Robert A. Donnelly
Abstract: This work examines the role played by health- and public safety-related discourses in the construction of governable subjects among settling Latino immigrants in contemporary central North Carolina. It proposes that health possesses a normalizing dimension that encourages the adoption of certain prescribed mindsets and practices, and that these outlooks and behaviors embody normative understandings of what it means “to be an American.” It draws on governmentality theory to demonstrate the ways in which neoliberal rationalities collaborate in this normalization process. By focusing on North Carolina, the research intends to examine how a state, where binary racial logics …

Milos Calda, Charles University
Introduction: The present paper deals, above all, with the current program of immigration facilitation launched by the government of the Czech Republic (hereinafter CR) in 2001. The program, called “Pilot Project”, should test future larger-scale immigration policy implementation. One of the contributing factors to such a policy was the decline of the Czech population over the last decade. The paper will also look into the population development and give a brief historical background.
Working Paper #127 »

Stefan Alscher, Humboldt University
Introduction: The “fight against illegal migration” has become a main topic of EU-summits in the last years: common border patrols, harmonization of deportation proceedings, and more funding for the control of the exterior borders represent several key themes punctuating ongoing debates. The explosiveness of this subject is illustrated by images of overloaded refugee boats, floating on the Mediterranean Sea near the Spanish, Italian or Greek coastlines; these images add fuel to anxieties in parts of the population of the actual and future EU-member states. The events in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in October 2005, …

Dr. Carmina Brittain, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Abstract: The immigrant student population in American public schools is an ever-growing demographic force, especially in some states such as California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois (Ruizde- Velasco & Fix, 2000). This concentration of immigrants in these states is the result of the networking process of migration that mobilizes newcomers to areas where more established immigrants from the same country (co-nationals) are located (Cornelius, 1998; Portes, 1999; Valdes, 2001). This mobilization produces a significant information flow across borders as established immigrants share their experiences with potential immigrants in their countries of origin …

David Spener, Trinity University
Abstract: Coyotaje is the Mexican cultural practice of hiring an intermediary, known as a coyote, to get around an inconvenient or burdensome government regulation. The term also refers to the brokerage of commodities. In both these senses, coyotaje has played a fundamental role in facilitating mass Mexican migration to the U.S.A. since passage of the Chinese exclusion and contract labor laws of the 1880s. In this paper I review the history of Mexican migration, foregrounding the evolution of the practice of coyotaje across five distinct migratory periods—el enganche (1882-1921); labor recruitment, clandestine migration, and mass deportations (1921-1942); …

David FitzGerald, University of California – San Diego
Abstract: The social science of international migration has generally ignored labor emigration control policies. In the critical case of Mexico, however, the central government consistently tried to control the volume, duration, skills, and geographic origin of emigrants from 1900 to the early 1970s. A neopluralist approach to policy development and implementation shows that the failure of emigration control and the current abandonment of serious emigration restrictions are explained by a combination of external constraints, imposed by a highly asymmetrical interdependence with the United States, and internal constraints, imposed by actors within the balkanized …

Yvonne Aimé Gastélum, University of California – San Diego
Introduction: Citizenship and borders shape the ways we conceive of justice in the modern world of nation-states. They delineate the contours of membership and territory we perceive as our own, and provide the institutional framework within which we construct justice. However, the particular moral order they create, its protections and exclusions, is inadequately considered within contemporary theories of justice that fail to recognize how borders are bridged and membership is renegotiated over time.
The boundaries that enclose political communities, denoted by citizenship, immigration and naturalization law, and territorial border control, are negotiated closures …

Brent Eric Valentine
Abstract: Latino immigrants are increasingly working in industries that have not traditionally employed immigrant labor. Wisconsin’s dairy industry is a great example of this expansion in the employment of Latino immigrants. During the last decade dairy farmers have been turning to Latino immigrants to meet their labor demands. This research projects looks at the relationship that is developing between Latino immigrants and Wisconsin’s dairy industry. The project helps to bring to light some of the new challenges facing both employers and employees in this industry and region, while also highlighting several of the positive aspects of the relationship …

Kathryn Kopinak, King’s University College
Introduction: While an extensive literature has developed in the forty years since export processing began in northern Mexico, very little research has addressed the relationship between maquiladora employment and labor migration to the United States. Those doing research on export led industrialization in Mexico do not usually ask whether people working in this sector migrate to the United States to work. Likewise, those who focus on Mexican migration north pay little attention to the role maquiladora employment might play in a person’s decision to cross the border to work. Exceptions to this pattern usually occur in …

Carmina Brittain, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Introduction: Due in part to their demographic significance (Ruiz-de-Velasco & Fix, 2001), students of Mexican origin continue to warrant the attention of the American educational community. The experiences of Mexican students in the United States have been well-documented thoughtout the years, but the bulk of the studies have failed to recognize the importance of the sustained links some of these students have with Mexico. Most of the current research on immigrant students has focused on the experiences that are directly related to the cultural and linguistic discontinuities they experience with the American mainstream culture …