Unsettled City: Migration, Race, and the Making of Seattle’s Urban Landscape

Megan Asaka
History
UC Riverside

“Unsettled City” examines the history of seasonal and migratory labor in the Pacific Northwest from the mid-nineteenth century through 1941. It uncovers the multiracial worlds forged in Seattle’s labor camps and lodging houses as well as the physical demolition of these sites and their continued erasure in the present-day memory of the city. Though most studies of this era rely on the records of municipal authorities and urban planners, “Unsettled City” instead uses creative methodologies including digital mapping and the built environment to reveal the social worlds and intimate encounters that existed outside of official knowledge. By reconstructing this social history of migration, “Unsettled City” shows the centrality of mobile populations in shaping urban regions and thus offers a far more complex picture of turn-of-the-century urban life than currently exists in the scholarly literature.