Hidden Histories of Unauthorized Migrations from Europe to the United States

Danielle Battisti, S. Deborah Kang

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780252088551, 9780252046469
• eBook ISBN: 9780252047770
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Often depicted as the nation's iconic legal immigrant, unauthorized European migrants are often overlooked by scholars, policymakers, and the media. This volume tells the stories of European migrants who adopted irregular migration strategies to enter and remain in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Contributors explore facets of this history with essays on migration patterns from Russia, Italy, Ireland, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland. They also offer important arguments about the treatment of unauthorized European migrants by states and societies on both sides of the Atlantic and how the reception of undocumented immigrants has been and continues to be impacted by the dynamics of racial, class, and gender constructions in the United States and abroad. As the contributors show, the reception accorded unauthorized European migrants frequently obscured and even normalized their irregular migration strategies, easing their access to American citizenship.

Revealing and insightful, Hidden Histories of Unauthorized Migrations from Europe to the United States sheds new light our intertwined notions of race, legality, and immigration.

Contributors: Danielle Battisti, Ashley Johnson Bavery, Mary Patrice Erdmans, Polina Ermoshkina, Torsten Feys, Carly Goodman, S. Deborah Kang, E. Kyle Romero, Randa Tawil, and Joanna Wojdon

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Pulling Back the Curtain: Unauthorized European Migrations to the United States
• Part I Making and Unmaking Unauthorized Entries
• Part II Reimagining the European Migrant
• Part III Global Productions of Illegality
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover