Immigrant Academics and Cultural Challenges in a Global Environme ...

new immigrants sympathetically or empathetically as being “immigrant as us” (p. 228). The reason is that succeeding generations of European migrants in the metropolitan New York area have built up an immigrant identity and have traditions and symbolism that continue to refer them back to their historical identity as immigrants. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, on the other hand, such history and symbolism is lacking—individuals in mainstream society in Los Angeles had migrated there from within the United States and, as a result, lack references that help them identify with immigrants. Consequently, they lack traditions or symbolism that enable them to refer back to an immigrant antecedent. New immigrants in Los Angeles are, thus, more easily considered a threat, are looked upon as very different “Others,” and are, consequently, treated with more discrimination. Immigrant academics who must live within the larger Los Angeles society cannot possibly escape such institutionalized conditions and bear the stress of striving to attenuate their “alienness” and “abnormality” as would other immigrants.

With the heightened security focus on antiterrorism in the United States, Canada, and many western European countries due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) on the United States and other similar terrorist attack attempts, millions of legal immigrants in the United States and western Europe have come under deeper scrutiny by politicians who have sought to woo their constituencies by reiterating what they consider to be a grave problem that requires urgent attention. In the very strident and divisive debate in the United States, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom about immigrants, national identity, and national unity, all immigrants—especially those of a different race and from minority cultures, and, even more specifically, those from Islamic culture areas—have come under ever greater social pressure to assimilate or conform. In most cases, they seem to have been stigmatized—marked as the stranger within that is perpetually unable to assimilate. Reports indicate that U.S. scholars of Mideast origin came under orchestrated intimidation in the aftermath of 9/11 (Tamburri, 2006).

While the discussion concerning illegal immigrants has climbed to center stage in America’s political debate, legal immigrants, including