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In this issue. . .

A Symposium on the Politics of Immigration

Irene Bloemraad Analyzing and Affecting Immigration Politics: Can Sociologists Influence Opinions?

Robert C. Smith How and Why We Could Do Immigration Well, ButDo It Badly

Kitty Calavita Deflecting the Immigration Debate: Globalization,Immigrant Agency, “Strange Bedfellows,” and Beyond

Reviewing the following books:

Deflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets, and Regulation in Los Angeles,by Ivan Light

Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contractfor the Future of America,

by Dowell MyersDebating Immigration, edited by Carol M. Swain

Roger Waldinger The Border Within: Citizenship Facilitated and ImpededBecoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada,by Irene Bloemraad

Review Essays

Michael Goldman What’s Nature Got to Do with It?The Recurring Dark Ages: Ecological Stress, ClimateChanges, and System Transformation,by Sing C. ChewGoverning Environmental Flows: Global Challenges toSocial Theory, edited by Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P. J. Mol, and Frederick H. Buttel

Eileen M. Otis Socialist Market InequalityThe State and Life Chances in Urban China:Redistribution and Stratification, 1949–1994, by Xueguang ZhouEducation and Social Change in China: Inequality ina Market Economy, edited by Gerard A. PostiglioneMade in China: Women Factory Workers in a GlobalWorkplace, by Ngai Pun

Gary Alan Fine Mind, GamesGames and Sport in Everyday Life: Dialogues andNarratives of the Self, by Robert PerinbanayagamPlay Reconsidered: Sociological Perspectives on HumanExpression, by Thomas S. Henricks

Toolkit Essay

John R. Hipp Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods andPrinciples for Social Research, by Stephen L. Morganand Christopher Winship

3405 Contemporary Soc.qxd 6/4/08 8:55 AM Page 1

July 2008 Volume 37 Number 4

ContemporarySociology

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWS

ContemporarySociology

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWS

EDITORSValerie JennessDavid A. Smith

Judith Stepan-Norris

MANAGING EDITORJenny Fan

ASSISTANT EDITORSSteven A. Boutcher

Nathanael Matthiesen

Edwin AmentaUniversity of California,Irvine

Stanley BaileyUniversity of California,Irvine

Maria CharlesUniversity of California,San Diego

Mary DanicoCalifornia State PolytechnicUniversity, Pomona

Hector DelgadoUniversity of La Verne

Mario DianiUniversity of Trento (Italy)

Elaine Alma DraperCalifornia State University,Los Angeles

Rebecca J. EricksonThe University of Akron

Katherine FaustUniversity of California,Irvine

Neil FligsteinUniversity of California,Berkeley

Heidi GottfriedWayne State University

Rick GrannisUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Darnell M. HuntUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Larry IsaacVanderbilt University

Shirley A. JacksonSouthern Connecticut StateUniversity

Eun Mee KimEwha Woman’sUniversity

Douglas KlaymanAmerican University

Kenneth C. LandDuke University

Jan LinOccidental College

John R. LoganBrown University

Mansoor MoaddelEastern Michigan University

Andrew NoymerUniversity of California, Irvine

Jen’nan Ghazal ReadUniversity of California,Irvine

J. Timmons RobertsCollege of William and Mary

Beverly SilverJohns Hopkins University

Salvador Vidal-OrtizAmerican University

Tekle WoldemikaelChapman University

EDITORIAL BOARD

University of California, Irvine

The Journal of Health and Social Behaviorpublishes articles that apply sociological concepts and methods to the understandingof health, illness, and medicine in their social context. Its editorial policy favors those manuscripts that build and test knowledge in medical sociology, that show stimulating scholarshipand clarity of expression, and that, taken together, refl ect thebreadth of interests of its readership.

Print subscriptions to ASA journals include online access to the current year’s issues at no additional charge through IngentaConnect (www.ingentaconnect.com).

ASA Members $40 • Student Members $25 Institutions (print/online) $185 • Institutions (online only) $170(Add $20 for subscriptions outside the U.S. or Canada)Individual subscribers are required to be ASA members. To join ASA and subscribe at discounted member rates, see www.asanet.org.

American Sociological Association1430 K Street NW, Suite 600Washington, DC 20005(202) 383-9005 • Fax (202) 638-0882subscriptions@asanet.org • www.asanet.org

Journal of Health and Social BehaviorEliza K. Pavalko, Editor Quarterly, ISSN 0022-1465

3405 Contemporary Soc.qxd 6/4/08 8:55 AM Page 2

CONTENTS

vii Editors’ Note The Politics of Immigration

A Symposium on the Politics of Immigration

295 Irene Bloemraad Analyzing and Affecting Immigration Politics: Can Sociologists Influence Opinions?Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America, by Dowell MyersDebating Immigration, edited by Carol M. Swain

298 Robert C. Smith How and Why We Could Do Immigration Well, But Do It BadlyDeflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets, and Regulation in Los Angeles, by Ivan LightImmigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America, by Dowell Myers

302 Kitty Calavita Deflecting the Immigration Debate: Globalization, Immigrant Agency, “Strange Bedfellows,” and BeyondDeflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets, and Regulation in Los Angeles, by Ivan LightDebating Immigration, edited by Carol M. Swain

306 Roger Waldinger The Border Within: Citizenship Facilitated and ImpededBecoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada, by Irene Bloemraad

Review Essays

309 Michael Goldman What’s Nature Got to Do with It?The Recurring Dark Ages: Ecological Stress, Climate Changes, and System Transformation, by Sing C. ChewGoverning Environmental Flows: Global Challenges to Social Theory, edited by Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P. J. Mol, and Frederick H. Buttel

313 Eileen M. Otis Socialist Market InequalityThe State and Life Chances in Urban China: Redistribution and Stratification, 1949–1994, by Xueguang ZhouEducation and Social Change in China: Inequality in a Market Economy, edited by Gerard A. PostiglioneMade in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, by Ngai Pun

317 Gary Alan Fine Mind, GamesGames and Sport in Everyday Life: Dialogues and Narratives of the Self, by Robert PerinbanayagamPlay Reconsidered: Sociological Perspectives on Human Expression,by Thomas S. Henricks

Toolkit Essay

320 John R. Hipp Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research, by Stephen L. Morgan andChristopher Winship

REVIEWS

Author and Title Reviewer

Inequalities

323 Vincent J. RoscignoThe Face of Discrimination: How Race and Gender Impact Work and Home Lives

Beth Anne Shelton324 Karyn R. Lacy

Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle ClassPatrick Sharkey

326 Nicole P. MarwellBargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City

Robert Mark Silverman327 Duane Champagne

Social Change and Cultural Continuity among Native NationsJames V. Fenelon

329 Blaine KaltmanUnder the Heel of the Dragon: Islam, Racism, Crime, and the Uighur in China

Christopher Sullivan

Intimate Relationships, Family, and Life Course

330 Charles N. Darrah, James M. Freeman, and J.A. English-LueckBusier than Ever!: Why American Families Can’t Slow Down

Suzanne M. Bianchi332 Michael J. Rosenfeld

The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the ChangingAmerican Family

Erica Chito Childs333 Monica T. Whitty, Andrea J. Baker, and James A. Inman, eds.

Online M@tchmakingCarol L. Glasser

334 Lillian B. Rubin60 On Up: The Truth about Aging in America

Melissa Hardy

Work, Organizations, and Markets

335 Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg, eds.On Capitalism

Greta R. Krippner337 Charles Perrow

The Next Catastrophe: Reducing our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, andTerrorist Disasters

Harvey Molotch338 Kathleen M. Shaw, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Christopher Mazzeo, and Jerry A. Jacobs

Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access for thePoor

Julia Wrigley339 Carolyn L. Hsu

Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People are Shaping Class and Status inChina

Lu Zheng

Author and Title Reviewer

Cognitions, Emotions, and Identities

341 Doreen Anderson-FacileDueling Identities: The Christian Biker

Robert M. Carrothers342 Pawan Dhingra

Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge ofMultiple Identities

Miliann Kang344 Susie Scott

Shyness and Society: The Illusion of CompetenceLinda P. Rouse

Ideology and Cultural Production

345 E. Burke Rochford, Jr.Hare Krishna Transformed

Eileen Barker346 David Smilde

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American EvangelicalismR. Andrew Chesnut

348 Tamir SorekArab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave

Mike Cronin349 Joseph M. Palacios

The Catholic Social Imagination: Activism and the Just Society in Mexico and theUnited States

Marco Marzano350 Sara L. Crawley, Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan

Gendering BodiesLisa Jean Moore

Population, Communities, and the Environment

351 Robert D. Bullard, ed.The Black Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century: Race, Power, and Politics of Place

John Iceland353 Andrew L. Barlow, ed.

