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PSCI 3103: Immigration Politics

This guide is designed to support PSCI 3100: Immigration Politics.

Assignment Information

Genealogy Report (20%)

As an exercise in practical data collection and historical immigration politics, students will create a genealogical family tree spanning 5 generations to identify the migration patterns of their ancestors during class time. Students will write a 3-page paper outside of class that explains their family’s migration story to and/or within the United States in detail. Students should use interviews, newspapers, genealogy websites, obituaries etc. to create their migration story and document their data in a bibliography.

Paper Prompt:

  1. What did you already know about your migration history before starting this project?
    1. Where would you say your family is originally from?
  2. How many different places, in the U.S. and abroad have your ancestors lived?
  3. What data or information (who, where, when and how) did you find about your oldest ancestor and the ancestor that migrated the farthest distance?
    1. Where were they born and where did they end up?
    2. What significant historical events took place that might have affected when/where/why/how they migrated? Were there wars, natural disasters, political, economic, social changes?
  4. What documentation do you have that shows your ancestors migration patterns?
    1. Do you have any ship manifests, census, immigration, marriage records?
      1. How reliable are these records? Justify your answer with evidence from your data collection.
    2. If your relatives entered from abroad, where did they first enter the United States (i.e. Port of Entry)?
      1. Are there any applicable visas held by your ancestor when they entered? Did they come as a spouse (IR1 or CR1 visas), as a fiancé(e) (K-3 visa) laborer ((H-2A(B) or H1-A(B) visas), Tourist (B-2 visa), intellectual (J visa), celebrity (O-1A visa) or athlete (B-1 visa)? As a student or an investor (F or E visa) or were they just passing through (C visa)? If there is no official reason, offer an educated guess with supporting data.
    3. What information did the government recorded for their arrival?
      1. Is this information correct? Why or why not?
    4. What kind of occupations did your ancestors have?
  5. What one immigration/naturalization/citizenship policy most directly affected when, where, or how your earliest ancestors migrated, justify your answer using the class readings and your genealogical data.
  6. Attached a bibliography and all digital images of proof of ancestry with a description of each image/data point. Remove license numbers, Social Security Numbers, birth month/day, and recent addresses (after 1990).

Presentation and Submission:

  1. Fill in a family tree from you to your past 5 generations (to your great great great grandparents) including year and place of birth, year and place of marriage (if applicable), year and place of death (if applicable). The template is provided on canvas and completed trees should be uploaded to canvas by March 21st.
  2. Make one color coded power point slide of the migrations (in the U.S. and Abroad) of all your generations. The template is provided on canvas and should be saved PowerPoint as “LastNameMap.ppt” and uploaded to canvas by March 21st.
  3. After the due date, students will be chosen at random to present their PowerPoint slide to the class over the rest of the semester.

Online Genealogy Resources

The following list of resources has been complied to assist you with the first research assignment in Dr. Silva's sections of PSCI 3100: Immigration Politics.

Many genealogy resources are fee based; some are available through Libraries and others available through private subscriptions. Examples of these are Ancestry.com and Fold3.com. These sometimes offer free trials and are really robust sites.

TOP RESOURCES FOR GENEALOGY RESEARCH

Ancestry Library Edition is an institutional subscription version of the normal fee-based site and is publicly accessible for free on-site at UNT Libraries. It includes international record collections as well U.S. records making it especially useful for world-wide research. Records of interest can be emailed to you through the use of the Send My Discovery Home function listed on the right side of the screen for all records. It will send you one email with a link to your discovery page on Ancestry with a link to the records you saved while using Ancestry Library Edition. Please note that this collection may be more limited than the fee-based contents in Ancestry.com.

  • Family Search
    This is the free site from the Mormon Church though it requires an account. It contains the Census enumeration forms and works to help make connections between individuals. Records can be browsed by country.

You can also visit a Family History Center or FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries.

  • Denton FHC

Denton Texas Family History Center

3000 Old North Road

DENTON Texas 76209-6250

  • Denton FSAL

Emily Fowler Central Library

502 Oakland St

DENTON Texas

Find-a-Grave helps to locate death records.

Additional Online Resources

Genealogy Research Guides

  • Genealogy Resources
    It is highly recommended that you visit this page developed by Robbie Sittel, head of the UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.

  • Genealogy Resources 
    Denton Public Library has additional resources that you can use to conduct local, state, and national genealogy research. This site include search tips, guides, and databases. 

UNT Databases​

This database provides images of U.S. Census records from 1790-1940 with some years searchable by name, Revolutionary War pension and bounty land files, U.S. Indian census rolls, Freedmens Bank records, some city directories, and supplements to the census such as mortality and slave schedules.

This database provides access to a variety of Spanish and English language Hispanic/Latino-American newspapers from the 19th and 20th centuries.

more...

This site provides access to the archives of a variety of newspapers from across the U.S.


Additional Websites for Genealogy Resources

  • American Ancestors 
    This resource explores family history from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. 

  • Historygeo 
    This is a collection of original landowner maps, historical maps, and atlases. 

  • Local News Index 
    This index searches for local news stories from the Denton Record-Chronicle compiled by Denton Public Library staff.

  • Newspaper Archives 
    The archive provides access to more than 3,000 newspapers including the Denton Record-Chronicle, issues from 1909 to 1977. Every newspaper in the archive is fully searchable by keyword and date, making it easy for you to quickly explore historical content. 

  • Portal to Texas History 
    This database provides access to digital scans of the Denton Public Library's Historical Photo Collection.

  • FamilySearch Wiki

This Wiki is probably the best one-stop place for non-European genealogy. 

​​UNT has the 2000 edition and Denton Public has the 2017 edition. If a student is having trouble finding info on where to seek records for their home country, contact Brea Henson and she will get you in touch with the genealogy librarian at DPL.

Research by Country

This might be help to some students but, beware that there are broken hyperlinks occasionally.​
 


*Genealogy Resources on this page were provided by Government Documents Librarian Robbie Sittel and Denton Public Library.

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