[PDF] The Passport As Home eBook

Author : Andrei S. Markovits
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 42,37 MB
Release : 2021-08-10
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9633864224

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This is the story of an illustrious Romanian-born, Hungarian-speaking, Vienna-schooled, Columbia-educated and Harvard-formed, middle-class Jewish professor of politics and other subjects. Markovits revels in a rootlessness that offers him comfort, succor, and the inspiration for his life’s work. As we follow his quest to find a home, we encounter his engagement with the important political, social, and cultural developments of five decades on two continents. We also learn about his musical preferences, from classical to rock; his love of team sports such as soccer, baseball, basketball, and American football; and his devotion to dogs and their rescue. Above all, the book analyzes the travails of emigration the author experienced twice, moving from Romania to Vienna and then from Vienna to New York. Markovits’s Candide-like travels through the ups and downs of post-1945 Europe and America offer a panoramic view of key currents that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. By shedding light on the cultural similarities and differences between both continents, the book shows why America fascinated Europeans like Markovits and offered them a home that Europe never did: academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity and religious tolerance. America for Markovits was indeed the “beacon on the hill,” despite the ugliness of its racism, the prominence of its everyday bigotry, the severity of its growing economic inequality, and the presence of other aspects that mar this worthy experiment’s daily existence.

Author : Craig Robertson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 31,17 MB
Release : 2010-07-02
Category : History
ISBN : 0199779899

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In today's world of constant identification checks, it's difficult to recall that there was ever a time when "proof of identity" was not a part of everyday life. And as anyone knows who has ever lost a passport, or let one expire on the eve of international travel, the passport has become an indispensable document. But how and why did this form of identification take on such a crucial role? In the first history of the passport in the United States, Craig Robertson offers an illuminating account of how this document, above all others, came to be considered a reliable answer to the question: who are you? Historically, the passport originated as an official letter of introduction addressed to foreign governments on behalf of American travelers, but as Robertson shows, it became entangled in contemporary negotiations over citizenship and other forms of identity documentation. Prior to World War I, passports were not required to cross American borders, and while some people struggled to understand how a passport could accurately identify a person, others took advantage of this new document to advance claims for citizenship. From the strategic use of passport applications by freed slaves and a campaign to allow married women to get passports in their maiden names, to the "passport nuisance" of the 1920s and the contested addition of photographs and other identification technologies on the passport, Robertson sheds new light on issues of individual and national identity in modern U.S. history. In this age of heightened security, especially at international borders, Robertson's The Passport in America provides anyone interested in questions of identification and surveillance with a richly detailed, and often surprising, history of this uniquely important document.

Author : Albert Baiburin
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 30,78 MB
Release : 2021-11-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1509543201

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In this remarkable book, Albert Baiburin provides the first in-depth study of the development and uses of the passport, or state identity card, in the former Soviet Union. First introduced in 1932, the Soviet passport took on an exceptional range of functions, extending not just to the regulation of movement and control of migrancy but also to the constitution of subjectivity and of social hierarchies based on place of residence, family background, and ethnic origin. While the basic role of the Soviet passport was to certify a person’s identity, it assumed a far greater significance in Soviet life. Without it, a person literally ‘disappeared’ from society. It was impossible to find employment or carry out everyday activities like picking up a parcel from the post office; a person could not marry or even officially die without a passport. It was absolutely essential on virtually every occasion when an individual had contact with officialdom because it was always necessary to prove that the individual was the person whom they claimed to be. And since the passport included an indication of the holder’s ethnic identity, individuals found themselves accorded a certain rank in a new hierarchy of nationalities where some ethnic categories were ‘normal’ and others were stigmatized. Passport systems were used by state officials for the deportation of entire population categories – the so-called ‘former people’, those from the pre-revolutionary elite, and the relations of ‘enemies of the people’. But at the same time, passport ownership became the signifier of an acceptable social existence, and the passport itself – the information it contained, the photographs and signatures – became part of the life experience and self-perception of those who possessed it. This meticulously researched and highly original book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union and to anyone interested in the shaping of identity in the modern world.

Author : Nicole Constable
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 23,76 MB
Release : 2022-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0520387988

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"Passport Entanglements examines the problems with documents issued to Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. Focusing on the politics and inequalities embedded in passports, anthropologist Nicole Constable looks at how these instruments determine legal status and prescribe rights. The book explores the larger role that passports and other types of documentation play in gendered migration, precarious labor, and bureaucracy as they reinforce violent structures on often already vulnerable women. Constable finds that new biometric technologies and surveillance do not lead to greater protection, security, or accuracy, but rather produce new vulnerabilities and reproduce old ones"--

Author : Cassandra Morphy
Publisher : Crowbarland Books
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 37,45 MB
Release : 2020-05-01
Category : Young Adult Fiction
ISBN : 1505300282

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Marissa Gorning has been going to Crowbarland Preparatory School since first grade. Its unique curriculum has given her skills beyond the norm for a teen her age. She didn't think much about it until the new girl came to school. Now, Mare and Ellie have to solve the disappearance of Ellie's father and, in the process, stumble upon the mysteries of their world beyond anything they had considered. This stand alone book takes place in the Crowbarland Chronicles universe.

Author : Eve Grafton
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 50,58 MB
Release : 2019-04-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1796000868

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James Armstrong left London to join his wife, Alicia, after her grandmother had a bad fall and called for her granddaughter to help in a southern coastal city. James was working at that time on a passport scam involving his wife without her knowledge. Percy Gray is the father of the surgeon who operated on Alicia’s grandmother’s arm who called his father, a retired police detective, to have a look at the situation that caused the fall, thinking foul play had played a part, so fate stepped in to introduce Percy Gray and James Armstrong to solve the granny’s fall affair. The passport scam was also solved by James, with help from Alicia. It had caused some angst between them when Alicia was told of her part in the passport affair, but she eventually could see why James had not told her. He now had to make up his mind whether to stay in London for his job or take up Percy Gray’s offer as a partner in a private investigation business. Granny would be incapacitated for several years, and Alicia wanted to help her out, so they decided to stay in the southern coastal city permanently and take up the investigations partnership.