Collaborations for Social Justice: Professionals, Publics, and Policy ChangeEdward T. Walker

Politics and the State

354 Berch BerberogluThe State and Revolution in the Twentieth Century: Major Social Transformations ofOur Time

Jack A. Goldstone355 Ralf Rogowski and Charles Turner, eds.

The Shape of the New EuropeGlyn Morgan

356 Jack Nusan PorterThe Genocidal Mind: Sociological and Sexual Perspectives

Mark P. Worrell

Author and Title Reviewer

Social Control, Deviance, and Law

357 Avelardo ValdezMexican American Girls and Gang Violence: Beyond Risk

Scott A. Desmond358 Tony Waters

When Killing is a CrimeSimon I. Singer

Social Movements

360 Stuart A. WrightPatriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing

Joshua D. Freilich361 Kimberly McClain DaCosta

Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color LineAnn Morning

Health, Illness, and Medicine

362 Anne Murcott, ed.Sociology and Medicine: Selected Essays by P.M. Strong

Pamela Behan363 Laura Mamo

Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of TechnoscienceKathleen E. Hull

365 Alan PetersenThe Body in Question: A Socio-Cultural Approach

Darin Weinberg

Theory, Epistemology, and Methodology

366 Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly, eds.The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis

Elisabeth S. Clemens367 Albert Hunter and Carl Milofsky

Pragmatic Liberalism: Constructing a Civil SocietyEdward W. Lehman

369 Talcott Parsons, edited by Giuseppe SciortinoAmerican Society: A Theory of the Societal Community

Jonathan H. Turner

Global Dynamics and Social Change

370 Mike DavisIn Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire

Cedric de Leon372 Catherine Ziegler

Favored Flowers: Culture and Economy in a Global SystemW. L. Goldfrank

373 Judith Blau and Alberto MoncadaFreedoms and Solidarities: In Pursuit of Human Rights

Shehzad Nadeem374 Patrice Flichy, translated by Liz Carey-Libbrecht

The Internet ImaginaireDianne S. Stalker

Author and Title Reviewer

376 Fred Kniss and Paul D. NumrichSacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America’sNewest Immigrants

Sarah Stohlman

Education

377 Emily Hannum and Albert Park, eds.Education and Reform in China

Feinian Chen379 Carrie Freie

Class Construction: White Working-Class Student Identity in the New MillenniumAllison L. Hurst

380 Christina ChavezFive Generations of a Mexican American Family in Los Angeles: The Fuentes Story

Angelica Rivera381 Michael DeCesare

A Discipline Divided: Sociology in American High SchoolsMelissa Weiner

TAKE NOTE 383

COMMENT AND REPLY 388

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED 389

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Immigration to the United States—particu-larly “illegal” or “unauthorized” entry—is atruly “hot button” issue in 2008. Many citi-zens feel very passionately about the eco-nomic and cultural “threat” of immigrationand the candidates in the current politicalseason are increasingly being pressed totake positions on this contentious issue.The immigration debate is never far fromnational consciousness. Cable news pun-dits take public outrage at immigration andimmigrants as a given and rail against thegovernment’s inability to control entry, re-strict access to public services, and deportthe undocumented. More moderate voicesacknowledge that our immigration policiesare not working, but nonetheless are over-whelmed by the complexity of the situationand despair at the prospect of attemptingto locate and deport millions of peopleliving in the United States without state au-thorization. And some disparate voices,including those representing the downtrod-den immigrants and business groups whobenefit from (or even “need”) low-wage la-bor, point to the positive economic impactof the demographic flows. Debates rageabout the wisdom of building a fence alongthe entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border,whether people without documents shouldbe able to get driver’s licenses, andwhether and how to enforce sanctionsagainst employers who hire undocumentedimmigrants. As Roger Waldinger succinctlyputs it in his essay in this volume, “Immi-gration is roiling American politics, withcontroversy continuing and no clear solu-tion in sight.”

One of the most vexing aspects of theimmigration debate is its tendency to shedmore heat than light. While there is atremendous amount of controversy aboutimmigration and immigrants, there is con-siderably less in the way of clear empiricalanalyses. Even the most basic facts are indispute. For example, estimates of thenumber of undocumented or illegal immi-grants in the United States vary from 7 to

20 million (with most scholars of the phe-nomena settling on about 12 million).1 Whatis the net positive or negative impact of im-migrants in the United States? How likely arethese newcomers able to assimilate to thedominant language and culture?

An excellent way to begin to addressthese questions is via sociological examina-tion of some key books on immigration writ-ten by sociologists and those in cognatefields. Our symposium in this issue of CS fo-cuses on three recent books: Ivan Light’s De-flecting Immigration: Networks, Markets, andRegulation in Los Angeles, Dowell Myers’sImmigrants and Boomers: Forging a New So-cial Contract for the Future of America, andCarol Swain’s edited collection Debating Im-migration. We asked leading sociologists ofimmigration (Irene Bloemraad, Robert Smith,and Kitty Calavita) to each pick two of thesebooks to discuss and each of them selecteddifferent combinations. Bloemraad framesher opening essay in terms of the 2008 pres-idential election and asks whether sociolo-gists can influence public opinion on immi-gration. She contrasts Myers’s claims thatthere are good economic reasons to supportand invest in recent immigrants with somevociferous criticism of immigration in theSwain volume. Myers’s argument is based onthe idea of a “demographic lag”: as citizen“baby boomers” age, the United States willneed the economically active younger popu-lation that recent immigrants provide to keepthe economy going, buy homes, and pay forthings like Social Security and Medicare.While Bloemraad praises Myers’s thesis as“nuanced, well-reasoned, and accessible tothe lay reader,” she nonetheless wonders ifhis economic argument ignores too much, in-cluding worries about immigrants’ race, poli-tics, and culture. The essays in the Swain col-

EDITORS’ NOTE:THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION

vii Contemporary Sociology 37, 4

1 Knickerbocker, Brad. 2006. “Illegal Immigrantsin the US: How Many are There?” The ChristianScience Monitor, May 16. Retrieved April 14,2008 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0516/p01s02-ussc.html).

viii–Editors’ Note

lection include a communitarian defense ofimmigration by Amitai Etzioni and an analyt-ically sophisticated summary of two decadesof sociological research on the topic by Dou-glas Massey. But Bloemraad sees many of theSwain chapters, including one by the editorherself, which claim that immigration to theUnited States is detrimental to our less afflu-ent fellow citizens, damages our commonculture, etc., as strong counterpoints to My-ers’s position. Smith’s essay also discusses theMyers book. However, he contrasts it withthe argument of Ivan Light who argues that,while Los Angeles was once the primary des-tination for undocumented immigrants, a va-riety of social forces in southern Californianow “deflect” these flows away from LA andtoward other parts of the United States. Smithbelieves that Light’s focus on the growingpower of localities to influence internationalmigration is important, but he would like theauthor to provide more direct data on immi-grant decision-making to make a convincingcase for deflection. Kitty Calavita’s essay ex-amines the Light and Swain volumes. Calavi-ta persuasively argues that immigration needsto be contextualized in terms of global eco-nomic forces, and immigration policy shouldexplicitly address issues of labor, free trade,etc. She sees insufficient attention to thesefactors in the two books. While she praisesthe Light book as an empirical “gem,” she be-lieves he is wrong to dismiss the “demand-driven theory of third-world immigration as aconsequence of globalization.” Moreover,while she finds the Swain volume provoca-tive (and singles out Massey’s chapter forspecial praise), she claims it is tilted towardanti-immigrant positions, several of whichshe finds quite untenable.

In addition to the paired essays on thesethree books, our symposium also includes an

essay by leading immigration scholar RogerWaldinger on Irene Bloemraad’s Becoming aCitizen: Incorporating Immigrants andRefugees in the United States and Canada. Hepoints out that beyond border enforcement,immigration policy also involves creating in-groups and out-groups of citizens and othersin order to exclude the undocumented fromthe political process and limit their unautho-rized access to public services. Bloemraad’sresearch compares low-income immigrants tothe United States and Canada and finds vastdifferences between our laissez-faire exclu-sionary policies and the inclusionary “multi-cultural” approach taken by our neighbors tothe north. Waldinger has some quibbles withher argument. For example, is the crucial dif-ference in Canadian policy really multicultur-alism or a more generic government facilita-tion of citizenship? But he sees this book asa rich sociological contribution to the currentpolitical debates about immigration to theUnited States.

