They also look to Dearborn for the social networks, mosques and churches where they may pray in a familiar manner, stores where they may buy the clothes they prefer and the foods they grew up with: in sum, a cultural milieu that dulls the edges of the experience of dislocation and adjustment. Traditionally, however, this concentration of Arabs in southeast Michigan has not translated into either political power or a cohesive social community. Here I will focus on the organization ACCESS and its efforts to provide a structure in which the Arab population in Dearborn can find solidarity and economic security amid the challenges of immigration.
At the same time, setting the history of ACCESS against the broader social and historical background of immigrant experiences in the U. In the past two years, major legislative initiatives have drawn attention to a rising cultural nationalism that finds expression in increased hostility to immigrants; Proposition in California, the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act of , and the Immigration Reform Law of are the primary examples of a deepening tendency towards exclusion in American society.
The experience of the Arab American community in Dearborn demonstrates how this increased hostility towards immigrants intersects with exclusionary policies against the poor and disadvantaged in American society as a whole. Considering issues of immigration and poverty together also furthers understanding of how social exclusion develops spatially, and how cultural nationalism establishes boundaries that attempt selectively to exclude ethnic and religious others from crossing U.
This process of exclusion complements the increasing economic and social isolation of low-income Americans. Boundaries that keep immigrants out of the U. Dearborn rests on the southwest edge of Detroit, an industrial zone that once served as the centerpiece of Henry Ford's empire.
It is a huge complex; there were once over 90, workers here, managing each stage of the production process of a car, from the steelworks to the final paint finish. Now only 11, workers remain at the Rouge plant, though the expansive factory grounds still serve as a reminder of an earlier period when automobile production was concentrated in large complexes rather than dispersed all over the country and the world.
The presence of the Rouge Plant on the landscape of Dearborn does not fully explain the growth of the Arab population there. In many ways the two are linked, but the history of the Arab American community extends prior to the history of Ford Motor Company: Arabs began to come to southeast Michigan well before the consolidation of the auto industry.
Arabs first arrived in the United States in the s. The Lebanese diaspora in West Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Australia tended to focus on commerce, enlisting extended families as the labor necessary for shops and trading concerns. In the U. Those who succeeded tended to move into metropolitan areas like Detroit and Chicago and sponsor the immigration of others from their families or villages back in Lebanon.
As more and more Lebanese were able to earn enough money to establish general stores, they began to send for their families.
This is a familiar immigrant narrative in the U. Just as the auto industry transformed the economic landscape of Michigan, it restructured the burgeoning Arab-American community. Since Ford's racist hiring policies generally excluded African-Americans from employment in the auto plants, the marked growth in the industry meant plentiful jobs for new immigrants. Though they received work with Ford and others they still suffered the effects of discrimination in the daily operations of the plants: even today, a disproportionately high percentage of dangerous jobs go to Arab immigrants who do not have the kind of support from the union or informal factory networks that would allow them to demand better positions on the production line.
The story is similar to many for Arabs and other immigrant groups: men leaving behind impoverished lives to pursue opportunity in the United States. This is a well-known story, and Arab-Americans were part of it. In Lebanon, for example, the economy basically collapsed.
Men needed jobs, and Detroit had plenty of them. Across the street from the factory, a group of Arab, South Asian and European Muslims opened the first purpose-built mosque in the United States in Not all Arabs are Muslims, though. In fact, most of the first Arabs to come to the U. Some of these congregations exist today.
Mosques and churches became social networks for newly arrived people unfamiliar with American language and culture. Howell says when Ford opened his River Rouge complex in Dearborn in the late s, many Arab-Americans followed him there and settled in the South End of the city. They opened businesses, grocery stores and restaurants. But we do know that in the early days, Ford was more willing to hire Arabs than some other immigrants—or African-Americans.
And they did seem to follow Ford. A new Arab community, one that now included many Muslims sprung up around his first factory in Highland Park. In fact, the first purpose-built mosque in the US was located in Highland Park.
Plenty of Arab Americans worked outside the auto industry, though. In the s, Arab Americans ran hundreds of them. As the auto industry declined after the Second World War, immigrants stopped flocking to Detroit. But it had already become the center of Arab America. As the Middle East suffered ongoing hardship, people kept leaving—and coming to Michigan.
Dearborn remained a particular magnet. Stiffler says that city really began to take on its distinct flavor in , when civil war broke out in Lebanon. Today, Dearborn is a unique Arab-American community--both nationally and among the smaller Arab communities scattered around Metro Detroit.
The Dearborn community is overwhelmingly Muslim, and majority Shiite Muslim. Shiites are a minority in the Muslim world. Nationally, Arab Americans are roughly half Muslims and half Christians.
Metro Detroit also has a number of smaller Arab communities, many of them majority Christian—like the growing Chaldean community in Sterling Heights. The kind of sectarianism that has gripped the Middle East, and some other Arab communities globally, has never really taken hold in Metro Detroit. Rather, clearer divisions in the Arab American community tend to fall more along class lines and degrees of cultural assimilation. Some are relatively wealthy and professional; others are predominantly poor and working-class.
But since the mid th century, conflict in the Middle East has been the main immigration driver. English mixed fluidly with Arabic and Chaldean as the largely-Iraqi crowd enjoyed the festivities. The event was put on by a number of non-profit and religious groups who serve new arrivals from the Middle East. Metro Detroit has a well-established network of such groups, most of them based in Dearborn. Alloos came to Michigan from Iraq himself in Census for people of Arab descent. An exhibit on media depictions of Arabs was particularly eye-opening.
In a survey of 1, films featuring a reference to Arabs, 12 had positive representations, 56 were neutral, and the rest were negative. Thankfully, this museum is helping to change these misperceptions. We learned about Fordson, for example, a Dearborn high school that is 99 percent Arab American.
Senator George Mitchell. After touring the museum, we headed out into the neighboring streets to do my favorite form of research: eating. The museum sponsors tours called Yalla Eat! For a couple of hours, we visited restaurants, grocery stores and sweet shops that sell halal foods halal refers to foods prepared according to Islamic religious traditions—think of it as a Muslim version of kosher. We started in a grocery store that looked like any suburban store except for a massive olive bar, some unfamiliar produce, and a lot of products that had Arabic labels.
Bob and I ended our day at the Islamic Center of America , where we were warmly greeted and told to wander where we wanted. Standing in that beautiful sanctuary, I recalled the response Youssef gave when I asked her what she wanted the larger world to know about her hometown of Dearborn. Some of us are religious, and some are not. We trace our ethnic background to a variety of countries, each with their own unique histories and traditions.
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