Reflections on the Sociology of Security and Surveillance in the Study of Immigration

In the last decade, sociologists have begun to address major issues associated with the rise of security and surveillance. My work suggests the ways in which a sociology of surveillance can contribute to the study of immigration and how, in turn, work on immigration can contribute to this new and growing field.     

Immigration: an international economic perspective

The creation of an effective US immigration policy has been complicated by the diversity of political interests and the absence of reliable statistics to determine the magnitude of the impact on the American economy. Estimates of the number of illegal aliens in the US range from 1 to 12 million. While political biases and complexities and data inadequacies complicate this analysis, some generalizations seem to be confirmed by worldwide experience. There are 2 mutually-supportive, short-run ways to reduce the flow of undocumented workers: 1) to better police US borders and shorelines and 2) to remove the motive for entry by making it illegal for employers to hire workers who are not authorized to work in the US. To give employers an easy defense and to facilitate their compliance with immigration laws, an effective worker identification system should be developed. To avoid the civil liberties, international relations, and human problems associated with mass deportations, illegal immigrants who entered the US before January 1, 1981 and who have been in continuous residence for at least 1 year, should be permitted to remain in the US as permanent resident aliens. The US should not adopt a new guest worker program. The proper sequence of changes in immigration policy is very important. Dealing with illegal immigration is essential; all these measures should be in place before an amnesty is granted. Because it is important to have friendly relations with neighboring countries and because the ultimate solution to illegal immigration is to reduce the wide disparities in employment opportunities between countries, the US should work with other countries to control illegal immigration, but should not link control to energy, trade, or other policies. It is particularly important to discuss immigration control plans with other countries, especially Mexico, and to do everything consistent with US interests to minimize the adverse impact of our immigration policies on our neighbors.     

The Inadmissible “Other”: Discourses of Ableism and Colonialism in Canadian Immigration

This article reports on a critical discourse analysis study exploring how ableism, racism, and neocolonialism play out in Canadian immigration policies. Situated within critical social work theory as well as postcolonial and anticolonial theoretical frameworks, the study focused on Canadian immigration policies in relation to people with disabilities from the global South, an area that has not received sufficient attention in social work research and practice. Findings indicate that discourses concerning risk and protection are central in determining the admissibility and inadmissibility of immigration applicants and reinforce ableism, racism, and neocolonialism. The article concludes with implications for social work practice and research.     

A Confluence of Interests in Immigration Enforcement: How Politicians,the Media,and Corporations Profit from Immigration Policies Destined to Fail

The concept of an immigration industrial complex draws from previous work on the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex. All three of these complexes point to the ways that the interests of government bureaucracies, corporate elites, and politicians shape laws and policies. This article explains how the undocumented status of migrants provides advantages to at least three groups: (a) media pundits who make their careers railing against ‘illegal aliens’; (b) politicians who use undocumented migrants as scapegoats; and (c) contractors who profit from massive immigration enforcement expenditures. The disenfranchised status of undocumented migrants enhances the ability of each of these groups to benefit from their presence. This confluence of interests explains why Congress has not enacted viable immigration policies that effectively deal with the ‘problem’ of illegal immigration. This is the second in a two‐part series on the immigration industrial complex.     

The role of foreign workers in the seasonal fluctuations of the French economy

The few studies that have been carried out only take into account the annual inflows of seasonal immigrants. This present article covers 2 other aspects of the problem: 1) the seasonal nature of immigration in general and 2) above all the role of permanent immigrant workers in certain sectors influenced by seasonal changes. The number of permanent first-time immigrants is determined, among other causes, by the need for a certain seasonal regulation of overall economic activity. The role of the foreign work force is o fparticular importance in 3 sectors influenced by seasonal changes, and it fulfills a function of seasonal regulation of activity in at least 2 of these sectors: the building trade and agriculture. However, the recognition of the need for seasonal regulation has been used as a pretext for making employment more unstable, in particular for permanent immigrant workers, many of whom cannot find work for the whole year. Seasonal work also plays a key role in agriculture and the hotel trade. Moreover, the part played by illegal immigrants is decisive, not only in these 2 sectors, but throughout the illegal labor market. In the years to come it is likely that seasonal immigration will continue to fall perhaps by half, as a result of mechanization in general, its application in grape-harvesting, and the adoption of new farming techniques. However, it will probably remain sufficiently high to make up for the lack of a national reserve of seasonal labor, especially in vegetable and fruit farming, lumbering, and catering. Seasonal immigration will doubtlessly continue also because it puts a downward pessure on the average wage and makes employment more precarious. It also constitutes a reserve of illegal labor, which can be used in sectors which have a crucial impact on the balance of goods and services in France. These advantages for the French government and employers are above all disadvantages for the seasonal immigrant workers themselves, whose living and health conditions are increasingly catastrophic.     