We also include four other featured essaysin this volume. Michael Goldman discusseshow two recent books on environmental is-sues might begin public debate on this topic,Eileen Otis reviews three volumes on “re-form” in China and notes that they all pointtoward growing inequality, and Gary AlanFine argues that two new books on sportsand play remind us that these are not triflingtopics for sociologists. Finally, John Hipp’sessay on Counterfactuals and Causal Infer-ence: Methods and Principles for Social Re-search is out latest addition to our method-ological “toolkit” series.

Valerie JennessDavid A. Smith

Judith Stepan-NorrisUniversity of California, Irvine

csoc@uci.edu

Contemporary Sociology 37, 4

A SYMPOSIUM ONTHE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION

The 2008 race for the White House has beenone of the most exciting in recent memory,with immigration a hot button issue. Immi-gration platforms differentiated primary can-didates and continue to fuel debate acrossand within parties. Two recent books, Immi-grants and Boomers by Dowell Myers andDebating Immigration edited by Carol W.Swain, explicitly seek to engage such politi-cal debates. Myers announces, “This book isfor the citizen-voter and taxpayers of theUnited States, who have a right to demandusable information that provides a realisticguide to the future of their country” (p. 2).Swain’s collection of academics, journalists,and pundits aims to give voice to “voids inpublic debate as well as in the scholarly lit-erature and the popular press” (p. 5).

But how does one get a handle on the“strange bedfellows” of immigration politics?Free market conservatives team up with pro-immigrant liberals and ethnic advocacygroups to support expansionist policies. Theyare opposed by cultural conservatives, whowere partnered, until recently, with unions,and perhaps increasingly, a small group ofprogressives worried about the native-bornpoor. The politics of immigration are cen-tered on material stakes—who wins and los-es in the labor market and in the fiscal tallybetween taxes paid and social benefits re-ceived—and on non-material consequences:its effects on social cohesion, common cul-ture, inter-ethnic relations, national security,political vitality, and the like. The books byMyers and Swain highlight the very differentways such economic and non-economic de-bates play out, and they raise importantquestions over how sociologists can (or can-not) further immigration debates.

Myers takes an economic tact. He arguesthat aging, largely white baby boomers mustenter into a new inter-generational socialcontract with young, minority immigrantsand their children. Aiming to transcend sharppolarization around social issues, Myers con-tends that “[n]either class nor values gives usa basis for agreement on the problem to besolved. Instead the new challenge we all faceis life in a nation undergoing demographictransition. And the solution to many of theproblems we face is commonality based onage” (p. 176). Put simply, in two decades, ba-by boomer retirees will need an educated, la-boring workforce to buy their houses andpay for Social Security and Medicare. Conse-quently, older Americans must invest in theeducation and success of younger residents,many of whom are immigrants or the chil-dren of immigrants, “not only for its ownsake, or to avoid conflict, but because of self-interest rightly understood by the older gen-eration” (p. 195).

To a certain extent, Myers is merelytransferring the well-known demographicargument for immigration used in other in-dustrialized countries to the United States.The argument is newer in the United Statesbecause the country does not face the steep

295 Contemporary Sociology 37, 4

Analyzing and Affecting Immigration Politics: Can Sociologists Influence Opinions?

IRENE BLOEMRAADDepartment of Sociology

University of California, Berkeleybloemr@berkeley.edu

Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a NewSocial Contract for the Future of America,by Dowell Myers. New York, NY: RussellSage Foundation, 2007. 368pp. $35.00cloth. ISBN: 9780871546364.

Debating Immigration, edited by Carol M.Swain. Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007. 316pp. $19.99paper. ISBN: 9780521698665.

296–Symposium

fertility declines found in most other devel-oped nations. His argument also differs a bitsince he does not advocate increasing migra-tion, but instead building “homegrown” re-sources of youth already in the United States.Indeed, Myers explicitly states that his pro-posed social contract rests on “stabilizing”the flow of new immigrants.

Myers’s economic argument is nuanced,well-reasoned, and accessible to the lay read-er. Particularly useful, he gives a clear-head-ed overview of the complicated, unequal po-litical terrain. Using California as a case study,Myers points to a demographic “political lag”:while the resident population of Californiawas just under 47% non-Hispanic white in2000, whites made up about 71% of thosewho voted. Conversely, Hispanics made up32% of the population, but they only ac-counted for 14% of voters, in part due to dif-ferent age structures and citizenship statuses.Because the mismatch between residentialand electoral demographics hurts those with-out political voice, and demographic analysisshows that whites will lose their political ma-jority, at the earliest, in 2024, Myers arguesthat we must change older citizens’ under-standing of their self-interest today to avoidfuture fiscal ruin and social problems.

At this point, skeptics may well askwhether such a re-formulation of interests ispossible. Myers argues that Californians’backlash against immigration in the late1980s and 1990s stemmed from economic re-cession and natural disasters coupled withrapid demographic change. Those still miredin politics of despair have missed, accordingto Myers, important indicators of optimism:public opinion over immigration has im-proved, economic conditions are better, andimmigrants show real signs of economic ad-vancement. In an uncanny foreshadowing ofthe 2008 presidential campaign, Myers urgesreaders to instead embrace a “future ofhope.”

Myers’s economic argument is impressive,but what of the political one? Are those op-posed to immigration primarily acting frommaterial concerns, and can these concerns beallayed with statistical evidence and logic?Myers clearly thinks the answer is “yes.” Atvarious points he calls the generational in-equity favoring seniors “unintentional” andhe suggests that older Americans “are not in-formed and would be shocked if they

learned the score” (p. 193). He is not blind tothe racial dimensions of the inequity, but helargely dismisses racial intolerance as a rootcause of anti-immigrant sentiment. In a briefpassage, Myers claims increased ethnic diver-sity does not correlate with greater appre-hension over immigration while economicconditions do. Cultural worries over immi-gration are dismissed by noting that manyimmigrants learn English over their lifetime,and virtually all children of immigrants knowEnglish.

Carol Swain’s collection of essays offers astark contrast to Myers’s book, not only in itsconclusions, but also in the very understand-ing of what is at stake. A few essays echo My-ers’s approach in the use of statistics and eco-nomic reasoning, though the conclusions arediametrically opposed. Steven Camarota, re-search director for the non-partisan, restric-tionist Center for Immigration Studies, con-tends that immigrant employment gains be-tween 2000 and 2004 have come at the ex-pense of natives’ employment. PeterBrimelow, pundit and journalist, concludesthat available economic evidence reveals noaggregate economic benefit from immigra-tion—so that “the United States is beingtransformed for nothing” (p. 158)—but thatsome redistribution of income from labor tocapital is occurring. In a brief demographicanalysis, Charles Westoff links continued mi-gration to significant increases in the U.S.population, but he concludes that any hopeof easing the fiscal burden of retirementthrough immigration is “overwhelmed by theoverall aging of the population” (p. 169). Thisis the closest we get to a direct challenge toMyers’s argument, but Westoff does not suffi-ciently spell out his reasoning to knowwhether his analysis undermines Myers’s pro-posed social contract.

It would be easy to dismiss some chaptersin Debating Immigration as partisan defens-es of immigrant restrictions, and some schol-ars will do so. Yet Swain’s collection providesa window on the deeply held, often princi-pled objections of many Americans. A num-ber of contributors in the volume argue thatthe expansionist views of many elites, and Iwould include most sociologists here, standat odds with the ambivalent attitudes of ordi-nary Americans. Legal scholar Peter Schuckclaims that the politics of immigration expan-sion comes from agricultural growers, busi-

Contemporary Sociology 37, 4

Symposium–297

ness groups, universities, ethnic lobbies, andasylum advocates, a coalition that overpow-ers a diffuse opposition. In Swain’s words,the volume arose because “an open debatewas suppressed by many people in the main-stream who feared being dismissed asracist.|.|.|. Presently, elites in both majorpolitical parties have largely ignored the con-cerns of the people” (pp. 5, 11).

