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Book Launch: Lauren Braun-Strumfels’ “Partners in Gatekeeping: How Italy Shaped US Immigration Policy over Ten Pivotal Years, 1891-1901” @ the ACME
November 4, 2023 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The event will take place on Saturday, November 4 from 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM at the Acme Screening Room on South Main St. in Lambertville.
The Library and the Lambertville Historical Society will celebrate the launch of Lauren Braun-Strumfels’ new book, Partners in Gatekeeping: How Italy Shaped US Immigration Policy over Ten Pivotal Years, 1891-1901 (University of Georgia Press). Lauren will discuss the book, answer questions and sign copies available for purchase on-site through Farley’s bookshop.
Lauren is a Lambertville resident, and an associate professor in the history department at Cedar Crest College. She was also a Fulbright Scholar at Roma Tre University in 2020.
Learn more about Partners in Gatekeeping: How Italy Shaped US Immigration Policy over Ten Pivotal Years, 1891-1901 below:
Partners in Gatekeeping illuminates a complex, distinctly transnational story that
recasts the development of U.S. immigration policies and institutions. Lauren
Braun-Strumfels challenges existing ideas about the origins of remote control by
paying particular attention to two programs supported by the Italian government
in the 1890s: a government outpost on Ellis Island called the Office of Labor
Information and Protection for Italians, and rural immigrant colonization in the
American South—namely a plantation in Arkansas called Sunnyside.
Through her examination of these distinct locations, Braun-Strumfels argues
that we must consider Italian migration as an essential piece in the history of how
the United States became a gatekeeping nation. In particular, she details how an
asymmetric partnership emerged between the United States and Italy to manage
that migration.
In so doing, Partners in Gatekeeping reveals that the last ten years of the
nineteenth century were critical to the establishment of the modern gatekeeping
system. By showing the roles of the Italian programs in this migration system,
Braun-Strumfels establishes antecedents for remote control beyond the wellstudied Chinese and Mexican cases
