This book connects the history of immigration with histories of Native Americans, African Americans, women, the poor, Latino/a Americans and Asian Americans.
This three-volume work exposes myths and debunks misinformation about global migration, an issue generating emotional debate from the highest levels of power to kitchen tables across the United States, Europe, and worldwide. Many don't realize that migration has been a central element of global social change since the 15th century. Unfortunately, misconceptions about the 3 percent of world citizens who do choose to migrate can be destructive. In 2008, riots broke out in South Africa over workers from neighboring countries. Today's rising tensions along the U.S.-Mexican border are inciting political, social, and economic upheaval. In the EU, political fortunes rise and fall on positions regarding the future of multiculturalism in Europe. Relying on fact, not rhetoric, this three-volume book seeks to inform readers, allay fears, and advance solutions. While other reference works tend to limit their scope to one country or one dimension of this hot-button issue, this book looks at the topic through a wide and interdisciplinary lens. Truly global in scope, this collection explores issues on all five continents, discussing examples from more than 50 countries through analysis by 40 top scholars across 8 disciplines. By exploring the past, present, and future of measures that have been implemented in an attempt to deal with migration—ranging from regularization procedures to criminalization—readers will be able to understand this worldwide phenomenon. Both the expert and the general reader will find a wealth of information free of the unsustainable claims and polarized opinions usually presented in the media. To view the introductory chapter of this book, visit http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2604184
What should we do about foreigners? Should we try to make them more like us or keep them at bay to protect our democracy, our culture, our well-being? This dilemma underlies age-old debates about immigration, citizenship, and national identity that are strikingly relevant today. In Democracy and the Foreigner, Bonnie Honig reverses the question: What problems might foreigners solve for us? Hers is not a conventional approach. Instead of lauding the achievements of individual foreigners, she probes a much larger issue--the symbolic politics of foreignness. In doing so she shows not only how our debates over foreignness help shore up our national or democratic identities, but how anxieties endemic to liberal democracy themselves animate ambivalence toward foreignness. Central to Honig's arguments are stories featuring ''foreign-founders,'' in which the origins or revitalization of a people depend upon a foreigner's energy, virtue, insight, or law. From such popular movies as The Wizard of Oz, Shane, and Strictly Ballroom to the biblical stories of Moses and Ruth to the myth of an immigrant America, from Rousseau to Freud, foreignness is represented not just as a threat but as a supplement for communities periodically requiring renewal. Why? Why do people tell stories in which their societies are dependent on strangers? One of Honig's most surprising conclusions is that an appreciation of the role of foreigners in (re)founding peoples works neither solely as a cosmopolitan nor a nationalist resource. For example, in America, nationalists see one archetypal foreign-founder--the naturalized immigrant--as reconfirming the allure of deeply held American values, whereas to cosmopolitans this immigrant represents the deeply transnational character of American democracy. Scholars and students of political theory, and all those concerned with the dilemmas democracy faces in accommodating difference, will find this book rich with valuable and stimulating insights.
"Foreigners have been writing about the United States ever since its foundation. Now it is my turn. But please don't hold this against me: the United States itself is at fault. Like a great many people on earth, I've long been fascinated by this remarkable phenomenon which calls itself America. My fate -or perhaps good fortune- has been that of a foreigner who for half a century lived the American experience-as a child, as a student, as an author, as a recurrent visitor and as a university professor. Being Mexican places me in a special category: having lost half its territory to the United States in the 19th century, having found itself caught up in the maelstrom of America's current identity crisis, Mexico can never ignore what happens north of the border. Further, while serving as Mexico's Foreign Minister from 2000 to 2003, I had the privilege of peeping inside the machinery of power that makes this great nation tick. That said, this book is not written from a Mexican perspective but rather from that of a sympathetic foreign critic who has seen the United States from both inside and outside. And its hope is to contribute something to how Americans view themselves and are viewed by the world. Before embarking on this journey, I naturally looked back at some of my forebears, earlier foreigners who were drawn to visit or live in the United States and who then went on to offer their version of America to their home readers. Some like the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the early 19th century classic, Democracy in America, felt European nations had much to learn from the American democratic experiment. Others like Charles Dickens left dismayed by what he considered to be the country's singular obsession with money. But they are just two of dozens who have tried-and continue to try- to find a magic key that unlocks the complexities and contradictions of American society. Indeed, it is as if the United States seeks to challenge foreign writers to explain it, confident they will fail. And in taking it on, these outsiders have variously experienced frustration, hope, anger, excitement, disappointment and enlightenment- but never indifference"--
This volume analyses South American regional and international cooperation during the COVID19 crisis started in 2020. Across thirteen chapters a collection of leading experts address how regional collaboration has developed, evolved, and recoiled. The chapters explore the state of regionalism at the pandemic surge and the challenges and opportunities this situation has opened for regional and international cooperation. Authors analyze the role of extra-regional powers and traditional regional leaders during the pandemic, identifying the extent to which regional cooperation has been possible across several policy agendas. They argue that fragmented visions of regionalism, ideological polarization, and weak leadership, has prevailed from before the pandemic which, accompanied by adverse interactions among major powers, has ensured that cooperation has remained bilateral rather than regional. Ultimately all these factors have created a complex scenario in which disintegration dynamics have emerged, darkening, even more, the South American regional panorama. Regional and International Cooperation in South America After COVID will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars and policy specialists of regionalism and regional integration, Latin American studies, international relations and international political economy.
Looking at refugee protection in Latin America, this landmark edited collection assesses what the region has achieved in recent years. It analyses Latin America’s main documents in refugee protection, evaluates the particular aspects of different regimes, and reviews their emergence, development and effect, to develop understanding of refugee protection in the region. Drawing from multidisciplinary texts from both leading academics and practitioners, this comprehensive, innovative and highly topical book adopts an analytical framework to understand and improve Latin America’s protection of refugees.
National borders and transnational forces have been central in defining the meaning of race in the Americas. Race and Transnationalism in the Americas examines the ways that race and its categorization have functioned as organizing frameworks for cultural, political, and social inclusion—and exclusion—in the Americas. Because racial categories are invariably generated through reference to the “other,” the national community has been a point of departure for understanding race as a concept. Yet this book argues that transnational forces have fundamentally shaped visions of racial difference and ideas of race and national belonging throughout the Americas, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Examining immigration exclusion, indigenous efforts toward decolonization, government efforts to colonize, sport, drugs, music, populism, and film, the authors examine the power and limits of the transnational flow of ideas, people, and capital. Spanning North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, the volume seeks to engage in broad debates about race, citizenship, and national belonging in the Americas.
A broad-ranging and ambitious study of the changing relationships between countries and their nationals abroad, and the impact that mass migration played in shaping modern international law and politics.
The last couple of years have witnessed an unprecedented battle within Europe between values and pragmatism, and between states' interests and individuals' rights. This book examines humanitarian considerations and immigration control from two perspectives; one broader and more philosophical, the other more practical. The impetus to show compassion for certain categories of persons with vulnerabilities can depend on religious, philosophical and political thought. Manifestation of this compassion can vary from the notion of a charitable act to aid 'the wretched' in their home country, to humanitarian assistance for the 'distant needy' in foreign lands and, finally, to immigration policies deciding who to admit or expel from the country. The domestic practice of humanitarian protection has increasingly drawn in transnational law through the expansion of the EU acquis on asylum, and the interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights.