Race and Immigration E-Book

Nazli Kibria

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: PIMS - Polity Immigration and Society series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 316

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Immigration has long shaped US society in fundamental ways. With Latinos recently surpassing African Americans as the largest minority group in the US, attention has been focused on the important implications of immigration for the character and role of race in US life, including patterns of racial inequality and racial identity. 

This insightful new book offers a fresh perspective on immigration and its part in shaping the racial landscape of the US today. Moving away from one-dimensional views of this relationship, it emphasizes the dynamic and mutually formative interactions of race and immigration. Drawing on a wide range of studies, it explores key aspects of the immigrant experience, such as the history of immigration laws, the formation of immigrant occupational niches, and developments of immigrant identity and community. Specific topics covered include: the perceived crisis of unauthorized immigration; the growth of an immigrant rights movement; the role of immigrant labor in the elder care industry; the racial strategies of professional immigrants; and the formation of pan-ethnic Latino identities. 

Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book will be invaluable for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate-level courses in the sociology of immigration, race and ethnicity.

Leseprobe

“While many scholars have written about race and immigration, this book uniquely brings contemporary structures of racism and immigration to a wide variety of readers. Amid the political rhetoric of a ‘post-racial society’ the authors remind us that racism continues to exert deleterious effects on a variety of groups including immigrants. Equally importantly, this book reminds us about the racialization of two groups that remain less visible in the migration literature: highly skilled migrants and black immigrants. A very timely and useful book for scholars, practitioners, and a general audience of interested readers.”

Bandana Purkayastha, University of Connecticut

“Race and Immigration’s serious examination of the relationship between immigration, race, and ethnicity is a welcome respite from the din of the acrimonious public debate on the costs and benefits of contemporary immigration. Chock-full of useful and up-to-date information on hotly contested immigration issues, it is a valuable resource for all those interested in social change.”

Yê´n Lê Espiritu, University of California, San Diego

Race and Immigration

Immigration & Society series

Thomas Faist, Margit Fauser & Eveline Reisenauer, Transnational Migration

Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration

Grace Kao & Elizabeth Vaquera, Education and Immigration

Nazli Kibria, Cara Bowman & Megan O’Leary, Race and Immigration

Ronald L. Mize & Grace Peña Delgado, Latino Immigrants in the United States

Philip Q. Yang, Asian Immigration to the United States

Race and Immigration

Nazli Kibria, Cara Bowman and Megan O’Leary

polity

Copyright © Nazli Kibria, Cara Bowman and Megan O’Leary 2014

The right of Nazli Kibria, Cara Bowman and Megan O’Leary to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

Polity Press 65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-7456-7978-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

1   The Race–Immigration Nexus

2   Immigration Policy and Racial Formations

3   Race and the Occupational Strategies of Immigrants

4   Immigrant Identities and Racial Hierarchies

Conclusions: Race, Immigration, and the American Dream

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the editors at Polity Press for their encouragement and support of this project. As is often the case with books, the writing of this one has stretched out for more years than anyone anticipated. We especially thank Jonathan Skerrett for his patience in sticking with us during the long duration of the project. We also gratefully acknowledge the support that we have received for the project from the Albert Morris Research Fund of the Department of Sociology at Boston University.

For all three of us, the opportunity to work together on this project has been a fruitful and enjoyable experience, even when it has been challenging. Whenever our energies have sagged, we have reminded each other of the importance of race and immigration as a topic of inquiry.

For Nazli Kibria, the students in her annual Sociology of International Migration seminars have been an important source of inspiration, constantly pushing her to think about immigration in different ways. Nazli is grateful to her family, especially to James Allen Littlefield, for his patience during the writing of the book. Nazli would like to dedicate this book to her daughter Shumita Kibria Littlefield, herself an aspiring author, for the love and joy that Shumita brings to her life.

Cara Bowman would like to thank her entire family for their love and encouragement throughout this process. She is grateful to her parents, Sheila and John Bowman, who are always enthusiastic and caring, and who taught her to question racial boundaries from an early age. She dedicates this book to her partner, Juan Lopez, whose own experience challenging the racial order in the U.S. has brought deep personal significance to this work.

Megan O’Leary would like to thank her parents, Dan and Cindy O’Leary, for the endless support and love they bring into her life every day. She is grateful for the laughs and constant voice of reason provided by her sister, Erin O’Leary. She would also like to thank her extended family for cheering her on throughout her graduate career as vigorously as they do for the New England Patriots.

Both Cara and Megan would also like to thank Nazli for giving them the opportunity to produce such an important book, and for helping them to grow as scholars and writers throughout the process.

The authors hope this book will be a step not only towards understanding the challenges facing immigrants in the U.S. racial order, but that it also inspires movements to remedy such inequalities.

1

The Race–Immigration Nexus

I’m here today because the time has come for common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform. The time is now. Now is the time. Now is the time. Now is the time.

I’m here because most Americans agree that it’s time to fix a system that’s been broken for way too long. I’m here because business leaders, faith leaders, labor leaders, law enforcement, and leaders from both parties are coming together to say now is the time to find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as the land of opportunity. Now is the time to do this so we can strengthen our economy and strengthen our country’s future. Think about it—we define ourselves as a nation of immigrants. That’s who we are—in our bones. The promise we see in those who come here from every corner of the globe, that’s always been one of our greatest strengths. It keeps our workforce young. It keeps our country on the cutting edge. And it’s helped build the greatest economic engine the world has ever known.

President Barack Obama, January 29, 2013

Around much of the world today, issues of global migration—of movement across national borders—loom large in the political arena. This is certainly the case in the United States, where in the run-up to the 2012 Presidential election, immigration was among the hot-button issues that occupied campaign rhetoric. After winning a second term in office, President Obama spoke fervently of the need to fix the country’s “broken” immigration system. As we see in the above excerpt from a Presidential speech on immigration,1 U.S. political discourse on immigration has often been couched in nationalist imagery, of America as the “land of opportunity” and a “nation of immigrants.” Drawing on this imagery, in the early months of 2013 President Obama set out a specific plan for immigration reform that included employer accountability, pathways to legalization for immigrants without papers, as well as easier access to visas for high-skilled immigrants.

In the immigration debates of the U.S. today, the theme of race is perhaps most noticeable for its seeming invisibility. When it is mentioned, the distinctiveness of race is depicted as a matter that can be overcome with the passage of time and hard work; over time there is assimilation into the American melting pot. Of course this is far from being always the case. The passage of watershed laws in U.S. immigration history, such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 National Origins Act, were marked by openly expressed and virulent racism. But in early twenty-first century America, an open agenda of racial exclusion is no longer legitimate. Instead, a variety of “race-blind” arguments mark the immigration debates. Thus those who contend that the U.S. needs to build a taller and tighter fence to guard the U.S.-Mexico border do not speak of race, but rather of the need to deter the criminal activities that surround the border regions. Those who argue against an amnesty program for undocumented immigrants do not speak of race, but instead dwell on the importance of rewarding those who follow the laws of the land and punishing those who do not abide by them. And those who assert the need to extend more opportunities for the highly skilled to come to the U.S. do not speak of race, but cite the need for the U.S. to remain competitive in the global economy.