Neglected Areas in the Sociology of Immigrants and Ethnic Groups in North America.

As Shils has pointed out, the study of the life of immigrants was one of the original justifications for the existence of American sociology. The earlier widespread sociological concern with immigrants and ethnic groups is confirmed by the voluminous literature, both analytical and descriptive, produced on these subjects. Since 1935 and particularly after World War II, however, the attention of sociologists to these subjects has continually been declining, as can be evidenced by comparative statistics on the "race and ethnic relations" specialty of the members of the American Sociological Association (while before 1955, 8.2 per cent had listed this field as their specialty, the percentage declined to 8.4 per cent in 1959); and by a decline in the scope and number of sociological publications on immigrants and ethnic groups. In contrast, it should be noted that a comparable decline of interest does not prevail among historians and anthropologists. The historians appear even to have increased their interest in recent years, as we note in the works of Handlin, Bjork, Hoglund, Jones, and Govorchin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]