Summer Assignment: Please contact your family and find out whatever you can about your family history as far back as you can. Focus your research on your family's immigration history, not the whole family history. The questions might include:
- When did your family members immigrate?
- Why did they immigrate?
- How did they do it (ship passage, flights, with jobs in advance?
- What was life like (jobs, family size, lifestyle, assets) before immigration in the home country?
- Were there "push factors" which are circumstances in the home country that contributed a desire/need to leave?
- What was life like after immigration (jobs, family size, lifestyle, assets)?
- Were there "pull factors" or promises of better life in the U.S. that contributed a desire to immigrate?
- Did your family move around in the US after that, and again, why?
In October, you will submit a research paper trying to answer the question, "Why did my family immigrate to the US?" You likely will have several ancestors to choose from, unless you, yourself are the immigrant. Information should be drawn from two sources: oral histories from family members and textual evidence: history and/or documentary evidence. The documentary evidence will answer the when and how questions, and possibly some of the why questions, and the oral histories may be able to fill in the gaps. I do not want you to write the paper now (there will be some workshops and discussions of expectations throughout the semester that I want you to hear before you actually begin to write), but for many, it will be easier to do the research now, as it asks you to contact family members and perhaps look at and maybe photograph or copy documents that might be hard to access during the busy semester away from home.
