The politics of immigration in liberal democracies exhibits strong similarities that are, contrary to the scholarly consensus, broadly expansionist and inclusive. Nevertheless, three groups of states display distinct modes of immigration politics. Divergent immigration histories mold popular attitudes toward migration and ethnic heterogeneity and affect the institutionalization of migration policy and politics. The English-speaking settler societies (the United States, Canada, and Australia) have histories of periodically open immigration, machineries of immigration planning and regulation, and densely organized webs of interest groups contesting policies. Their institutionalized politics favors expansionary policies and is relatively immune to sharp swings in direction. Many European states (France, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium) experienced mass migration only after World War II and in a form that introduced significant non-European minorities. Their immigration politics is shaped by what most see as the unfortunate consequences of those episodes and are partially institutionalized and highly volatile and conflictual. European states until recently sending countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece) deal with migration pressures for the first time in their modern histories, under crisis conditions, and in the context of intensifying coordination of policies within the European Union. We should expect the normalization of immigration politics in both sets of European states. Although they are unlikely to appropriate the policies of the English-speaking democracies, which should remain unique in their openness to mass immigration, their approach to immigration will, nevertheless, take the liberal democratic form.
This essay examines some of the pitfalls in contemporary immigration theory and reviews some of the most promising developments in research in this field. As a data-driven field or study, immigration has not had to contend with grand generalizations for highly abstract theorizing. On the contrary, the bias has run in the opposite direction, that is toward ground-level studies of particular migrant groups or analysis of official migration policies. As the distillate of past research in the field and a source of guidance for future work, theory represents one of the most valuable products of our collective intellectual endeavor. Ways to foster it and problems presented by certain common misunderstandings about the meaning and scope of scientific theorizing are discussed.
This article aims to contribute to an understanding of contemporary American attitudes toward immigration. It extends work by Espenshade and Calhoun (1993) who analyzed data from a southern California survey in June 1983 about the impacts of undocumented migrants and illegal immigration. There has not been a follow-up study that evaluates more recent evidence to see how residents throughout the United States feel about overall levels of immigration (legal and undocumented). The paper uses data from a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted in June 1993. Respondents were asked whether they would like to see the level of immigration to the United States increased, decreased or kept the same. We test several hypotheses about factors influencing respondents’ attitudes, including the importance of previously unexamined predictors. These new hypotheses relate to views about the health of the U.S. economy, feelings of social and political alienation, and isolationist sentiments concerning international economic issues and foreign relations. One important discovery is the close connection between possessing restrictionist immigration attitudes and having an isolationist perspective along a broader array of international issues.
The recent surge in immigration to the United States has rekindled debate over the economic burden imposed by immigrants. This article explores the utilization of public assistance by immigrants and natives. The analysis goes beyond existing research by utilizing repeated cross-sectional data. Descriptive tables show that despite their higher poverty rates, immigrant families had only minimally higher public assistance recipiency rates compared to natives. Multivariate logistic regression analyses reveal that immigrant families were generally less likely than natives to receive public assistance, other things equal. There were exceptions to this generalization according to year of observation and race/ethnicity.
Abstract Chapter 2 explains the book’s methodological approach and analytical framework of Migration-Development Regimes. To do so, it draws on the global literature on migration to identify four sets of forces and actors that shape sending-state emigration practices. The first highlights the power of northern-imposed development ideologies/norms, particularly neoliberal globalization. The second exposes how, at certain moments, sending states act as agents in and for themselves—striving to ensure domestic material accumulation, political legitimacy, and material redistribution at the global level. The third reminds us how poor and elite emigrants, as well as their transnational organizations, sometimes resist and reshape sending state emigration practices. The final emphasizes the role of history. Building on this global migration literature, this chapter explains the MDR framework. MDRs are defined as the full set of emigration practices and policies that enable sending countries to ensure domestic capital accumulation as well as their own political legitimacy at the global and domestic levels. MDRs enable us to capture the multiple forces shaping sending states’ class-based emigration, expose the contingent nature of emigration practices, and compare sending states’ emigration regimes across time.