Author: Marilynn Johnson
Title: The New Bostonians
Publication Info: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2015] 
Summary/Review:
Boston College historian and Boston By Foot guide Marilynn Johnson initiates the discussion of the recent history of immigration and its effect on the Greater Boston region. Beginning with the Immigration Act of 1965, the flow of immigrants shifted from traditional origins in Europe and Canada to the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The new immigrants arrived in a city in the midst of the post-World War II decline and helped play a key role in the rebirth of metro Boston’s prosperity.
Johnson begins with the history of Boston’s “old” immigrants – Irish, Jewish, Italian, Portuguese – and the institutions they established in business, religion, and politics. Reformation of Federal immigration laws in 1965 allowed for the arrival of new immigrants, with an emphasis on those who were “highly-skilled” as well as amnesty to refugees that U.S. Cold War politics found sympathetic. Thus the new immigration was dramatically different from the old as “high-skilled” immigrants could move immediately into more elite circles while refugees were given Federal support for housing in addition to other groups who followed the more traditional ways of scrapping by on their own initiative.
Another big difference is that immigrants initially settled in the suburbs and small cities in the region in addition to Boston’s outlying neighborhoods, instead of the center of the city. Cities like Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Revere, and Randolph have significantly more foreign born residents than Boston. Most immigrants joined the growing service economy while others entered into Boston’s knowledge economy. The new immigrants have been essential to growing the population that allows Metro Boston to flourish, and contrary to anti-immigrant rhetoric that they’re “stealing jobs from Americans,” new immigrants added new jobs through ethnic businesses and high-tech companies. Immigrant groups also helped revitalize derelict urban areas, only to later be pushed out by gentrification. That the immigrant communities have generally not shared in the region’s prosperity is a great injustice.
Immigrants also changed the religious landscape of Boston. A “quiet revival” saw “the de-Europeanization of Christianity” as immigrants filled the pews of Catholic and Protestant churches and brought with them more evangelical and Pentecostal traditions. The Catholic Church scrambled to train bilingual clergy and celebrate Mass in different languages. Catholicism nevertheless declined in the midst of economic duress and clergy abuse scandals allowing Protestants to dominate the city for the first time in over a century. New immigrants from Asia and Africa also brought with them religions not previously common in Boston, including Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Sikhs, among others. Immigrants also changed the politics of Boston from the traditional ward-based system controlled by Irish Catholics. Immigrants formed activist organizations to fight for their rights and neighborhoods, and multi-ethnic coalitions to gain influence in government. It was a slow process but the book shows the success of several figures from Latin American and Asian American backgrounds in recent years. And the book was published before Michelle Wu, the child of immigrants from Taiwan, become the first woman and first person of color elected Mayor of Boston.
The book is an excellent synthesis on the trends of immigration and the immigrant experience in Boston since 1965. I learned a lot and think this book is informative and well-written.
Some interesting tidbits I learned from this book:
- Cambridge became a sanctuary city in 1985, far earlier than I realized that sanctuary cities existed
- “between 1960 and 1970 Chinatown’s population grew by more than 25 percent while its land was reduced by half.” -p. 83 (due to construction of the Mass Pike, expansion of Tufts New England Medical Center, and other “urban renewal” programs).
- men from Haiti have established a niche in taxi driving while Haitian-American women have become nurses in great numbers, which tracks with where I’ve interacted with Haitian-Americans in Boston.
Favorite Passages:
“As in many US cities, jobs in cleaning, grounds keeping, food service, childcare, elder care, and other services became the lifeblood of many of the area’s less-skilled foreign workers. Their labor was critical to the emerging knowledge economy and to maintaining the lifestyles of the affluent and often stressed two-income families employed in the upper ranks of this new economy. But service jobs were not only the result of economic restructuring; they were also created in response to new career opportunities for middle-class women.” – p. 112
“Entrepreneurial success, however, proved to be a double-edged sword. As revitalization took hold in both Chinatown and Jamaica Plain, gentrification increased rents and property values, driving away coethnic customers and some of the small ethnic businesses they patronized.” – p. 120
Recommended books:
Rating:
Summary/Review:
Panorama of the Mountains 