Alan Houston, University of California – San Diego
Abstract: This paper sketches the terrain. It is not a finished portrait, but a preliminary outline. I begin with a discussion of Franklin’s status as “the first American,” and the need to situate him in a broader social, political, and intellectual context. I then turn to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century arguments regarding the causes and consequences of population growth, and Franklin’s distinctive contributions to them. In the final sections of the paper I turn to Franklin’s reflections on race and ethnicity in colonial life. Throughout this paper I seek to emphasize the politics of …

Hoyt Bleakley, University of California-San Diego
Aimee Chin, University of Houston
Abstract: Research on the effect of language skills on earnings is complicated by the endogeneity of language skills. This study exploits the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children to construct an instrumental variable for language proficiency. We find a significant positive effect of English proficiency on wages among adults who immigrated to the U.S. as children. Much of this impact appears to be mediated through education. Differences between non-English-speaking origin countries and English-speaking ones that might make immigrants from the latter a poor control group for …

Hinda Seif, U.C. Institute for Labor and Employment
Abstract: Scholarship on the efforts of undocumented immigrants for recognition in receiving countries focuses on national legal identity. Yet the restoration of access to a driver’s license has emerged as a key struggle of undocumented immigrants across the US. What does the driver’s license represent to Mexican immigrants? What may we learn about changes in the enforcement of immigration laws from the driver’s license struggle? I outline the history of driver’s license legislation and enforcement in California based on participant observation, interviews and document collection at the California state legislature and Southeast Los …

Amelie Constant, University of Pennsylvania and IZA
Klaus Zimmerman, Bonn University, IZA and DIW Berlin
Abstract: While the literature has established that there is substantial and highly selective return migration, the growing importance of repeat migration has been largely ignored. Using Markov chain analysis, this paper provides a modeling framework for repeated moves of migrants between the host and home countries. The Markov transition matrix between the states in two consecutive periods is parameterized and estimated using a logit specification and a large panel data with 14 waves. The analysis for Germany, the largest European immigration country, shows that more than 60% …

Francisco J. Durán Ruiz, Universidad de Granada
Working Paper #84»

Kelly Lytle, University of California-San Diego
Abstract: What I want to contribute to this conversation today is to provide a historical framework for the eruption of anti-immigrant vigilante activity along the US-Mexico border at the turn of the 21st-century. Beginning with the South Carolina Regulator Movement of 1767-1769, there have been at least 500 vigilante movements throughout the United States. Like all other vigilante movements, including what’s going on in Arizona today, the South Carolina Regulators were organized in response to a sense among elite community members that there was of a lack of adequate law enforcement. Like the American Border …

Robin Hoovers, Humane Borders
Working Paper #82»

April Linton, Princeton University and University of California-San Diego
Abstract: This analysis uses data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses to explore individual and contextual factors that influence U.S.-born Hispanic adults to maintain Spanish alongside English. Cuban of Puerto Rican ancestry, living with a Spanish-dominant person, having children in one’s household, and working in a service- or health-related job all increase the odds of bilingualism. Contextual incentives – growth in a state’s Hispanic population, bilinguals’ status, and Hispanics’ political influence – also positively influence the odds of bilingualism. By showing a positive relationship between upward mobility, political participation, and bilingualism, my …

Erin Aeran Chung, Harvard University
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between citizenship policies and noncitizen political behavior, focusing on extra-electoral forms of political participation by Korean residents in Japan. I analyze the institutional factors that have mediated the construction of Korean collective identity in Japan and, in turn, the ways that Korean community activists have re-conceptualized possibilities for their exercise of citizenship as foreign residents in Japan. My empirical analysis is based on a theoretical framework that defines citizenship as an interactive process of political incorporation, performance, and participation. I posit that the various dimensions of citizenship—its legal significance, symbolic …

Julie Watts, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Abstract: Despite persistent Mexican migration, deepening North American economic integration, and the recent predominance of migration on the U.S.-Mexico bi-national agenda, cross-border labor union efforts to collaborate on immigration policy and migrant worker rights have been sporadic, reactive, and lacking in concerted action. Based on recent interviews conducted with U.S. and Mexican labor union representatives, migration scholars, immigrant advocacy groups, and government officials, Watts examines the historical, political, and institutional obstacles to cross-border labor union solidarity on migration issues.
Working Paper #79»