Anthropologist Freidenberg seeks to contribute to a growing body of literature making a case for understanding the US immigrant experience through local contexts, using interviews with more than 70 international migrants who settled in Prince George’s County, Maryland (an eastern suburb of Washington, D.C.) between 1968 and 2009. The book’s purview is promising and the author offers a fine history of Prince George’s County going back to before European contact, a solid sociological and demographic portrayal of the area, and a rich wealth of ethnographic interview narratives with immigrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia.... Freidenberg seeks to frame immigration as a complex societal issue that Americans must own and embrace as part of the nation’s heritage, rather than as a problem to be blamed on others; this goal is commendable.... Summing Up: Recommended ... Academic and regional collections.

Choice Reviews

[The book is] an excellent introductory work to a different way of thinking about the problem of immigration in the United States for young people starting their higher education. In the
immediate future, they will face political decisions that depend on understanding immigration as a social issue. [translated from original Spanish]

Resenas Bibliograficas

The research was carried out between 1968 and 2009 and provides a richness of detail and process that is rarely part of most contemporary ethnographically-oriented fieldwork and spans immigrants from three continents. . . . to return to Freidenberg’s initial conceptual frame that began this discussion of the manner in which valued unequal resources prompt the erection of human differences, “immigration” as a single heuristic is by premise one that guarantees “otherness” and the creation of cognitive, political, social, cultural, and linguistic differences and their ensuing borders. These guarantee stereotypifications, intolerable toleration, and a kind of “seeing man” rationale in which the “immigrant” is expected to become reduced to a caricature guided by political policies guaranteeing this process. Freidenberg, provides us a deeply nuanced alternative vision.

Anthropology Book Forum

Judith Freidenberg’s Contemporary Conversations on Immigration in the United States: The View from Prince George’s County, Maryland enhances a growing literature that argues for understanding the U.S. immigrant experience through a focus on local places as contexts of settlement. Freidenberg skillfully weaves historical data together with media analysis and immigrant voices to tell the story of Prince George’s County in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. She argues that native-born acceptance is a major influence on the experience of immigrants. Furthermore, this book offers an insightful and powerful critique of the process by which a social issue becomes a social problem. Policy-makers should particularly take notice of these key points. They are instrumental to immigration reform.

Caroline B. Brettell, Southern Methodist University

By centering her narrative on migrant’s voices and testimonies, Freidenberg provides a textured analysis of the larger structures, histories, and contexts that affect contemporary immigration. The result is a welcomed antidote to the homogenizing narratives on immigration that dominate public debate and existing scholarship.

Arlene Davila, New York University

The immigration reform packages introduced, debated, and, in recent history, killed in Congress have very little and quite a lot to do with the lives of the immigrants who live in Washington, D.C.'s shadow as revealed in Freidenberg’s book. Although from diverse origins, the experiences of immigrants—at home and abroad—are surprisingly similar. In their daily lives, the immigrants whose voices are central to Freidenberg’s account are affected primarily in the sense that the failure of Congress to act creates a nagging sense of lived ambivalence. Yet in their life courses, the continuing lack of comprehensive immigration reform translates into frustrated hopes and persistent downward mobility. Emphasizing immigration as an issue rather than a problem, Freidenberg is careful to allow the immigrants of Prince George’s County to speak for themselves rather than either imposing her own interpretations on their thoughts and actions, or pushing them to the sidelines by means of a more abstract and erudite discussion of immigration, reserving her commentary to succinct summaries of the lived experiences of immigrants. The resulting merger of indigenous and intellectual knowledge is not only original but also develops a rich and at times subtle understanding the complexities of immigrants’ lives.

David Griffith, East Carolina University