The sudden influx of significant numbers of Latinos to the rural Midwest stems from the recruitment of workers by food processing plants and small factories springing up in rural areas. Mostly they work at back-breaking jobs that local residents are not willing to take because of the low wages and few benefits. The region has become the scene of dramatic change involving major issues facing our country—the intertwining of ethnic differences, prejudice, and poverty; the social impact of a low-wage workforce resulting from corporate transformations; and public policy questions dealing with economic development, taxation, and welfare payments. In this thorough multidisciplinary study, the authors explore both sides of this ethnic divide and provide the first volume to focus comprehensively on Latinos in the region by linking demographic and qualitative analysis to describe what brings Latinos to the area and how they are being accommodated in their new communities. The fact is that many Midwestern communities would be losing population and facing a dearth of workers if not for Latino newcomers. This finding adds another layer of social and economic complexity to the region’ s changing place in the global economy. The authors look at how Latinos fit into an already fractured social landscape with tensions among townspeople, farmers, and others. The authors also reveal the optimism that lies in the opposition of many Anglos to ethnic prejudice and racism.

In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles. Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street; and between each other. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibilities for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.

As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than one hundred years of the Arab-American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants. Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester’s links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America. Using the voices of Arab immigrants and their families, she explores their entire experience, from emigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day lives of their descendants. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success, family life, education, religious and community organizations, and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved.

Archie Mafeje was an independent Pan-Africanist and cosmopolitan individual who sought to understand the world at a global level in order to locate Africa within that tapestry. In many ways, Archie Mafeje was one of the African intellectual pathfi nders. He contributed immensely to the African people's search for self-understanding, self-determination and political emancipation as they struggled against alienation and misrepresentation. In recognising the academic and intellectual contribution of Archie Mafeje, this monograph also refl ects on the African people's journey for emancipation in the search for African identity, self-control and self-understanding.

Much has been written about a state's use of the threat of military force or economic sanctions to change the behavior of another state. Less is known about the use of positive measures such as economic assistance and investment as a means of influence. This study looks at the ways in which government officials use economic instruments for foreign policy gains. More specifically, it examines the means by which a government can enhance its efforts at economic persuasion by inducing domestic business trade and investing in the target nation. The author demonstrates the domestic conditions under which the state can use commercial economic incentives to achieve foreign policy goals, especially where these incentives are meant to induce cooperative behavior from another state. Using the process of German-Polish reconciliation in the 1970s and 1980s as a case study, The Art of Economic Persuasion, argues that complex institutional links between the German government and the German business community enabled the government to encourage commercial relations with Poland, which supported the government's policies. With singular access to archives of business associations in Germany as well as numerous interviews with German and Polish officials, the author carefully retraces German foreign policy towards Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. The Art of Economic Persuasion is a theoretical addition to the literature on international political economy and international relations. It will be of interest to specialists in international relations, foreign policy, and international political economy, as well as economists, political scientists, and historians of Germany, Poland, the United States, and Cold War relations. Patricia Davis is Assistant Professor of Government and International Studies, University of Notre Dame.

In Artifacts of Loss, Jane E. Dusselier looks at the lives of Japanese American internees through the lens of their art.Dusselier urges her readers to consider these often overlooked folk crafts as meaningful political statements which are significant as material forms of protest and as representations of loss.

This book examines the growing interdependence between ASEAN and Korea and the political and economic realities governing the relationship. Leading experts from ASEAN and Korea discuss the emerging issues in areas of domestic and regional security environments, non-traditional security, regional trade arrangements, Korean relations with the new ASEAN member states, and the prospects of community-building with special reference to the roles of Korea and ASEAN. It also provides a serious and thought-provoking evaluation of future ASEAN-Korea relations in light of the growing trend towards East Asian regionalism.

With the rise of India and China, the rest of Asia is feeling the great impact of socio-economic changes and challenges created by these twin engines of progress and cooperation. The question on the minds of regional analysts is: Where is Russia in the midst of these vast changes? What is its role? How and why is a great power like Russia adopting such a low profile in the region? In what ways can ASEAN engage Russia?Currently, Russia's interaction with ASEAN is limited to dialogue between both parties; trade between both sides is categorized by Russian arms sales and ASEAN raw materials. This book sets out to help explain these anomalies and puzzles, by examining the state of relations between Russia and selected individual ASEAN countries. Several interesting ideas are offered, such as a proposal for a Russia-ASEAN FTA; building tourism/business bridges through budget airlines; and proposals to strengthen and energize the ASEAN-Russia dialogue.

The last half century witnessed a dramatic change in the geographic, ethnographic, and socioeconomic structure of Asian American communities. While traditional enclaves were strengthened by waves of recent immigrants, native-born Asian Americans also created new urban and suburban areas. Asian America is the first comprehensive look at post-1960s Asian American communities in the United States and Canada. Contributors from an array of academic fields focus on global views of Asian American communities as well as on territorial and cultural boundaries.