Donna Gabaccia on the Immigrant Paradigm

France, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Argentina are just as much nations of immigrants as the United States is, yet none has generated an equivalent of the immigrant paradigm as symbol of their nation’s distinctiveness.

The immigrant paradigm, I believe, is the product of the unique manner in which the United States has grappled with ... ambivalence to create an American nation. The United States shares with Canada and Australia a long history of subjecting and excluding the indigenous peoples it conquered. Like Canada, furthermore, the United States has incorporated territories of several empires (French and English in the case of both; Spanish in the case of the United States). What makes the United States different from Canada and Australia is its long history of slavery as a source of significant national disunity. It is this history, I believe ... that explains the creation of an immigrant paradigm in the United States and not in the other English-speaking countries. ... The racial dynamics of the United States best explain the creation and persistence of an immigrant paradigm that ignores, when it does not also falsify, the history of African Americans.

Donna R. Gabaccia. 1999. Is everywhere nowhere? Nomads, nations, and the immigrant paradigm of United States history. The Journal of American History 86(3):1115-1134.