The first thing that caught my attention was that Foner mentions at length Jacob Riis’ work How the Other Half Lives, which is on our reading list. I have not had a chance to read it yet, however it is certainly interesting to read about the drastic differences between Riis’ experiences in the late 1800’s to today’s immigrant patterns. Foner discusses how in modern times, immigrants don’t always end up in crowded housing like they did years before. Many immigrants are able to immediately move into more expensive housing than they would have been able to in Riis’ time, and even those who aren’t don’t live in squalor the way they did earlier. Single-ethnic communities do exist, but now so do heavily mixed communities even within new immigrants. My question is, is this simply because those arriving are socioeconomically better off than their predecessors or are there other factors in play here?

As Foner did in the first chapter by describing specific immigrants group and who they are, why the came here, and how they were received when they did, Foner goes on to describe the specific groups in relation to where and how they lived after they first arrived. She says that “despite grim conditions” many immigrants decorated their apartments a lot. And although many were living in close quarters with many others in their families, they often took on more people to live with them to make more money. Foner says that there were many problems with the boarders that people took on, including jealousy in marriage if a boarder became attracted to the host’s wife.