The simultaneity of feeling German and being American: Analyzing 150 years of private migrant correspondence

Analyzing the long-term dynamics of migrant integration is a significant challenge for researchers. This paper traces how ‘ordinary’ German-speaking migrants in the USA expressed their sense of participation and belonging throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries in the letters they wrote to their families ‘back home.’ We study a large collection of migrant letters written by German-speaking immigrants in the USA between 1830 and 1970 and analyze this new data with methods of computerized text analysis. The investigation shows how migrants continuously make and re-make identities within and across their heterogeneous migrant ‘groups.’ Our paper highlights the strong incentives for social and cultural integration in the absence of restrictive host state policies. We also show that political events and crises affecting both the country of origin and the destination country act as a catalyst in redefining, at least temporarily, parts of the migrant identities in relation to both the sending and host states