As its title suggests, Debating Immigrationshowcases a range of opinions, including no-table scholars such as sociologist DouglasMassey, political scientist Rogers Smith, andlegal scholar Linda Bosniak. Yet Swain alsohas a clear agenda to problematize large-scale immigration, legal or unauthorized. Dis-concerting to the rational economic argu-ments advanced by Myers, Swain includes acontribution by political staffer James R. Ed-wards, who offers a conservative Protestantdefense of immigration restriction rooted inthe bible. Can demographic analysis under-mine arguments based on interpretation ofGod’s word? Coming to a similar conclusionto Edwards, but from principles of secularliberal political theory, Stephen Macedo ar-gues that basic justice must lead us to favorcurrent members of our polity over others, “ifhigh levels of immigration have a detrimentalimpact on our least well-off fellow citizens,that is a reason to limit immigration, even ifthose who seek admission seem to be poor-er than our own poor” (p. 64).

Macedo provides an opening for academ-ic discussion with the conditional “if.” Doesimmigration hurt the native born? Myers sug-gests the opposite; Brimelow (at most) con-cedes a draw, while Macedo and variouscontributors to Debating Immigration arguethat the aggregate benefits of immigration donot matter if a minority of native-born citi-zens is hurt. Those most at risk, many of thecontributors agree, are African Americansand other long-standing poor Americans.This is a point ignored by Myers, whose ar-gument over self-interest is largely focusedon older white Americans.

One of the most provocative sections inDebating Immigration addresses the topic ofdifferential harm and race. Carol Swain at-tacks the Congressional Black Caucus for notconfronting the problem of immigration fromthe perspective of African Americans. Sheclaims that immigration disproportionatelyhurts less educated blacks in the labor force,

and it creates tensions around affirmative ac-tion and political power. In a passage sure toraise eyebrows, she suggests that blacksmight be better served by “the Republicanside of the aisle, where a number of legisla-tors have staked out positions conducive tothe interests of working people” (p. 188).Swain’s general point is then taken up andargued even more forcefully, and colorfully,by Jonathan Tilove. Tilove echoes the fearsof economic and political displacement, andidentifies an insidious process of black mar-ginalization among those championing immi-grants: “The problem here is that whileblacks are losing this high-stakes competi-tion, there is very little attention paid to theways in which the competition is stackedagainst them .|.|. because immigrants whoare hired instead are also not white, employ-ers run little risk of running afoul of antidis-crimination laws or their own sense ofshame” (pp. 214, 215).

Communitarian and sociologist Amitai Et-zioni is placed as counterweight to Swainand Tilove. Etzioni claims that immigrantsbenefit the United States because theystrengthen communitarian bonds throughtheir commitment to family, community, andnation, as well as their respect for authorityand “moderate religious-moral values” (p.189). He maintains that immigrants share val-ues of democracy, the Constitution, universallaw, mutual respect and tolerance with Amer-icans and, echoing Myers, that they largelyembrace English as a common language. In afinal section that particularly enrages Tilove,Etzioni suggests that the multi-ethnic andmulti-racial backgrounds of new immigrants,combined with intermarriage, will underminetraditional black/white identity politics,thereby “normalizing” American politics.

The clashing views of Tilove and Etzionishowcase the promise of Debating Immigra-tion. Readers enlarge their understanding ofthe stakes in placing these two chapters side-by-side, making the volume particularly use-ful in the classroom. Yet the collection alsofalls short, since most chapters do not direct-ly engage each other, or allow opponents todispute the “facts.” A number of the contrib-utors who claim immigration hurts (some)Americans’ material interests almost exclu-sively cite the work of economist GeorgeBorjas. But various labor economists andmany sociologists disagree with Borjas’s con-

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Upon first reading of these two excellent newbooks on immigration by Dowell Myers andIvan Light, I felt that these two scholars—who teach within a few miles of each otherin Los Angeles—must inhabit different coun-tries. Where Myers sees the potential for in-tergenerational cooperation and progress be-tween immigrants and natives, Light sees afuture wherein locals use their power to dis-courage and deflect immigrants who they seedestroying their quality of life. Where Myerssketches out the analytical and policy basisfor resolving the shrill standoff that passes fordebate on immigration issues today, Light an-alyzes how the failure of national immigra-tion has yielded a strident set of haphazard,de facto local policies of sequential absorp-tion and deflection. Yet it is not differentcountries that these scholars inhabit, but dif-ferent, though complementary, analytical andpolitical perspectives. While I have more

bones to pick with Light than with Myers,both books make important contributions toour understanding of immigration. I also usethe review to discuss important, related is-sues in immigration.

These books have several virtues. Both of-fer serious scholarly analysis engaged with

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How and Why We Could Do Immigration Well, But Do It Badly

ROBERT C. SMITHBaruch College, School of Public Affairs

The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkRobert_smith@baruch.cuny.edu

clusions, a position not articulated in thebook. Similarly, while a conservative Protes-tant defense of restriction is presented, thereis no corresponding, religiously groundeddefense of liberalization. Those who alreadyhold positions within the immigration debatewill likely remain unswayed.

Taking a step back, what do these twobooks teach us about the politics of immi-gration and social scientists’ ability to influ-ence them? It is clear, from Swain’s volume,that although economic considerations areimportant, the politics of race, social cohe-sion, and culture cannot be ignored. As Ed-wards puts it, “the greatest harm done by thekind of large-scale immigration we have to-day .|.|. may not be something that can beexpressed in dollars and cents. The greatestharm .|.|. may be our inability to preserve asense of common culture and community ina rapidly changing world” (p. 60). It is un-clear how Myers’s intergenerational socialcontract, for all its rational self-interest andevidence, can alleviate this sense of threat.

This is not to suggest that Immigrants andBoomers is not an important intervention.Many immigration scholars hope that their re-search will influence public debate, but mostof us must settle for, at best, having our workread by a handful of students and colleagues.Myers deserves credit for attempting to swayvoters with evidence and logic, and othersshould follow his lead. Sociologists shouldhave a more important role to play. A greatdeal of the academic work on immigrationover the last thirty years has been carried outby sociologists, but most contributors in De-bating Immigration are non-sociologists, asis Myers, a professor of urban planning anddemography.

Some of the contributors in Carol Swain’svolume would likely retort that academics’perspectives are so far removed from themainstream that they should just return to theivory tower from whence they came. The re-al challenge for social scientists interested inaffecting politics may well lie in hearing andanswering, in a persuasive fashion, the non-economic fears unleashed by immigration.

Deflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets,and Regulation in Los Angeles, by IvanLight. New York, NY: Russell SageFoundation, 2006. 272pp. $35.00 cloth.ISBN: 9780871545381.

Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a NewSocial Contract for the Future of America,by Dowell Myers. New York, NY: RussellSage Foundation, 2007. 368pp. $35.00cloth. ISBN: 9780871546364.

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political debate on immigration. Both areworks of synthesis, drawing on a wide baseof knowledge and sources. Both are wellwritten—Myers is folksy in his erudition, theGarrison Keillor of the immigration debates,while Light is an incisive logician. And nei-ther is partisanly pro- or anti-immigrant. Theyoffer sober, but different views of our currentreality. Myers’s book is tighter in argumenta-tion, and more persuasive. Light is theoreti-cally ambitious and innovative, even if hestumbles at times. Both take California as aharbinger.

Dowell Myers challenges the assumptionsand arguments in the dominant public dis-course on immigration today. To wit, today’simmigrants, especially Latinos, are of lowerquality, and threaten to undermine the Amer-ican way of life, and even pose the threat ofa Quebec-like separatist movement. SamuelHuntington and George Borjas are men-tioned by name. Myers argues that the immi-gration debate today has led to politicalpositions that undermine everyone’s self-in-terest in our common American future. Theconflict of interest between older, more af-fluent and educated whites, and younger,less affluent and educated Latinos and Asiansis seen and conducted as a zero-sum game.Refreshingly, Myers appeals not to our altru-ism, but—like the Federalist Papers—to ourbaser side. He argues for public policies thatpursue our enlightened self-interest.

