and the Politics of Visibility

"Since the founding of the American republic there have been a host of nationalities incorporated into the polity not by the forces of attraction that compelled millions to emigrate to the United States of their own volition, but who have been the objects of force, entering as slaves, vanquished subjects of American territorial wars, refugees grudgingly offered succor, and children carried across the sovereign borders of the US without documentation or inspection. In her provocative, rich, and wide-ranging book, Ramírez calls these individuals 'denizens,' offering us granular assessments of the profound myopic limits of assimilation theory. Why are some full citizens not treated as such by their neighbors and the state? Ramírez's answers turn on the complexity of the history of racialization in America, where one’s national origin is invariably linked to race—a stigma not easily erased by time or behavior."—Ramón Gutiérrez, author of When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846