Women’s Status in the Context of International Migration

International migration creates unique gendered work‐family contexts that profoundly affect individual lives in various ways. This paper examines how immigration impacts women’s status in the labor force and in the family. Immigrant women who are laborers, self‐employed entrepreneurs, and professionals experience very different changes in gender relations and work status resulting from immigration. While some become more egalitarian, others remain patriarchal; some enter the paid labor force for the first time, whereas others retreat from prominent careers to become homemakers; some are powerful in certain areas but vulnerable in others. Immigrant women’s gains and losses in their work and family domains are full of variations, contradictions, and constraints. In addition to reviewing the current state of knowledge in this area of study, this paper discusses parallels across scholarly work, inadequacies in the literature, and directions for future research.     

The Flag or the Pocketbook: To What are Immigrants a Threat

An increasing number of immigrants and rising unemployment rates are widely thought to contribute to the electoral success of extreme right parties in Western Europe. However, no study explicitly posits the causal mechanism that links the aggregate level factors of immigration and unemployment to the electoral success of extreme right parties, and systematically analyzes whether and how this mechanism works. Thus, the causal connection between immigration, unemployment and extreme right success remains at best ambiguous. I argue that the causal mechanism linking immigration and unemployment to extreme right electoral performance is the development of anti‐immigrant attitudes at the individual level. In this paper, I examine how unemployment and immigration affect individuals’ attitudes toward immigrants. This examination furthers our understanding of the actual dynamics of how unemployment and immigration influences the electoral success of extreme right parties. I find that greater unemployment rates increase the probability that an individual will have an anti‐immigrant attitude only when immigration is already at a high level. Similarly, increasing immigration alone does not always increase the probability that an individual will have an anti‐immigrant attitude.     

Is there any merit to the merit-based immigration system? What Sub-Saharan African immigrant labor and housing market outcomes tell us about U.S. economic and immigration systems

For decades, U.S. immigration policy debates have centered on creating a merit-based system limiting entry to high-skilled immigrants. Yet the emphasis on merit-based immigration ignores the fact that high-skilled immigrants already enter the United States in merit-based immigration assume high-skilled immigrants benefit the U.S. economy because they are better able than low-skilled immigrants to translate skills into economic success. Using Sub-Saharan (Black) African immigrants' labor and housing market outcomes, I show that meritocracy only partially explains U.S. labor and housing outcomes, leaving a merit-based system unlikely to address America's economic needs. The majority of immigrants to the U.S. are non-White, and racial discrimination in the labor market results in occupational and wage disadvantages in the U.S. Due to the public charge rule, high skilled immigrants may be less likely to get their visas renewed or green card applications approved because of these labor market disadvantages. Without stable visa status, high-skilled immigrants will be less likely to make long-term economic investments in the United States—an important way of contributing to the U.S. economy. Together, research indicates that U.S. immigration reform will not work without first enacting policy addressing racial disparities in economic systems.     

Immigration and the Transformation of American Unionism

Does immigration hamper union organizing in the United States? The prevailing literature strongly suggests that it does and for two reasons: first, immigrants increase the labor pool and diminish union influence over the labor market. And second, immigrants may be harder to organize than native workers. In this dominant view, unions are well served to restrict immigration and have always done so. But how, then, to explain the fact that American labor has long been deeply divided over the response to immigration? Drawing on new archival research and interviews, this paper uncovers a neglected side of American labor history in which many union leaders have extended solidarity to immigrants and sought to organize them. Moreover, analysis of time series data on immigration and union density corroborates the implicit theory of this alternate account of labor history: immigration has, in fact, no statistically significant effect – either positive or negative – on union density over time. Depending on specific conditions and strategies, unions can and have been successful in organizing during periods of high immigration.     

Managing the National Status Group: Immigration Policy in Germany

This article challenges the established convention in immigration policy scholarship of treating economic utility and identity maintenance as logically distinct concerns. Drawing on work by Weber, Wallerstein and Bourdieu, we argue that concerns about economic utility and identity maintenance interact in the immigration policies of Western liberal democratic states, leading to policies designed to build and maintain middle‐class national status groups. Using the example of contemporary immigration policy in Germany, we illustrate how this impulse to build the middle‐class status group affects immigrant inclusion/exclusion in nuanced ways at both the group and individual levels, along class/status, ethnic and gender lines. We conclude by considering the policy implications of growing and shaping populations according to middle‐class ideals, particularly for the statistical monitoring of immigrant populations for integration benchmarking purposes.     