Myers dissects how our enlightened self-interest is not served by current debates andpolicies. Myers uses what might be clumsilycalled “life course demographic public policyanalysis.” By tracing how immigrants andtheir children change over the life course—using such techniques as cohort analysis—heis able to see things that cross-sectional datacannot show. He then applies these insightsto policy

A primary target of Myers’s analysis iswhat he calls the “Peter Pan” assumption un-derlying most contemporary debate on immi-gration—that is, the assumption that poorlypaid, poorly educated immigrants will remainso for the rest of their lives. This assumptionunderpins the vision of a bleak future, be-cause such persons could not support ourAmerican ways of life. Yet Myers argues, us-ing the Census and other data, that the PeterPan assumption is wrong. In category aftercategory, he shows how earlier migrants are

both moving ahead socioeconomically, andbecoming more behaviorally American. ForMyers, a positive assimilation is very muchalive and well in California.

Measures of housing, education, and in-come figure prominently in Myers’s analysis.Myers shows that earlier migrants, on aver-age, increased both their levels of educationand their incomes over time. This makessense. Even those with low initial levels ofeducation tend to translate their time on thejob into higher incomes. Myers also showsthat Latino immigrants increase their level offormal education over time. Myers’s movingpicture offers a better read on the conditionof Latinos than the snapshot of cross-section-al data. Myers also shows how these higherincomes and education levels also convert in-to higher rates of homeownership for immi-grants. Hence, Latino names now account forsix and Asian names two of the top tennames for new homebuyers in California,while names like Smith and Johnson haveslipped down the list. The use of such sim-ple, yet persuasive, data, helps make Myers’scase convincing.

Myers uses this base of actual and poten-tial upward mobility to make the case for en-lightened self-interest in the form of a newintergenerational social contract. One key ex-ample is the baby boomer housing bubble.Boomers have increased their wealth throughan unprecedented boom in housing pricesover the last twenty years. But to keep thisbubble from bursting when boomers sellthose houses—and enable them to live outtheir lives drawing on that wealth, and passsome of it on to their offspring—they willneed buyers for their homes. Without buyers,prices will plummet. How to fix the issue?We need a new intergenerational social con-tract. The key, for Myers, is to invest more inpublic education, especially, and relatedpublic services, to recognize “how much thegenerations depend on one another” (p.245). The “one action tool within our grasp isto promote the educational preparation ofthe next generation .|.|. and elevate theearnings potential of grown children, andthereby enhance their home buying poten-tial” (p. 245). It is a simple, feasible contract,but could fix many problems in American so-ciety.

There are two caveats for Myers’s analysis.In discussing the book, Luis Guarnizo’s asks

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a well-put question: What will happen if thesocial supports for this slow climb into themiddle class are further eroded, rather thanstrengthened? I ask a similar question—whatwill be the effects of a more than twenty-yearperiod in which undocumented immigrantshave been unable to legalize their status, re-sulting in 12–14 million of them now grow-ing up or growing old as undocumentedpeople? Both these conditions will make theupward mobility Myers seeks to promotemore difficult, but no less worthy.

If Dowell Myers is trying to illuminate thepolicy path to enlightened self-interest, IvanLight sheds light on how and why Americanswill not take that path. His answer is “se-quential absorption and deflection” (p. 164).Light argues that the failure of national immi-gration policy to stop undocumented immi-gration has dumped the problem in the lapsof regional and local actors, whose combinedactions drive immigrants out of Los Angelesand cities like it throughout the United States.This is Light’s explanation for why immi-grants, especially Mexicans, have dispersedthroughout the United States since the 1990s.

Light argues that a “poverty intolerantgrowth regime” emerged over three decadesin response to the “ever-intensifying prob-lems that arose from the influx of low-wageLatinos from Mexico and Central America.”This “muddling through .|.|. brought togeth-er four linked but independent contributors:homeowners, social justice movements,housing and labor markets, and local gov-ernments” (p. xii). He summarizes his argu-ment neatly:

First, selfish homeowners were partlysuccessful in defending Los Angeles sub-urbs against affordable housing. Second,the actions of caring and humane citizensof the Los Angeles region reduced thesupply of slum housing and sweatshopjobs. Third, in conjunction with housingand labor markets, immigrants’ social net-works effectively related the bad news tonew immigrants still in Mexico, thus dis-couraging their intention to settle in LosAngeles. Finally, Los Angeles regionalgovernment became increasingly intoler-ant of immigrant poverty, and so beganto enforce previously ignored laws andordinances that restricted the ability ofpoor people to live in the area. (P. xii)

Light’s argument is provocative and inno-vative. He makes a valuable contribution byexamining the political reality of migration atthe state and local level, where increasinglyimportant action is taking place, while mostscholarship focuses on national policy. Hisframework looks at apparently unrelated are-nas of action, and draws on and critiquescorresponding theory, for example, of migra-tion and of urban growth regimes. His analy-sis of how local actors combined actions ledto a less hospitable environment for new im-migrants deepens our understanding in waysimpossible for nationally focused research.Such creative theorizing helps open a newapproach to studying migration and localpolitics at a time when such issues are heat-ing up. While I don’t agree with all he says,scholars should pursue explanations for newproblems using the tools that illuminate vari-ous dimensions of it. If they are wrong,wholly or partly, they will be challenged andhopefully, our collective knowledge ad-vanced. This “glass half full stance” may be atodds with much American academic culture,but it is good for it.

Light’s complex argument does not fullysatisfy in analyzing racial discrimination as acause of this Latino immigrant dispersal dur-ing the 1990s. Light argues that racism clear-ly exists in California, but was not a signifi-cant cause of outmigration of Latinos. Hesays that fear of “squalor” (p. 151) and notracism motivated harsh public rhetoric in Cal-ifornia, and that being “anti-immigrant is notthe same as anti-Latino,” and being “anti-ille-gal immigrant is not the same as anti-immi-grant” (p. 151). But these semantic distinc-tions belie the way that more publicly ac-ceptable labels can be used to mask or legit-imize less acceptable sentiments, or howthese can be bundled together and mobilizedby rhetoric which does not speak race’sname, but sends the same message by proxy.In a book on politics and immigration in Cal-ifornia in the 1990s, I would have liked morediscussion of this issue.

Light asserts that deflection caused migra-tion networks to disperse throughout thecountry. I like his use of wage to rent ratiosto partly explain the dispersal of Latino im-migrants, and the two-step model by whichmigrant networks can be established and re-oriented towards better conditions. Yet asothers (Bloemraad 2007) have noted, this

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central assertion should be backed up by di-rect data, for example, from migrants on rea-sons for dispersal. Another plausible expla-nation, drawing on my own research on theEast Coast and in Kentucky, is that these mi-grant networks were not mainly “deflected,”but rather were established by pioneers le-galized in the amnesty of the late 1980s.These pioneers traveled the United States tofind better opportunities in new places, andthen brought friends (legal and undocument-ed). Los Angeles’s deteriorating conditionsare a push factor here, but migrant agency,enabled by the national policy (amnesty) al-so matter. I also think that magnitude of mi-gration directly from new origins in Mexicoto new origins in the United States is toogreat to be understood as deflected from LosAngeles. Huge numbers of these immigrantswould have had no information about condi-tions in Los Angeles or other destinations thattheir immediate networks could not takethem. Finally, as Jackie Hagan observed in aconversation about the book, demand for mi-grant labor in other places in the UnitedStates must play a more prominent theoreti-cal role in explaining this dispersal.

I really like Light’s analysis of how the ur-ban growth regime limited immigrant expan-sion beyond the metropolitan core. Howev-er, Light’s focus on how Los Angeles has de-flected migration overlooks the effects of in-clusive measures in Los Angeles and othercities, and fails to consider the larger politicalframework within which local power seeksto regulate immigration. Going forward,analysis of these political processes shouldinclude the issue of federalism, and considerhow the power to regulate immigration is afederal power, but the states, and hence lo-calities, use their “police powers” under theConstitution to also include immigrants.Hence, many localities during the 1980s and1990s passed laws forbidding the sharing ofinformation about immigrants’ legal status,except in connection with a criminal investi-gation. Similarly, some states passed lawsgiving all poor youth, including undocu-mented ones, access to medical care, even asthe federal government withdrew such sup-port. The policies sought to ensure that im-migrants and their children could go to thedoctor if sick, seek police protection, andsend their children to school. These are mod-est goals in wealthy society, but put these

states and localities at odds with federaltendencies.

