Immigrating Ethnicity: Configuring Romanianness in North America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This article gives a social-historical account of Romanian immigration to North America at the turn of the twentieth century. The story is traced through the notion of ethnicity, which is conceived as a discursive, representational, and practical repertory emergent in social relationships, at the confluence of specific historical social structures and institutions. The scrutiny of the experience of migration objectifies Romanian ethnicity’s variable internal organisation, functioning, and manifestation, as it is produced in other territories, within other states, and articulated in specific ethnic and racial hierarchies.