Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees, and America at Its Best

by Susan E. Eaton

Integration Nation takes readers on a spirited and compelling cross-country journey, introducing us to the people challenging America’s xenophobic impulses by welcoming immigrants and collaborating with the foreign-born as they become integral members of their new communities. In Utah, we meet educators who connect newly arrived Spanish-speaking students and U.S.-born English-speaking students, who share classrooms and learn in two languages. In North Carolina, we visit the nation’s fastest-growing community-development credit union, serving immigrants and U.S.- born depositors and helping to lower borrowing thresholds and crime rates alike.

In recent years, politicians in a handful of local communities and states have passed laws and regulations designed to make it easier to deport unauthorized immigrants or to make their lives so unpleasant that they’d just leave. The media’s unrelenting focus on these ultimately self-defeating measures created the false impression that these politicians speak for most of America. They don’t.

Integration Nation movingly reminds us that we each have choices to make about how to think and act in the face of the rapid cultural transformation that has reshaped the United States. Giving voice to people who choose integration over exclusion, who opt for open-heartedness instead of fear, Integration Nation is a desperately needed road map for a nation still finding its way beyond anti-immigrant hysteria to higher ground.

Genres: Nonfiction, Immigration, Education, Sociology, Race

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2016

Reviews

[Ashton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seeking to learn about immigrant integration specifically in the southern U.S., I especially benefitted from some of Eaton's local stories on community-based initiatives. She highlighted a program bridging the linguistic gap between immigrant families and health care providers in Dalton, GA, as well as grassroots organizing for state legislation in MS.

For someone looking for similar stories from across the country, there are plenty in this book. I would have appreciated a more cohesive and connected narrative, and ideas to systematically address related needs.

[Danielle W · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am all for the theme of this book but it is a collection of essays that were only meh in depth and memorability. The essays were like something you'd read in a Scholastic newsletter as opposed to a very compelling magazine. So, great idea but uninspiring in its execution.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

She gives me hope. Despite political rhetoric, Eaton highlights communities that get to work and help take care of their neighbors. There are a lot of great grassroots ideas throughout this book.

[Vladimir Polozov · Rating 5 out of 5]

В книге немало примеров. Есть фактура.

[Mike Bushman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elections are inherently divisive, but we don’t have to accept ruptured relationships as predestined outcome. This concept may be particularly important to remember this November.

Groundwork for unification starts in our local communities, not simply at the ballot box.

The increasing segregation of our nation, and dangers inherent in such separation, led to my first two novels suggesting that we might be only a generation away from risking permanent fracture. Several paths forward are evident, including several highlighted in "Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees, and America at its Best" by Brandeis University Professor Susan Eaton.

Successful integration projects she highlighted centered around:

• community centers in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Hazleton, Pennsylvania (the latter inspired by Chicago Cubs Manager Joe Maddon),
• a credit union in North Carolina,
• community gardens in Boise, Idaho,
• an interfaith initiative in Nebraska, and
• study circles in Maryland.

In each case, exposure across racial, ethnic and language boundaries helps bridge gaps between long-term residents and immigrants from various parts of the globe. Evidence also continues to be compelling for dual-language immersion programs. I’m convinced the United States needs to adopt these programs across multiple languages—including Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian—to remain competitive as America becomes a smaller percentage of the global economic landscape. In Utah, dual-language immersion programs highlighted by Eaton increased test scores across multiple subjects for children in previously single-language English and Spanish households.

While I believe it essential to successfully integrate with anyone living inside our borders, I certainly understand frustration with a clearly broken system that discourages legal immigration while encouraging illegal entry. For its writing and the stories it shares, this book deserves five stars. I settled on four stars only as protest that it didn't tackle the equally hard challenge of identifying the best methods of determining how much immigration makes sense. Clearly, with average income for the lowest-earning 60 percent of U.S. households still below 2008 levels, we have an excess of labor supply that would be a consideration for immigrant entry in a well-functioning immigration system. But taking frustration out on the vast numbers of hardworking, family-oriented immigrants who simply take advantage of the broken system our elected leaders have created and/or failed to administer won’t create the better nation we all seek, as Prof. Eaton clearly identifies.

While we make our separate decisions on what type of immigration system we demand going forward, we can certainly acknowledge that beginning or expanding integration work inside our communities will create long-term benefits regardless of who wins in November. This book does a great job of describing multiple paths forward.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice panoply of essays, each focused on an optimistic or success story of immigrants integrating into a local community. Eaton and her co-authors successfully challenge the prevailing narrative of immigration policy only being about who gets let in, what the numbers or percentages / quotas might be in any given year. In rural, Southern, and predominantly white towns and cities, long-standing community members are working with low-key community leaders, faith leaders, and politicians to continue to make America the premiere destination for immigrants from the world over.

Some pieces run a bit long, and other stories could run longer (e.g. the educational workshops taken by the teaches in Maryland). The author and co-authors interviewed a significant number of key participants from many different communities ranging from Boise, Idaho to Dalton, Georgia to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

This is the second book I've read of the author's (the first being the The Other Boston Busing Story: What's Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line) and I'm suitably impressed with her ability to communicate humanly rich narratives that touch upon issues deeply embedded in American sociology, history, and consciousness.

As requoted at the end of the book: E pluribus unum!

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book the WSU-Vancouver campus is reading. There are community events on campus covering immigrants including a naturalization ceremony and a book discussion event with the Susan Eaton. I found the book uplifting and encouraging. It is a breath of fresh air to see communities in both red and blue states enthusiastically and successfully integrating new immigrants in the US, much better than hearing the hate diatribe we constantly hear on the news. Favorite chapters were ones about a credit union in Durham, NC, the bilingual Spanish-English immersion schools in Utah, and a community garden/farmer's market in Boise, Idaho.

[Marcus M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Integration Nation is a reminder of the fact that America continues to be a nation of immigrants. As the authors reminds us, she gently draws attention to opportunities that the US has to improve the integration of immigrants. The book is also a compilation of integration success stories that redefine integration, separating it from the idea that it is a loss of culture and connecting idea of successful integration to communities that accommodate and validate immigrants' retention of their native cultures.