What Light is picking up, and what seemsnew, is that localities are now using suchpolicies to control the effects of immigrationor indirectly dissuade immigrants from com-ing to their towns. The deputizing of localpolice departments as ICE (Immigration andCustoms Enforcement) agents bolsters his ar-gument. Other cases show how federalism oranti-discrimination provisions can limit local-ities power to deflect. Hence, in 2007, a courtruled unconstitutional the Hazleton, PA ordi-nances forbidding the renting of housing oremployment of undocumented immigrants.Mamaroneck, NY, was told in 2007 to dis-continue its discriminatory enforcement oftraffic and loitering laws, which had targeted“illegal immigrants.” In both cases, public of-ficials had, without evidence, blamed recentand illegal immigrants for public problems,including increased crime. Finally, Riverside,NJ passed and then repealed similar ordi-nances a year later, because the resulting im-migrant exodus was hobbling its economy.

Both books use California as a harbingerof America’s future. While California’s demo-graphic changes are ahead of most of the restof the United States, it is not clear that Cali-fornia’s present is the United States’s future.California has hosted perhaps the largest,sustained immigration of one ethnic group inU.S. history, and at a time when aging babyboomers see themselves in competition forresources with younger, less well-educated,largely Mexican origin, descendents of immi-grants. Yet as migration patterns change (asmigration from Mexico decreases, in abouttwenty years), and the nation’s and California’sMexican population ages and increases itsmiddle class, I bet the dynamics of race, eth-nicity, and intergenerational relations willchange too. Future newcomers in new desti-nations, or descendents of today’s newcom-ers, may be aided in their upward mobility asthey move into job markets where recordnumbers of white boomers will be retiring, asRichard Alba points out in a talk he gave atthe Russell Sage Foundation this year. In oth-er places, such as New York, the mechanismsof political power and inclusion are moresympathetic to immigrants than in California.California is thus instructive, but not neces-sarily predictive, in looking into the future.

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One thing I still remember from an otherwiseunmemorable undergraduate methodscourse is that just because the number of firetrucks on the scene of a fire is positively re-lated to the extent of the fire’s damage, doesnot mean the fire trucks cause the damage.They’re probably both related to somethingelse—like, of course, the severity of the fire.

Sometimes scholarship on immigration re-minds me of this cautionary tale of fire trucksand fires. Many immigration scholars give atleast lip service to the ways globalization,economic transformation, and restructuring(the fire) in advanced countries have con-tributed to immigration on one hand and thedisappearance of living-wage jobs on theother; but, the same scholars often then lapseinto what is akin to blaming the fire trucks(immigration) for the damage. Granted, theanalogy is not perfect. All else being equal,injecting a labor market with additional low-er-wage workers can depress wages, in away that adding more fire trucks to the sceneof a fire will probably never produce moredamage. But, as is well known by now, wagelevels in the U.S. began collapsing with de-industrialization, capital flight, economic re-structuring, and the evisceration of laborunions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, thatis, just before the current massive increase inimmigration. So, while immigration cansometimes have a negative effect on wages,it’s far more likely in this case that decliningwages and (later) rising immigration levelswere each related to a broader set of forces.

The works reviewed here provide us withreams of useful data on demographics, hous-

ing trends, immigrant geographic distribu-tion, public opinion about immigration, eco-nomic mobility among immigrants, and manyother issues, and contribute much to our em-pirical store of knowledge. But, in readingthem I was often frustrated by the lack of at-tention to the vast restructuring of the globaleconomy that arguably has been one triggerfor rapidly rising levels of immigration, notjust in the U.S. but in all advanced capitalistcountries. Despite the dramatic differencesbetween these two books and among theedited chapters of Debating Immigration,they tend to share this inattention to the fireof global economic forces.

In the case of Ivan Light’s Deflecting Im-migration, this is no oversight. His centralempirical argument is that when low-skilledimmigrants from Mexico and Central Americaarrived in Los Angeles in significant numbersin the 1980s, the effect was to drive wagesdown, to reduce the housing supply relativeto demand and push housing prices up, andto trigger “poverty intolerance” by the localpopulace. This latter phenomenon, according

Contemporary Sociology 37, 4

Deflecting the Immigration Debate: Globalization, Immigrant Agency, “Strange Bedfellows,” and Beyond

KITTY CALAVITADepartment of Criminology, Law & Society

University of California, Irvinekccalavi@uci.edu

In sum, both books are worth reading.Where Myers analyzes our current intergen-erational impasse, and suggests a way out ofit, Light analyzes how this impasse is beinglived out at the local level, and why it willendure. Immigrants and Boomers and De-flecting Immigration contribute significantlyto our understanding of contemporary immi-

gration, and should open new roads for re-search and inform current policy debates.

ReferenceBloemraad, Irene. 2007. “Politics and Markets: A

Call for More Research on Local Politics around

Migration.” City and Community 6 (3):

242–244.

Deflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets,and Regulation in Los Angeles, by IvanLight. New York, NY: Russell SageFoundation, 2006. 272pp. $35.00 cloth.ISBN: 0871545381.

Debating Immigration, edited by Carol M.Swain. New York, NY: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007. 316pp. $19.99paper. ISBN: 9780521698665.

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to Light, included such things as increasedmunicipal regulations and labor-law enforce-ment, which in turn made housing and low-wage jobs even more scarce. Cumulatively,Light argues, these trends had the conse-quence of “deflecting” Latino immigrantsaway from LA and toward destinations thatoffered higher wages, more job opportuni-ties, and, presumably, greater poverty toler-ance on the part of locals. Light’s topical fo-cus is on the expansion and contraction ofthe LA garment industry, the disappearanceof affordable housing, the penetration of Lati-nos into LA suburbs and the subsequent“antislum crusades” and NIMBYism of nativesuburban homeowners.

As a descriptive chronicle of these devel-opments, the book is a gem. But, Light has amuch broader agenda in mind. His purposeis to use this story to debunk the “demand-driven explanation” (p. 2) of immigration. AsSaskia Sassen (2007:189) has said in a recentreview of Light’s book, she is “exhibit num-ber one.” Light claims that Sassen’s and oth-ers’ demand-driven theory of third-world im-migration as a consequence of globalizationand economic structure is undermined by hisdocumentation of the power of immigrants’agency and networks in determining theirdestinations, by LA’s “poverty intolerance,”and by immigrants’ low wages relative tonon-immigrants.

But, I see nothing here that is inconsistentwith demand theory. No one pretends thatimmigration is only and entirely driven bythe demand for cheap labor, regardless of thepotential supply of immigrants willing tomove or networks to facilitate it. In fact, fromthe point of view of demand theory, it makessense that immigrants would move to sec-ondary destinations once the demand forlabor there had become apparent and net-works established. Witness the influx of Lati-no workers into New Orleans in the post-Katrina reconstruction.

Other problems surface in Light’s attemptto displace the labor-demand theory. It’ssomewhat mystifying that he would point todeclining wages as an indication of lack ofimmigrant labor demand. In the theory ofimmigration, it’s not a demand for labor inthe absolute that helps trigger immigration,but the demand for ever cheaper labor. Farfrom debunking demand theory, the associa-tion of massive immigration with declining

wages—even declining wages for immi-grants—is consistent with it. In post-FordistItaly, where unemployment among localsreaches double digits, Italian sociologist Mau-rizio Ambrosini (1999) calls immigrant work-ers “useful invaders,” much as Zolberg (1987)once described immigrants in the U.S. as“wanted but not welcome.”

And, this brings me to a third limitation ofLight’s attack on demand theory. Evidence ofa backlash against the poverty of immi-grants—such as he marshalls for the LA caseand which he suggests points to a falling de-mand for immigrants—neither is new (atleast since the mid-nineteenth century Irishinflux, anti-immigrant sentiment has beentriggered in part by immigrants’ impover-ished conditions), nor does it upset demandtheory as he contends. As Zolberg, Sassen,and many others have argued, immigration isreplete with contradictions, not the least ofwhich is that the poverty wages that makeimmigrant labor so desirable also unleashanti-immigrant backlash. Underlying thestubborn policy issues surrounding immigra-tion is this fundamental catch-22 comprisedof the simultaneous demand for cheap laborand the fiscal and social repercussions of thepoverty that predictably ensues.

Further, it is difficult to sustain the “pover-ty intolerance” argument that this backlash isabout the desire to uphold a “standard of hu-man decency” or locals’ “humane interest indecent living conditions among their immi-grants” (Light, p. 17); if this were the case, lo-cals would push for affordable housing tominimize the poverty of those who nowspend up to half their income on shelter,rather than mobilizing for municipal codesthat restrict the supply of affordable housingand result in evictions and homelessness ofimmigrants and citizens alike. To this reader,locals’ anger is more likely about their own“perceived economic and social self-interest”(p. 144), as Light sometimes concedes.

