Immigration politics by proxy: state agency in an era of national reluctance

ABSTRACT

While attempts to reform immigration policy have stalled in the U.S. Congress, statehouses across the country are responsible for an explosion in immigration lawmaking. This study uses an intergovernmental relations framework to identify shifting allocations of authority and contested scales of jurisdiction that now characterise the U.S. immigration policy. It presents an analysis of more than 2200 state bills passed over eight years (2006–2013), and supplements this with a case study of drivers’ licence and identification laws. The study is unique in its consideration of the ways that dispersed authority in multi-level systems may amplify rather than defuse contentious immigration politics.