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Nancy Foner – One Quarter of the Nation: Immigration and the Transformation of America

Mar 1, 2022 | 6:00 pm

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(From left) Nancy Foner and Muzaffar Chishti

Roosevelt House is pleased to present a discussion—presented on Zoom—of One Quarter of the Nation: Immigration and the Transformation of America by Hunter College Professor Nancy Foner. In this important new study, Foner provides an eye-opening, in-depth examination of the many ways immigration has fundamentally redefined modern America. The author will be in conversation with the Director of the Migration Policy Institute at the NYU School of Law, Muzaffar Chishti.

Unprecedented in scope among books of its kind, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order while playing a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. Foner delivers new insight on how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as rural communities, and provides fresh analysis of how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones.

This wide-ranging, deeply researched book opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration—showing how immigrants have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the core of the country’s identity and institutions. An astonishing number of immigrants and their children―nearly 86 million people―now live in the United States. While many books on the subject have considered how America changed immigrants, One Quarter of the Nation provides an overdue exploration of how immigrants changed America.

Nancy Foner is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author or editor of 20 books, including: Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe; From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration; and One Out of Three: Immigrant New York in the Twenty-First Century. She received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a Berlin Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Muzaffar Chishti, moderator, is a lawyer and the Director of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) at the NYU School of Law. His work focuses on U.S. immigration policy at the federal, state, and local levels; the intersection of labor and immigration law; immigration enforcement; civil liberties; and immigrant integration. Prior to joining MPI, he served as Director of the Immigration Project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE); as Chairman of the Boards of Directors of the National Immigration Forum and the National Immigration Law Center; and as a member of the American Bar Association’s Coordinating Committee on Immigration. He has testified extensively on immigration policy issues before Congress and is frequently quoted in the media.