While Deflecting Immigration stakes out aposition and sticks to it, Carol Swain’s Debat-ing Immigration appears, at first glance, tobe far more modest. This edited volumemostly addresses the issue of what should bedone about immigration, and Swain tells usearly on that she and the contributors “do notpretend to have definitive answers to thequestions [they] raise”; instead, she wants tostimulate debate (p. 5). Comprised of sixteen

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chapters plus an introduction by Swain andconcluding remarks by Nathan Glazer, thebook provides a wealth of information.

The chapters are uneven though, perhapsbecause the editor was so intent on includinga diverse range of views. In “A Biblical Per-spective on Immigration Policy,” James Ed-wards of the Hudson Institute argues that al-though the Bible directs us to treat foreignersin our midst well, nonetheless God created“different nationalities of the earth and theplaces to which God has assigned them to re-side,” and that each should stay in their as-signed places, according to “providentialplan” (p. 54). This chapter and a few othersdo little to advance the debate. Indeed, over-all the authors mostly talk past each otherrather than engaging in any sustained dia-logue. And, despite the apparent effort to in-clude non-conventional entries and the in-clusion of some partisan authors known fortheir anti-immigration positions, there is aconspicuous absence of comparable immi-grant advocates represented.

But, there are many interesting chaptershere, several written by such renownedscholars as Amitai Etzioni, Peter Schuck,Doug Massey, Linda Bosniak, Rogers Smith,and Randall Hansen. The most substantialchapters focus less on advocating for a par-ticular immigration policy than on exploringthe underlying socio-political dynamics ofthe immigration phenomenon. One themethat is touched on is that of the overlap of“immigration questions” and “alienage ques-tions” (Bosniak, p. 86). With characteristiceloquence, Bosniak reveals the ways inwhich border enforcement is complicated bypersonhood rights, and how in turn the per-sonhood rights of immigrants “are alwaysheld in the long shadow of the government’simmigration enforcement power” (p. 87).

Perhaps the most consistent theme is thegap between public opinion and officialrhetoric which is often restrictionist on onehand, and a relatively laissez-faire policy onthe other. Thus, Schuck discusses the “dis-connect” between a restrictionist public andan “expansive policy”—a disconnect that herelates to “the immigration-specific politicaleconomy” (p. 17). This political economy,Schuck argues, is defined in large part by aset of expansionist interests that not only in-clude growers and other employers, but alsoethnic and immigrant advocacy groups who

hold far more political sway than the frac-tured and often ambivalent array of restric-tionists. (Swain’s chapter on the discrepancybetween the relative inaction of the Congres-sional Black Caucus on issues of immigrationand the restrictionist interests of its con-stituency which, she contends, stands to losemost from immigration, is another twist onthis disconnect). Rogers Smith picks up thistheme as well, arguing that historically the re-sult of the clash of economic interests in aplentiful workforce and public demands forrestrictions has been symbolic policies thatappear to be aimed at restriction but thatdon’t interrupt the labor flow.

A third theme that surfaces regularly isthat of the “strange bedfellows” of immigra-tion politics, arguably because of the contra-dictions permeating immigration which arethen embodied in convoluted alliances. In“Strange Bedfellows, Unintended Conse-quences, and the Curious Contours of the Im-migration Debate,” Jonathan Tilove pointsout that the “pro-immigration coalition”brings together the National Restaurant Asso-ciation, the National Association of Manufac-turers, and the National Council of La Razaunder the same umbrella group. “NationalImmigration Forum dinners,” he says, “areevents where those who exploit immigrantlabor break bread with those who laboragainst that exploitation” (p. 209).

There is much to admire in Tilove’s chap-ter, particularly because he tackles difficultquestions of race. But, he sometimes getstangled up in his own rhetorical efforts toskewer political correctness. Tilove contendsthat a conspiracy of silence prevents Ameri-cans from questioning the negative effects ofimmigrants because they—unlike “white” Eu-ropean immigrants of the past—are oftenracial minorities. He makes the curious state-ment: “Were most immigrants white, the var-ious guardians of social justice in academia,in the press, in the realms of government andadvocacy, and in the black community itselfwould be on alert as to how these new ar-rivals were affecting the fortunes of America’snative-born minorities .|.|.” (pp. 208–209).One problem with this is its historical myopiaand overly simplistic view of race, ignoringthe longstanding interplay of racializationand concerns about immigrant competitive-ness. So powerful is this interplay historicallythat even Irish immigrants were cast as non-

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white, in part because of their extreme desti-tution and fears about their depressive effecton wages. A few decades later, Chinese im-migrants were thought to be racially inferiorand unfair competitors because, it was al-leged, they could survive on less food thanwhite people required. For more than 150years, Americans have complained aboutcompetition from immigrants who were seenas racially other, and the fears of competi-tiveness and the racial othering were inte-grally connected.

Peculiar too is the awesome power Tiloveascribes to the (presumably multitudinous)“guardians of social justice” who now shieldimmigrants from blame. Given the currentpolitical and media climate, worries aboutany inordinate influence of social justice ad-vocates seem strangely misplaced. And, theidea that immigrants are effectively shieldedis particularly unconvincing in light of theSouthern Poverty Law Center’s report, citedby Swain (p. 8), that hate crimes have in-creased by 33 percent over the last five yearsand that Hispanic immigrants are the targetsof most of the increased violence.

Tilove mentions in passing the disruptiveaspects of the current economic transforma-tion, but focuses his energies on blaming im-migrants themselves for reducing wages.Pickus and Skerry go one step further in“Good Neighbors and Good Citizens.” Whilenoting that “.|.|. immigrants have becomethe human face of two sweeping forces: thefraying of local community ties and the de-cline of national sovereignty” (p. 204) thatare both products of globalization, they takea sharp reductionist turn, worrying aboutwhether immigrants are good enough neigh-bors. In their rendition, it’s not just the firetrucks but the ill-mannered fire fighters whodo all the damage.

Douglas Massey’s chapter stands out asboth analytically sophisticated and policy ori-ented. He summarizes his extensive empiricalfindings over the course of at least twodecades—findings which should be the start-ing point for any serious policy discussion.

Presenting powerful evidence that neitherborder blockades, nor substantially increas-ing Border Patrol budgets and personnel, noremployer sanctions, have worked to stop un-documented immigration to the U.S., and thatthey have all had disastrous, unintended (butpredictable) consequences, Massey rues thatwith regard to U.S. immigration policy, “Wehave the worst of all possible worlds” (p.138).

In the absence of any broader changes it’shard to conjure up an immigration policy—round-ups, guestworker programs, open bor-ders, barricades—that might lead us to a bet-ter world. The solution arguably lies in “de-flecting” the debate—that is, thinking outsidethe narrow confines of “immigration policy.”Immigration is essentially an economic phe-nomenon, triggered by economic forces (asmany of the authors here imply), so it followsthat it can and should be treated as part ofeconomic policy more broadly construed.This opens up a range of options that at leaststand a chance of reducing undocumentedimmigration and at the same time wouldbenefit all workers. Economic and labor poli-cies such as the enforcement of existing laborlaws, the enactment of a living wage, invigo-rating unions, and encouraging fair trade,would be far more effective at suppressingthe demand for undocumented workers andlimiting their immigration than the currentapproach, the failures of which Massey andothers have so persuasively exposed. Not tooverwork an imperfect analogy, but we needto stop counting the trucks and contain thefire.

ReferencesAmbrosini, Maurizio. 1999. Utili Invasori. Milan:

FrancoAngeli.Sassen, Saskia. 2007. “Bringing Down the House to

Add a (Nice) Room.” Science 12: 189.Zolberg, Aristide. 1987. “Wanted But Not Wel-

come: Alien Labor in Western Development.”Pp. 261–297 in Population in an InteractingWorld, edited by W. Alonso. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

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Immigration is roiling American politics, withcontroversy continuing and no clear solutionin sight. As all parties concur, the system isbroken, frustrating the new, would-be, andestablished Americans, while yielding sub-stantial social costs and tensions from theMexican to the Canadian border, and justabout everywhere in between. Beyond thispoint of agreement, however, dissonance isall that can be heard. Many voices are shout-ing; no one knows where to go.

