Recent popular and political discourses debate whether the American Dream is “dead” or is a reality only for some groups. However, Lawrence Samuel writes in The American Dream: A Cultural History, that the most significant thing about the American Dream is that it isn’t real; instead sometimes the idea of something (true or not) can be more much more powerful than the actual thing itself.
You are asked to think about how and in what ways the American Dream is a powerful ideology that shapes the immigrant experience. Using the various definitions (hint: consider more than one!) of the American Dream and notions of freedoms that we came across in our readings and class discussion, you should answer the following question: How does the American Dream both empower and disempower immigrants trying to attain it? For example, you could consider to what extent the idea of the American Dream is used to influence American society as a motivator for immigrants, as a cause for immigration (in the form of neoliberal policies), or creating/limiting possibilities for the expression of identity.
Sample Solution