Readers interested in race, citizenship, immigration, social welfare policy, and the on-the-ground implementation of New Deal reform will want to check out this new release from Princeton University Press:
Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal, by sociologist
Cybelle Fox (University of California, Berkeley). Here's the Press's description:
Three Worlds of Relief examines the role of race and
immigration in the development of the American social welfare system by
comparing how blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants were treated by
welfare policies during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Taking
readers from the turn of the twentieth century to the dark days of the
Depression, Cybelle Fox finds that, despite rampant nativism, European
immigrants received generous access to social welfare programs. The
communities in which they lived invested heavily in relief. Social
workers protected them from snooping immigration agents, and ensured
that noncitizenship and illegal status did not prevent them from
receiving the assistance they needed. But that same helping hand was not
extended to Mexicans and blacks. Fox reveals, for example, how blacks
were relegated to racist and degrading public assistance programs, while
Mexicans who asked for assistance were deported with the help of the
very social workers they turned to for aid.
Drawing on a wealth
of archival evidence, Fox paints a riveting portrait of how race, labor,
and politics combined to create three starkly different worlds of
relief. She debunks the myth that white America's immigrant ancestors
pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike immigrants and
minorities today. Three Worlds of Relief challenges us to
reconsider not only the historical record but also the implications of
our past on contemporary debates about race, immigration, and the
American welfare state.
And a few blurbs.
"Three Worlds of Relief is theoretically important,
empirically rich, and a major contribution to scholarship on race,
immigration, and welfare policy. Fox brings together the experiences of
Mexicans, white immigrants, and African Americans into a single account,
in the process enriching current knowledge of each group's history in
the United States and illuminating how these histories fed into
government policy. Three Worlds of Relief is an outstanding work
of scholarship. Fox traces the distinct paths of blacks, Mexicans, and
white immigrants as they were incorporated into the American welfare
state in the key decades culminating in the New Deal. Her argument is
fresh and original, her research meticulous, and her prose elegant. Three Worlds of Relief is an intellectual tour de force that sets a new scholarly agenda"--Desmond King, author of Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the U.S. Federal Government
"Cybelle Fox's Three Worlds of Relief
demonstrates that U.S. social policies in their formative years
provided disparate treatment by race and ethnicity. Political,
labor-market, and racial contexts advantaged European immigrants and
disadvantaged African Americans and Mexican immigrants. This book is a
must-read for anyone seeking to understand the origins of the uneven
U.S. welfare state, its race and ethnic politics, and political dilemmas
today."--Edwin Amenta, University of California, Irvine
Chapter 1 and the TOC are available
here.