Enforcement is the Name of the Game: An Essay on the Immigration Inspector at Work

Abstract

This article concerns the work of immigration inspectors who inspect parties entering the country to determine if they merit entry according to law. Focusing on aspects of their working environment, this paper discusses ways inspectors have sought to organize daily activities. Faced with an uncertain decision-making process, lacking adequate preparation to deal with an unpredictable public, and working within a decentralized administrative structure, inspectors are nonetheless confronted by strong bureaucratic pressures for uniformity and consistency in their actions. Attempting to reconcile these conflicting demands, personnel have utilized various strategies for reducing overall risks associated with their work. This analysis casts doubt on the applicability of such theoretical constructs as “formal” or “informal” organizational processes when examined through an action perspective.     

Immigration and the American Obesity Epidemic1

Immigration is an important population dynamic at work in the U.S., but we know little about its impact on American obesity. Built on nutrition transition and immigration theories, this paper provides explanations for immigrants’ initial body composition advantage, its partial erosion over time, and the gender difference in the erosion. We find evidence that the American obesity epidemic would be much more severe without the mass immigration that began in 1965. In addition to confirming the erosion in immigrants’ body composition advantage, we further find that this erosion is weaker for men than for women. Once immigration’s impact is teased out, racial/ethnic disparities in body composition greatly differ from what we observe. This study provides gender‐specific estimates for the differences in obesity by nativity and residence duration and the net level of Hispanic‐white and Asian‐white disparities at the mean body mass index (BMI) as well as the overweight, Stage‐1, and Stage‐2 obesity cutoffs. Our findings suggest that immigration must be taken into account when addressing public health concerns.     

Military Brides and Refugees: Vietnamese American Wives and Shifting Links to the Military, 1980 – 2000

Since the immigration legislation of 1965, marriage to American citizens and resident aliens has been one of the primary paths for migration to the United States. Despite the rapid growth of the Asian American population over the course of the late twentieth century, Asian Americans had still reached only 3 per cent of all Americans by 2000, meaning that Asian marriage migration to the United States has been largely through marriage to non‐Asians. In this study, we look at exogamy among Vietnamese Americans using U. S. Census data (1980, 1990, and 2000) from 5 per cent PUMS sets made available through the IPUMS project. We ask: (1) What are the predictors of exogamy among Vietnamese Americans? (2) How do the rates of exogamy of Vietnamese American women compare to those of Vietnamese American men? (3) How have the predictors of exogamy and the apparent characteristics of the exogamously married changed over the decades of refugee movement from Vietnam to North America? We review data from the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. In the assimilationist view of immigration associated with the classic work of Milton M. Gordon, exogamy is the final stage of immigrant incorporation into a host country. Migration through marriage, which has become a major source of immigration to the United States since the Immigration Act of 1965, reverses this assimilationist pattern, placing marriage before immigration and incorporation, or at the earliest stages of immigration and incorporation. Our findings are relevant to understanding the specific Vietnamese experience in the United States. They highlight the continuing but declining importance of the Vietnam War in creating close connections between Vietnamese and other people in the United States, even after the war had ended. The findings also suggest how these connections changed as a result of Vietnamese mass migration to America.     

Living on the margin: disabled Iranians in Belgian society

This paper explores the antecedents, experiences and consequences of marginalization as reported and dealt with by disabled Iranian immigrants in Belgium. This work extends the work of Gallie and colleagues and Siegrist demonstrating that the forces of marginalization applicable to all immigrants are particularly pertinent to disabled immigrants. The research is based on 26 in‐depth, face‐to‐face interviews, focus groups, interviews with government officials and immigration experts, ethnographic work and official government statistics. The findings detail how the combined forces of history, context and reasons for immigration; isolation, vulnerability and perceived loss of control; religion and rejection; lack of reciprocity in social exchanges; problems in obtaining jobs; and difficulties in negotiating an entry into Belgian society combine to sustain marginizalation. As a consequence, disabled immigrants in this group are generally excluded from society and discriminated against in terms of citizenship, education, jobs and general acceptance.     

