They Remember America by Theodore Saloutos tackles a big blind spot in U.S. immigration history: the people who went back. Using Greek-Americans as a focused case, Saloutos studies voluntary repatriation primarily from 1908-1924 (peaking around 1911-14 and 1919-21), noting that millions across nationalities declared intentions to return. He frames the project as a prototype others could replicate for Italians, Poles, English, etc., where archives are richer. With little prior scholarship to lean on, he builds a mixed, field-driven method: preliminary interviews in U.S. Greek communities; shipboard conversations en route to Greece; then extensive, on-the-ground interviewing across Athens, provincial cities, and islands. He triangulates with whatever official and press sources he can find, while openly flagging constraints—thin archives, recall biases, performative answers, bystander interference, and the emotional volatility of a population shaped by war, occupation, and civil conflict.
What repatriates said they wanted: to rejoin family (especially aging parents or adult children), recover health in a preferred climate, retire more cheaply, marry (often a Greece-born spouse), or restart education/professions blocked in the U.S.; politics and disillusionment also appear (e.g., banking losses, party resentments). Saloutos shows how easy it was to locate returnees through social hubs (cafés, shops, consulates) and how similar core narratives recur despite varied detail. The payoff is a first systematic portrait of "return migration" as a mass phenomenon with its own motives, timing, and social meanings—plus a clear research roadmap and caution list for anyone extending the work to other national groups or periods.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1956.
