borderbattles.ssrc.orgBorder Battles – Items

Social Science Research Council The SSRC is an independent, international, nonprofit organization. It fosters innovative research, nurtures new generations of social scientists, deepens how inquiry is practiced within and across disciplines, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public issues. Programs SSRC activities span more than 80 countries on 6 continents Fellowships & Prizes Apply for research opportunities across the globe Support the SSRC Contributions fund research and scholarship worldwide Items Items is a space for engagement with insights from the work of the Council and the social sciences. War of the Worlds: Covid-19 and Pandemic Belligerence by Robert Peckham Placing the Pandemic in Time: Astrology and Covid-19 by Omri Elisha Covid-19, Ebola, and the Ethnographic Distance by Ilmari Käihkö The Immanent Frame The Immanent Frame publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. Reproductive choice and disability stigma by Devan Stahl Placing the pandemic in time: Astrology and Covid-19 by Omri Elisha Self-inflicted wounds: The Church and dissipation of Christianity in Europe by Anna Grzymala-Busse Kujenga Amani Kujenga Amani facilitates the exchange of ideas about diverse aspects of peacebuilding in Africa. Africa and the Geopolitics of Covid-19 by Gilbert M. Khadiagala and Bob Wekesa Regimes of Othering: Unpacking the Migration-Security Nexus by Margaret Monyani Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Tanzania: The Role of Solidarity, National Unity, and Peace by Iddy Ramadhani Magoti MediaWell Donate Insights from the Social Sciences Search Menu Search Menu Border Battles Social scientists explore the underlying issues of increasingly contentious debates over immigration in the US. July 28, 2006 Category While debates over illegal workers, border controls, employer sanctions, access to services, amnesty, temporary workers, and the like have persisted at least since the formation of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy in 1979, the positions taken by advocates and the policies proposed by politicians have recently become more contentious and extreme. In the coming months, reconciling divergent views in the House and Senate on these issues in legislation will be difficult, if not impossible. The Bush administration’s Border Security Initiative would deploy new military technologies, 370 miles of fence, 6,000 National Guard, and 15,000 new Border Patrol officers. While many Senators insist on amnesty-like “pathways to citizenship” for most of the estimated 11-12 million undocumented immigrants, the majority in the House would block access to permanent residency and impose felony charges for illegal entry. Up for renewed scrutiny are restrictions on immigrants’ access to health, education, and social services, and high-tech identification cards for all Americans. And more. In unprecedented public response, hundreds of thousands of undocumented and legal immigrants have joined protest marches in cities across the country, culminating in the May 1st “Day without Immigrants.” Private militias are patrolling the border to make up for federal, state, and local governments’ “chaotic neglect” of border enforcement. And in national newspaper ads the Mexican government is claiming “shared responsibility” for U.S. policies and is publicly protesting to President Bush about his plans. What sense can be made of the forces that are driving these conflicting stances and tumultuous activities? In “Border Battles: U.S. Immigration Debates” you can find original insights from social scientists on the key underlying issues. Border Battles The Myth of Immigrant Criminality by Rubén G. Rumbaut and Walter A. Ewing Public perceptions of immigrants and crime This essay originally appeared as a special report for the Immigration Policy Center, a division of the American Immigration Law Foundation. It is printed here with the permission of the IPC and the AILF. Myths and stereotypes about immigrants and crime often provide the underpinnings for public policies and […] Read more May 23, 2007 Border Battles Labour Market Flooding? Migrant Destination and Wage Change during America’s Age of Mass Migration by Susan B. Carter and Richard Sutch Influential voices in the media and in public policy circles have sustained the impression and perhaps heightened the concern that high levels of immigration harm resident Americans by reducing their wages. This perception of “labour market flooding” – sometimes billed as “common sense” (Brimelow, 1995) – is bolstered by the logic of introductory-level microeconomic theory. […] Read more March 12, 2007 Border Battles The United States and Mexico: Prospects for a Bilateral Migration Policy by Marc R. Rosenblum On July 2, 2000, Vicente Fox became Mexico’s first democratically-elected opposition president, and almost made good on a campaign promise to re-examine US-Mexican migration relations by proposing that the countries of North America begin eliminating controls on regional labor flows. The idea of a common market fell on deaf ears within the United States, but […] Read more March 8, 2007 Border Battles Do Surges in Less-Skilled Immigration Have Important Wage Effects? by David R. Howell Over the last three decades the U.S. has experienced a second great surge in immigration, comparable in many respects to the massive increase in foreign born workers in the Age of Mass Migration – the decades around the start of the last century. Between 1970 and 2005 the foreign-born share of the U.S. labor force […] Read more March 8, 2007 Border Battles Impacts of Border Enforcement on Unauthorized Mexican Migration to the United States by Wayne A. Cornelius Summary How have heightened border controls affected the decision-making of unauthorized Mexican migrants to the United States? My research findings, based on highly detailed, face-to-face interviews with 1,327 migrants and their relatives in Mexico during the last 18 months, support earlier research showing that tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged […] Read more September 26, 2006 Border Battles Migration and Borders: The Space for Contradiction by Jorge Santibáñez Romellón United States tolerance and the Mexican omission In practice, the phenomenon of labor migration works as a system of complementary components. What for one country is a process for immigrant arrivals, for the other is a process of emigration and people in transit. In order for the system to work, the logic of how these […] Read more August 31, 2006 Border Battles A Century of Informality on the United States-Mexico Border by Aristide Zolberg The present situation on the United States-Mexico border is not exactly new, but nearly a century old, and largely of the U.S.’s own making. Mexican labor first came to be used in the West after the United States enacted Chinese Exclusion, precisely when completion of the transcontinental railroad the Chinese had been imported to build […] Read more August 17, 2006 Border Battles Mexican Migrant Civic Participation in the United States by Jonathan Fox In the spring of 2006, more than three million immigrants—most of them originally from Mexico—marched through the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Detroit, Denver, Dallas, and dozens of other U.S. cities to protest peacefully for a comprehensive reform that would legalize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Though […] Read more August 15, 2006 Border Battles NAFTA and Mexican Immigration by Alejandro Portes It was supposed to be the magic wand that took care of immigration. The North American Free Trade Agreement was to make Mexico rich and create enough employment incentives to keep its people at home. It has been anything but. More than ten years after the signing of the treaty, economic growth has been anemic […] Read more July 31, 2006 Border Battles Immigration R...