Winders’ Nashville in the New Millennium is a study of the local effects of the new immigration in areas that had historically experienced a paucity of immigrants and international culture. By employing a methodology based on participant observation, personal interviews, and oral histories, Winders demonstrates that a surge of immigrants in a local community can produce a complex challenge to epistemologies of collective identity based on historically entrenched ethnic categories and popular memories. Her research is a fresh addition to a field of scholarship that has produced illuminating interdisciplinary studies about the effects of the changing flows of immigrants on communities, generations, and minority groups.

Recent and current research has increasingly approached immigration and ethnic factors from the perspective of historical state development, taking into account regional and global dimensions. The articles in this special issue reflect the innovative conceptual frameworks and empirical methodology utilized in this approach. They indicate how the field of immigration studies is integrating political and historical analysis.