Week 3 — Theories of Belonging

Why this matters

Whether a family is asked to blend in or to keep its language shows up in a school's welcome letter, a hospital's interpreter policy, and a hiring manager's idea of who fits.

In plain language

People have argued for more than a century about how newcomers and older communities come to belong in the United States, and the best-known picture, the melting pot, comes from Israel Zangwill's play, first staged in 1908. This week you meet the field's main frameworks for that question, meaning tools scholars built to explain a pattern, each with an author, a year, and critics. Some say groups blend in, some say groups keep their cultures side by side, and some say the children of immigrants take different roads. Others start from a different fact: some peoples never immigrated at all, because they were conquered, annexed, or brought by force. You will learn to test which framework fits a real history and to say your reading in one plain sentence.

• Already covered: Week 1 gave you the field's questions and the archive; Week 2 gave you race, ethnicity, and the kinds of discrimination.
• This week: six frameworks of belonging and the line between immigrant and colonized or incorporated peoples.
• How they connect: assimilation and internal colonialism are arguments about race, ethnicity, and discrimination.
• Where we're going next: Week 4, Indigenous Nations, Sovereignty, and Settler Colonialism.

Focus

How have scholars explained belonging, and which framework fits a real history?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] place six frameworks in time with their authors
• [ ] tell cultural from structural assimilation, and both from cultural pluralism
• [ ] tell immigrant peoples from colonized or incorporated peoples
• [ ] test a framework on an account and say the fit in one plain sentence

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 3 (~40–50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Do the practice exercises (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the Community History Workshop (about 90 minutes), discussion, and assignment.
5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: test one framework on an account and say the fit in one plain sentence.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if stuck.

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