The New Ϲians: How Immigrants have Transformed Ϲ since the 1960s

Boisi event

Marilynn Johnson
Ϲ College

ٲٱ:September 21, 2016

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Abstract

Drawing on her recent book,The New Ϲians, Johnson will discuss how immigrants have helped transform the Ϲ metropolitan area since the 1960s as it evolved from an declining manufacturing city to a center of the new knowledge economy. She'll also offer a peak at a related digital history project, Global Ϲ, a website that explores the region's immigration history, past and present.

Speaker Bio

Marilynn Johnson

Marilynn Johnsonis a professor of history at Ϲ College where she teaches modern US urban and social history. She received her Ph.D. in history at New York University and has taught at Southern Methodist University and the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies at MIT. Her research focuses on migration, urban social relations, and violence. Her books includeThe Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II(1993) andStreet Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City(2004). Most recently, she publishedThe New Ϲians: How Immigrants Have Transformed the Metro Area Since the 1960s(University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). She continues to do research on this subject is currently building a website called, which explores immigration history in greater Ϲ from the early 19th century to the present.

Event Photos

Boisi event

Marilynn Johnson, professor of history at Ϲ College, spoke about her new book--The New Ϲians--at a Boisi Center luncheon on September 21.

Boisi event

Photos by MTS Photography

Event Recap

Marilynn Johnson, Ϲ College professor of history, spoke at the Boisi Center on September 21 on the historic shifts in immigration to Ϲ. Johnson’s book,The New Ϲians: How Immigrants Have Transformed the Metro Area since the 1960s(University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), was released on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration Act. The legislation caused changes in immigration by eliminating quotas and expanding preferences for skilled workers and family members of immigrants in the U.S.

Ϲ has always been an important portal for immigrants, and established ethnic communities draw new immigrants. Ϲ has witnessed many different waves of immigration over its history; during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, families and largely unskilled workers from Ireland, Italy, China, Russia, and Canada dominated immigration into Ϲ. After the 1965 Immigration Act, the origins of Ϲ’s immigrants shifted to Central and South America and Asia. Locally, the centers of immigration shifted from Ϲ itself to its suburbs.

Johnson has continued her research beyond The New Ϲians online. Her new project, Global Ϲ (), was developed to maintain and expand historical accounts of immigrants in Ϲ and open scholarship on Ϲ’s immigration to a wider community of citizen-scholars. Johnson intends the website to be an ongoing collaborative project that includes students’ efforts to understand and analyze historical trends in immigration.

Read More

Books

ohnson, Marilynn S.The New Ϲians: How Immigrants Have Transformed the Metro Area Since the 1960s.Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Halter, Marilyn; Johnson, Marilynn S; Wright, Conrad Edick; Viens, Katheryn P; eds. “The Metropolitan Diaspora: New Immigrants in Greater Ϲ,”What’s New about the New Immigration? Traditions and Transformations in the US Since 1965.Palgrave McMillan, 2014.

What’s New about the New Immigration: Traditions and Transformations in the United States Since 1965,edited by Marilynn Johnson, Marilyn Halter, Conrad Edick Wright, and Katheryn P. Viens (Palgrave McMillan, 2014).

Johnson, Marilynn S. “’The Quiet Revival’: New Immigrants and the Transformation of Christianity in Greater Ϲ,”Religion and American Culture24:2 (Summer 2014): 231-58.

Articles

Johnson, Marilynn S. “New Ϲ Sprang from the 1965 Immigration Act,”Ϲ Globe(Ideas section), September 27, 2015.

Johnson, Marilynn S. “Thirty Years Later, Remembering Ϲ’s Wave of Anti-Immigrant Violence,”Ϲ Globe(op-ed), May 22, 2015.

In the News

A recent article published by thehighlights the growing fears among many Ϲ immigrants over a possible Trump presidency.