• Arab Labor Migration in the Americas, 1880–1930

    Author(s):
    Stacy Fahrenthold (see profile)
    Date:
    2019
    Group(s):
    Borderlands historians, Global & Transnational Studies, History, Ottoman and Turkish Studies
    Subject(s):
    Middle East, Area studies, Migration, Internal--Study and teaching, United States, History, Latin America, Syria, Textile fabrics
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    lebanon, palestine, labor migration, Middle Eastern studies, Migration studies, American history, Latin American history, Middle Eastern history, Textiles
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/dgbf-gv24
    Abstract:
    Between 1880 and 1924, an estimated half million Arab migrants left the Ottoman Empire to live and work in the Americas. Responding to new economic forces linking the Mediterranean and Atlantic capitalist economies to one another, Arab migrants entered the manufacturing industries of the settler societies they inhabited, including industrial textiles, small-scale commerce (peddling), heavy machining, and migrant services associated with continued immigration from the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire enacted few policies to halt emigration from Syria, Mount Lebanon, and Palestine, instead facilitating a remittance economy that enhanced the emerging cash economies of the Arab world. After 1920, the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon moved to limit new migration to the Americas, working together with increasingly restrictive immigration regimes in the United States, Argentina, and Brazil to halt Arab labor immigration. Using informal archives, the Arab American press, and the records of diasporic mutual aid and philanthropic societies, new research in Arab American migration illustrates how migrants managed a transnational labor economy and confronted challenges presented by American nativism, travel restriction, and interwar deportations. Keywords: Arab Americans, labor migration, immigration, workers, Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians, Atlantic world, Ottoman Empire, peddling, textile industry, remittances, 1924 National Origins Act
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Online publication    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
    Share this:

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf fahrenthold_ore_arab-labor-migration.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 909