Woodrow-Lafield, Karen A. 2008. “Migration, Immigration, and Naturalization in America,“ Pp. 60-79 in From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. in a Global Era, Elliott Barkan, Hasia R. Diner, and Alan Kraut (eds.), New York University Press. Presented at “Transcending Borders: Migration, Ethnicity, and Incorporation in an Age of Globalism,” Joint Conference of the Immigration, Ethnicity, and History Society and New York University, October 31-November 2, 2003, New York City.

Scholars and others are fascinated with migration and immigration this decade when the U.S. foreign-born population is nearly as large as the Hispanic (or Latino) population or the Black or African American population. In the past two censuses, the number of noncitizens was greater than the number of naturalized citizens, in contrast with the trend between 1930 and 1980 when the European-born accounted for the majority of the foreign-born before recent immigration from Asia and Latin America. Naturalization or naturalizing is relatively little noted in the social science literature and governmental policies have been directed more to border enforcement and immigration benefits than to naturalization. This article focuses on new perspectives for understanding temporal processes of naturalizing and recognizing the influences of social capital and human capital.

[Link to NYU Press]

http://www.nyupress.org/books/From_Arrival_to_Incorporation-products_id-5162.html