Memories of the Past and Its Impact in the Present: Conceptions and Misconception of the Irish Immigrant Experience in the United States

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Alienating immigrant groups is not something unique to this generation. Immigrants to the United States, long before labeling human beings legal or illegal was commonplace, have been deemed either desirable or undesirable, moral or immoral, valued or value-less. Such categorizations have had a debilitating impact on the daily lives of immigrant collectives. To unmask this neglected and overlooked aspect of the immigrant experience in the U.S., archaeology must bring to light not only the impact of U.S. policy alienating immigrant communities over time, but more importantly its material signature as it reflects the experiences and daily lives of immigrant collectives. The aim of this presentation is to highlight my research of the 19th and early 20th Irish immigrant laboring communities in the United States as an entry point confronting the exclusionary nature of U.S. immigrant policies over time. Moreover, the paper includes a discussion of the research’s potential to be used in confronting present-day issues of alienating U.S. policies and public sentiment, as well as provide an intimate human portrait to the thousands of people cast aside.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23991