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Paul A. Kramer’s primary research interests are in modern U. S. history, with an emphasis on transnational, imperial and global histories, American social thought, and the politics of inequality.

His first book, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines (University of North Carolina Press; Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2006), explores the imperial politics of race-making between U. S. and Philippine societies in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It was awarded the Organization of American Historians’ James A. Rawley Prize and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations’ Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Philippines’ National Book Award in the Social Science category.

He is currently writing a methodological book on the transnationalizing of US history, under contact with Oxford University Press, and a book on intersections between immigration policy and US foreign relations.

He teaches a wide range of courses in modern U. S. history and the history of the United States in the world at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including Transnational America, 1880-1940; Transnational America, 1940-2010; Race, Gender and 20th Century U. S. International History; Race, Power and Modernity; Class, Culture and Power in the 20th Century United States; The Craft of History; American Masculinities; Militarization and American Society in the 20th Century; Immigration and U. S. Foreign Relations in the 20th Century; Modern Colonialism in Global History; and Spatializing History.

Refugees

Immigration

U.S. History

Foreign Policy

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History in a Time of Crisis

us-historian-and-immigration-expert-on-afghan-refugees-in-the-us

Associate Professor of History

Paul Kramer, associate professor of history, is available for commentary on the arrival of Afghan refugees in the U.S.

Paul is an expert in the history of immigration and related policies in the U.S. and can discuss:
Historical parallels: The U.S. has a long history of opening up its refugee admissions to its allies in context of geopolitical conflict, especially during the Cold War, and a history of tension and ambivalence about refugee admissions, sometimes fearing refugees are spies for U.S. opponents, largely due to discrimination based on race and religion The rationale: The move is partly out of a sense of moral obligation, and partly out of strategic interest (if the U.S. doesn't admit refugees who helped the county abroad, it undermines U.S. foreign policy) Pros and cons: The upside is that many vulnerable people can escape immediate harm (theoretically), and the downside is that many of these vulnerable people who are not seen as U.S. allies can get shut out for foreign policy reasons  

U.S. historian and immigration expert on Afghan refugees in the U.S.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Immigration must be stopped before newcomers overwhelm our generous welfare system, producing babies with full citizenship rights who add even more strain on social services. So goes a familiar argument for sealing the borders of the United States.
 
            “In a lot of respects we have the discussion about immigration and the economy exactly reversed,” says Paul A. Kramer, associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. “There’s a way that Americans often talk about immigration as if they’re doing this enormous favor to immigrants by letting them in. In fact, immigrants play a crucial role in the U.S. economy and subsidize American consumer society with their labor, their consumption and the taxes they pay.
 
            “Often, they can’t receive those taxes back in benefits.”
 
            Kramer has written about immigration and border issues for the New Yorker and Slate, and been featured on National Public Radio. He has spent the last decade studying U.S. immigration history, and he’s working on a book about the forces that push people into leaving their home countries and immigrating, including the United States’ influence.
 
IT’S ECONOMICS
            “In a globalized economy, people are trying to make their way and put food on the table for their families in places where often the local economies aren’t able to do that for them,” Kramer says. “Often this is the result of dictatorship or post-dictatorship societies, where predatory political forces have made it impossible for people to survive and thrive where they live. So they’ve been uprooted.
 
            “In some cases the United States has been behind some of those dictatorships.”
 
IMMIGRATION NUMBERS EXAGGERATED
            Much of the angst Americans are experiencing today over immigration has been felt by previous generations, Kramer says. For example, there are those who warn that immigration numbers are at a dangerous all-time high.
 
            “That’s simply not true,” Kramer says. “We’re definitely at a high moment, but there have been other high moments. We’re more or less about where we were at the turn of the century, that fabled era of European immigration between roughly 1880 and the mid-1920s. We’re certainly not being overrun.”
 
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP AN AMERICAN TRADITION
            Birthright citizenship has emerged as an issue in the Republican presidential primary race, a sign that concern over immigration has reached a new plateau, Kramer says.
 
            The Republican Party was largely responsible for the passing of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil. During Reconstruction after the Civil War, birthright citizenship was a tool to build a more inclusive population and move toward equal rights.
 
“Birthright citizenship is at this point a venerable American legal tradition,” Kramer says. “It’s one that sets the United States apart from most other societies, who often have much more rigid and exclusionary definitions of who gets to be a citizen.”
 
RACISM AT CORE
Race is really what’s at the heart of a lot of the current antipathy to immigrants, Kramer says.
 
“When people talk about ‘illegals’ it’s … not Canadians crossing into Maine,” Kramer says. “They’re talking about black and brown migrants whom many Americans are uneasy with. … The fact that there’s that legal kind of cover for racism is a really important part of its success.”
 
Picking on immigrants can be done without much risk because of their need to stay in the shadows. “They can and do fight back, but the formal avenues available to non-citizens are limited, thus making them likely scapegoats,” Kramer says. 
 
“But he says immigrants are going to keep coming no matter what.
 
“The question for me is not whether the United States can or should stop immigration,” Kramer says. “Immigration is going to continue to happen because the United States doesn’t exist apart from the rest of the world.
 
“The question is whether U.S. immigration policy is going to punish and stigmatize and marginalize people who come here or whether it’s going to treat the people arriving here in the spirit of justice.”
 
                                             -VU-
 

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History is repeating itself with current immigration issues, says Vanderbilt historian

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How did the US immigration debate get to be so divisive? In this informative talk, historian and writer Paul A. Kramer shows how an "insider vs. outsider" framing has come to dominate the way people in the US talk about immigration -- and suggests a set of new questions that could reshape the conversation around whose life, rights and thriving matters.

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