Uncertainty reigns as to how best to con-trol the borders. Meanwhile, there is anotheroption which governments in the UnitedStates have decided to avidly pursue: name-ly, create differences between the people ofthe state and all other people in the state.Hence, expanding immigrant numbers havegone hand in hand, both with a restriction onimmigrants’ rights and with a growing diver-gence between demography and democracy.While unable to prevent unauthorized immi-grants from crossing the border, governmentshave found it much easier to prevent the il-legal immigrants residing on U.S. soil fromobtaining public services. As a driver’s li-cense is too fine a privilege to be granted tothe country’s 12 million undocumented im-migrants—let them take the bus!—an every-day illegality involved in living in the UnitedStates without authorization has become atool for deporting the unwanted. Likewise,the divide between citizens and permanentresidents, which had narrowed in the after-math of the civil rights era, has once againbegun to widen, with legally resident non-citizens no longer eligible for benefits thatare now available to citizens alone, and atrisk of deportation should they be convictedof a felony. Though not voiceless, non-citi-zens are voteless, at little cost to those Amer-icans enjoying the vote. The damage, rather,is to the American democracy, decreasingly agovernment of and for the people, whenbarely a third of all foreign-born persons liv-ing on U.S. soil are eligible to vote.

America’s resistance to integration withthe world and those of its people that have

moved to U.S. soil is often hard to see, espe-cially by the professional students of what iscalled “immigration,” as they tend to standwith their backs at the border’s edge. Fromthat perspective, it’s clear that the immigrantsare just putting into practice the program thatthe Americans have long endorsed: namely,that of trying to get ahead on the basis oftheir own effort, requesting no help fromanyone else (though that pesky driver’s li-cense would be nice!). Having already bro-ken with the stay-at-homes, the immigrants’search for a better life—whether in the formof a higher-paying job, safer neighborhood,or higher quality schools—leads them tocross ethnic boundaries, heading away fromothers of their own kind and toward theAmerican mainstream, whatever that mightbe.

Once across the territorial frontier, the im-migrants discover that they have yet anotherobstacle to cross, namely the barrier that pre-cludes them from membership among thepeople of the state in which they now live. Ingeneral, sociologists take that boundary forgranted, asking about the factors that moti-vate immigrants to “naturalize,” assuming thatthe answer is to be found at the individuallevel. The problem, however, is that access tocitizenship is carefully rationed, effectivelyexcluding far more people from having anysay than democratic theory would allow.

One might wonder why. Moreover, itwasn’t always so, as in the U.S. during thelast century of mass migration, citizenshipwas far easier to acquire. More importantly,perhaps, the other rich democracies aren’t alllike the United States. Case in point, ourneighbor to the north: Canada. Though im-migrant densities are even higher in Canada

Contemporary Sociology 37, 4

The Border Within: Citizenship Facilitated and Impeded

ROGER WALDINGERDepartment of Sociology

University of California, Los Angeleswaldinge@soc.ucla.edu

Becoming a Citizen: IncorporatingImmigrants and Refugees in the UnitedStates and Canada, by Irene Bloemraad.Berkeley, CA: University of CaliforniaPress, 2006. 382pp. $55.00 cloth. ISBN:9780520248984.

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than in the United States, the foreigners ar-riving in Canada are becoming citizens atroughly twice the rate of their counterpartswho instead head for the United States. IreneBloemraad’s insightful new book explainsjust why the path to citizenship has becomeso divergent in these two adjacent countries,similar in so many fundamental respects.

Like any good comparative sociologist,Bloemraad uses the Canada/U.S. comparisonto illuminate the impact of differences in un-derlying variables. For over a decade, themost influential writings on citizenship haveasked how “civic” versus “ethnic” concep-tions of nationhood can impede or facilitateimmigrants’ access to citizenship. While theU.S. and Canada both fall into the civic vari-ant, policies toward citizenship differ, doingso along two dimensions. One pertains togovernment policy toward citizenship per se.The U.S. takes a laissez-faire approach: whilelegal immigrants face relatively few impedi-ments in accessing citizenship, they have todo it on their own, with little direct or indi-rect encouragement from the state. In Cana-da, by contrast, the state actively encouragesthe newcomers to become Canadians. Thesecond dimension involves government poli-cy toward ethnic (or more precisely, homecountry) identity: the U.S. is again laissez-faire; Canadian multicultural policies facili-tate the retention of, and indeed use, home-country ethnic ties.

Bloemraad ingeniously fills up this two bytwo space by focusing on the same two, rel-atively low-skilled groups in both countries—Portuguese and Vietnamese; whether movingto Canada or the United States, the Por-tuguese arrived as labor migrants and theVietnamese as refugees, officially so recog-nized in both countries. This turns out to bethe perfect choice of groups: though relative-ly invisible in the greater U.S. scene, the Por-tuguese are the ideal stand-in for the classiclabor migrants, whether the Italians of yoreor the Mexicans of today. As officially recog-nized refugees, by contrast, the Vietnameseare the exception, receiving government sup-port in the U.S. that comes close to the situ-ation encountered in Canada, though withoutthe multicultural apparatus. Thus, the com-parison among Vietnamese communitiesacross borders lets Bloemraad trace the im-pact of differences in multiculturalism; southof the border, the comparison between the

Vietnamese and the Portuguese illuminatesthe effect of government support.

Using a variety of sources and method-ologies, but principally relying on in-depthinterviews among immigrants, ethnic leaders,and officials in Boston and Toronto, Bloem-raad shows how much policies and institu-tions matter. In Boston, the Portuguese areindeed invisible, with low levels of citizen-ship, surprisingly few ethnic organizations ofany type, and almost no representationamong elected officials, no matter how mod-est. Their local Vietnamese counterparts havenot fared much better in electoral politics,but organizational density is far greater. Bothgroups find it hard to fit their imported,home country identities within the ethno-racial pentagon that defines American politi-cal life. In Toronto, the Portuguese seem toenjoy the best of both worlds, with a highlevel of organizational density and consider-able success at electoral politics, thanks, inpart, to the ethnic organizations thatlaunched numerous political careers. BothVietnamese and Portuguese Torontonians re-port that support and recognition of theirhome country identities has made them moreeager to be Canadians, in both the formaland larger sense.

A summary of this sort can’t do full justiceto this sophisticated, well-written, engagingbook, which has already become requiredreading in both my undergraduate and grad-uate classes. But like any work of impor-tance, Becoming a Citizen is likely to leavethe reader wanting some further debate withthe author. Bloemraad’s take-home messageemphasizes the positive role of multicultural-ism in facilitating citizenship and encourag-ing common membership in a multiculturalsociety. Maybe, but for my taste, the case hasnot been clinched. As noted above, multicul-turalism is only one of the two axes of varia-tion along which this book is organized;government support of citizenship per se isthe other dimension and conceptually, thetwo are distinct. In this respect, the set-up isnot quite perfect: in particular, the compari-son of Portuguese across borders is muddiedby the fact that it involves differences alongboth multicultural and support dimensions.For that reason, among others, I’m not con-vinced that it’s multiculturalism, rather thangovernment facilitation of citizenship, thatexplains the Canadian success story; even if

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multiculturalism is the decisive element, theavailable evidence doesn’t tell me just howmuch more important it is. Bloemraad alsoconcludes that the United States should shifttoward the multicultural variant pursued byits neighbor to the north, in effect, manipu-lating the book’s independent variable so asto hasten the immigrants’ full, political incor-poration. But one wonders whether citizen-ship policy is quite as malleable, and as in-dependent from immigration policy, as thisconclusion would seem to imply. After all,the immigrants who arrive in Canada are in-deed the Canadian state’s chosen people;given the government’s careful sifting and se-lecting, doesn’t it follow that the Canadianstate will work hard to get the immigrants to

commit, as part of an effort to get maximalreward for its investment? South of the bor-der, by contrast, immigration is a societydominated process, leading to a situation inwhich the economy has developed a needfor foreigners whom the people of the Unit-ed States don’t really want. With all energyfocused on a thus far hopeless effort at ex-clusion, are policies that would provide po-litical and material support for inclusionarycitizenship truly an option?

The criticisms notwithstanding, Becominga Citizen is an impressive achievement, be-longing on the shelf of all serious migrationscholars. Based on this reading, they can al-so look forward to learning what IreneBloemraad will do next.

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