Immigration Politics

This synthetic chapter addresses the causes of the massive escalation of border immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico boundary since 1994 (and in some ways, since the early 20th century).  It argues that hierarchical citizenship in which Mexican origin people are slotted as commodity-migrant laborers (though resisted as such) now is interacting with a national and global political economy in which there are increasing sources of conflict and anxiety (economic and social inequality worsening, capitalist driven insecurity and globalization, continual failures of the United States as a militaristic global hegemon) to result in scapegoating of feared subordinate servant populations: immigrants.  It looks at the specific symbolic role of borders (as a boundary between purity and danger) in this cultural-political economy.  It argues that the current immigration and border policy conjucture is emerging from a three sided struggle between capitalist managerial elites (favoring managed subordinate labor flows), xenophobic populist right wing sectors (as analyzed above), and human/labor rights coalitions battling under difficult circumstances.

This chapter looks at the important role of the barrier at and passage through the heavily enforced U.S.-Mexico border in creating and intensifying illegality not only in the region but forward into the U.S. interior and even backward into sending areas.  It first reviews the development of an increasingly massive enforcement apparatus at the border since late 1993, and effects such as deaths, smuggling prices/organizations, and rights abuses.  It then examines three perspectives on why this occurs (that are not mutually exclusive): border enforcement serving the functional needs of the capitalist economy; border enforcement responding to xenophobic and racist politics in the receiving society (but in the context of recent capitalist and imperialist history); and strengthening of state power, including internal state interests and the logic of the territorial state, interests of homeland security industries, and forms of knowledge in a Foucaultian perspective.  It then reviews the literature on how the border passage has effects at a distance, such as debts, arrangements, and psychological scars, and also reviews the literature on illegality and its effects ("entrapment") in the settled communities of the border.  The chapter then turns to how the border apparatus is resisted, both informally and by social movements and organizations, including a review of different kinds of organizations and their methods and goals in the El Paso/southern New Mexico region of the border.  It concludes by identifying emerging trends and needed lines of research.  A copy of this item can be obtained by email from [email protected]

A pdf is available by request from [email protected] .  Argues for a historical, social struggle based approach to Marxist analysis of borders and migration (in the case of the U.S.-Mexico border) rather than a capitalist-functionalist kind of Marxist analysis.  Covers three topics: differential and unequal mobility through borders in unequal class-nationality settings (addressing in this section the concept of global apartheid); border enforcement as a mechanism of labor disciplining and control; and militarization of the border as a means of social control.  In each case, it argues for an emergent and complex rather than abstract systems logic analysis of these topics.  It concludes by pointing out that the relation between capitalism and the state remains incompletely understood.

A pdf is available by request from [email protected] .  Chapter is in Spanish.  Argues for a historical, social struggle based approach to Marxist analysis of borders and migration (in the case of the U.S.-Mexico border) rather than a capitalist-functionalist kind of Marxist analysis.  Covers three topics: differential and unequal mobility through borders in unequal class-nationality settings (addressing in this section the concept of global apartheid); border enforcement as a mechanism of labor disciplining and control; and militarization of the border as a means of social control.  In each case, it argues for an emergent and complex rather than abstract systems logic analysis of these topics.  It concludes by pointing out that the relation between capitalism and the state remains incompletely understood.

... Day in 1970. Paul Ehrlich had just published his groundbreaking book The Population Bomb in 1968 and was a repeated guest on The Johnny Carson Show. ... Unpublished Empirical Paper, Department of Sociology, University of Southern California. Perea, Juan (Ed.). 1997. ...

Drawing on Charles Tilly’s seminal work on citizenship, I propose that we refocus our approach to immigration by combining in one single view the historical development of nation-state membership (termed “citizenship”) and internal and international migration.  I argue that the characterization of newly arriving outsiders (“immigrants”) only makes sense in contrast to the gradual definition and clarification of insiders (“citizens”).  I am thus critical of social, economic, and political accounts that focus only on immigrants or only on citizens, without seeing them as outcomes of simultaneous if contrastive processes.  These social positions are partly a result of the gradual rise of nation-states, which is obvious, but they are also affected directly and indirectly by capitalism, including the attraction of immigrant populations into growth centers, the movement of capital to new sites of production (sometimes glossed as globalization), and the decline of old sites of capital investment.  State formation is likewise funded by revenues from the capitalist economy.  I thus suggest we need to envision three interweaving processes: human migration, internal and international; nation-state consolidation and the rise of citizenship regimes; and capital mobility, accumulation, and withdrawal.

My argument has four parts:
(1) Immigration (in particular the targets I frame here, immigration politics and host-immigrant relations) should not be considered mainly in terms of immigrants and their effect on the receiving society.  We also should consider the long-term development of citizenship, both generally and in specific national histories.  We should define the core subject as the dual emergence of insiders and outsiders across social and political history.
(2) Polities (states and political arrangements) aim to stabilize around particular formations of who is included as citizens. Yet these formations are continuously disrupted by capital's abandonment of older, better established labor with stronger rights and organizations, and by the recruitment of new pools of migrant, relatively exploitable labor.  Neither of those are directly political processes, but the former pressures existing citizens' sentiments and behaviors, while the latter brings new populations into the societal mix. 
(3) Internal and international migration need to be viewed together, in a single processual history.  Only over time does the internal/international distinction emerge, as bounded nation-state identities strengthen.  The dynamic capitalist search for new labor sources and new production sites stimulates both internal and international migration.
(4) My inquiry aims not at immigration or international borders alone, but at inside-outside boundaries (Tilly 2005) in modern states.  This includes citizenship and host/newcomer distinctions, which intersect other social boundaries such as race, internal region, and so forth (Fassin 2011).  My immediate agenda within insider/outsider politics is how the frame of contention “immigration politics” emerges and evolves over time, and the processes and results of demands for inclusion by immigrants and especially their descendants as citizens.
To illustrate these points, I begin with an ideal-type model of the interactions among the three processes of capitalism, labor migration, and state formation.  With this simplification, it is easier to envision the complex dynamics.  I then explore this approach more deeply with a case study of United States internal and external migration history.  The U.S. case has a rather complicated history, with reversions between internal and external labor sources, and likewise internal and external relocations of capital investment.

The Tea Party is an interesting political movement in contemporary America.  Combining populist fervor with elements of the mainstream Republican establishment, such as support for the War on Drugs and opposition to immigration, and some elements of libertarian ideology such as opposition to the unionization of workers, they form a political nexus that has not been seen before in American political history. From the movement’s “birth” in 2009 to today, the Tea Party has had an active role in changing American politics, particularly in the 2010 congressional elections. In this paper, I will analyze the factors that led to their rise, their political ideology and stances, the makeup of their voting bloc, their connection to organizations that are openly bigoted and hostile to the federal government, an analysis of several of prominent Tea Party politicians, and how they are contributing to the popularity surge for 2016 Republican candidate Donald Trump.