A Tale of Two Counties: Natives’ Opinions Toward Immigration in North Carolina1

This article compares native residents’ opinions and perceptions regarding immigration using a representative survey from a pair of matched North Carolina counties – one that experienced recent growth of its foreign-born population and one that did not. Drawing from several theoretical perspectives, including group threat, contact theory, and symbolic politics, we formulate and empirically evaluate several hypotheses. Results provide limited evidence that competition and threat influence formation of opinions about immigration, with modest support for claims that parents with school-aged children harbor more negative views of immigration than their childless counterparts. Except for residents in precarious economic situations, these negative opinions appear unrelated to the immigrant composition of the community. Claims that the media promotes negative views of immigration receive limited support, but this relationship is unrelated to the volume of local immigration. Finally, sustained contacts with foreign-born residents outside work environments are associated with positive views of immigration, but superficial contacts appear to be conducive to anti-immigration sentiments. Political orientation, educational attainment, and indicators of respondents’ tolerance for diversity explain most of the difference between the two counties in overall support for immigration.     

“Right Here is the Gateway”: Mobility,Sex Work Entry and HIV Risk along the Mexico–US Border

Women comprise an increasing proportion of migrants. Many migrate voluntarily for sex work or practise survival sex; others are trafficked for sexual exploitation. To investigate how the context of mobility shapes sex work entry and HIV risk, during 2010 to 2011 we conducted in‐depth interviews with formerly trafficked women currently engaged in sex work (n = 31) in Tijuana and their service providers (n = 7) in Tijuana and San Diego. Women's experiences of coerced and deceptive migration, deportation as forced migration, voluntary mobility, and migration to a risk environment illustrate that circumstances resulting from migration shape vulnerability to sex trafficking, voluntary sex work entry, and HIV risk. Findings suggest an urgent need for public health and immigration policies providing integrated support for deported and/or recently arrived female migrants. Policies to prevent sex trafficking and assist trafficked females must consider the varying levels of personal agency involved in migration and sex work entry.

Policy Implications

• There is a need for coordination between public health and immigration policies to ensure that these are not at odds with one another
• Findings suggest the need for public health and immigration policies that provide integrated support for female migrants, especially trafficked women and girls
• Policy changes are urgently needed to protect deportees' health and promote their social integration
• Policies to prevent sex trafficking and assist trafficked females must consider the range of agencies involved in migration and sex work entry

     

Irregular Immigration,Labour Market and Enforcement at the US‐Mexico Border. Evidence from a Time‐Series Analysis (1963–2014)

This article provides evidence on irregular immigration to the US from Mexico in the years 1963–2014. It aims to answer to two questions. The first is: how much is irregular immigration responsive to changes in the US labour market? Compared with legal immigration, irregular immigration seems to be more sensitive to short‐run economic cycles as it is not directly regulated by the policies of the destination country. Second, what effect does border enforcement have on irregular immigration? One of the proposals of the recent bill is the construction of a double layer fence on the Southern border. We do not know, however, to what extent a further increase in border security will prevent irregular immigration and at which economic cost. The contribution of this article is dual: first, it provides empirical evidence on irregular immigration to the US Second, it provides evidence about the effect of US border policies on irregular immigration.     

“Those who come to do harm”: The Framings of Immigration Problems in Costa Rican Immigration Law

This article examines the political rationales at work behind the particularly repressive 2006 Costa Rican immigration law and subsequent immigration reform process and resulting 2010 law through an analysis of two rival framings of immigration in Costa Rica. First, I examine how the rushed nature of the 2006 law constructed a crisis in which migrants, particularly Nicaraguans, represented urgent threats to national security. Next, I examine the 2010 law that emerged from the reform process and the alternative framings of immigration as an issue of human rights and integration that migration advocates contributed to the new law. I argue that the juxtaposition of integration and security frameworks in the new law reinforces the law's most repressive measures, contributing to an overall project of securitization and marginalization of immigrants.     

Dispersion to Oceania and developed Asia

Since most of South Asian Tibetan refugees have not secured formal immigration status in their host countries, their dispersion has expanded to other continents. Compared to those Tibetans living in South Asia, Europe and North America, Tibetans in Australia and New Zealand emigrated there on their own, married citizens, or went to study, work, or engage in religious or cultural activities. Tibetan diasporization in Oceania has proven successful. There are only around 60 Tibetans residing in Japan, some of them hold a Taiwanese (Republic of China) passport, which makes it easier to obtain a Japanese visa, and others are fulltime staff members of the liaison office of the Dalai Lama in Japan. Under Seoul's stringent immigration laws, less than 20 Tibetans reside in South Korea, mostly on work visas. Tibetan exiles and their supporters often protest to the Visiting Chinese Leaders or Embassy of China in Oceania and developed Asian countries.