Maurizio Albahari, University of California – Irvine

Alison Elizabeth Lee, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Introduction: This paper examines the process by which one rural town in south-central Mexico was rapidly transformed into an international migrant sending community over the last twenty years. In marked contrast to reports from Western Mexico where international migration experience in the adult population was accumulated over many decades, the prevalence of migration experience rose in accelerated fashion over the course of just two decades in Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla.. In the mid-1980s, some villagers from this town set out for New York City in order to salir adelante, …

Maurizio Albahari, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and University of California -Irvine
Abstract: European governmental and non-governmental sources estimate the death toll of would-be migrants (including asylum seekers) in the Mediterranean between 6,000 and 10,000. This paper investigates the chronicle of death off the coasts of southern Italy from 1996 to the present, together with the accompanying legal and political framework of deportations, internment, bilateral agreements (e.g., with Libya) and EU provisions. Building on fieldwork in coastal southern Italy and on the analysis of key incidents and of the responses of Italian and EU institutions and mass media, the paper explores …

Amelie Constant, IZA, Bonn, and Georgetown University
Liliya Gataullina, IZA and University of Bonn
Klaus F. Zimmermann, Bonn University, IZA, Bonn, and DIW-Berlin
Abstract: The paper provides a new measure of the ethnic identity of immigrants and explores its evolution in the host country. The ethnosizer, a measure of the intensity of a person’s ethnic identity, is constructed from information on the following elements: language, culture, societal interaction, history of migration, and ethnic self-identification. A two-dimensional concept of the ethnosizer classifies immigrants into four states: integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization. We find that ethnic identity persists stronger for females, Muslims, those with schooling …

Eiko R. Thielemann, London School of Economics and Political Science
Abstract: This article shows that the refugee burdens among Western states are also very unequally distributed and that this constitutes a problem not only for individual states, but also for the EU as whole. It argues that despite many obstacles, the development of regional or international burdensharing regimes is indeed desirable. Attempts to explain or justify steps towards such a system do not have to rely solely on notions of solidarity but can be justified by more traditional interest-based motivations. However, it suggests that the EU’s main burden-sharing initiatives which rely …

Rosa M. Soriano Miras, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Introduction: Hasta hace relativamente escasas décadas, la voz de la mujer ha estado silenciada, y en especial la de aquella mujer que traspasa las fronteras de su tierra natal, por obligación y no por deseo, alejándose de su hogar, y de sus raíces con todas las rupturas individuales, sociales y estructurales que ello implica. Dicho silencio no puede por menos que ser objeto de estudio de los que nos dedicamos al estudio de un fenómeno tan nuevo, y al mismo tiempo, tan viejo como es el estudio de las migraciones. Y es …

Marc R. Rosenblum, Council on Foreign Relations and Migration Policy Institute
Introduction: The existing immigration regime was designed in 1952-1965 with the primary goals of allowing nuclear and extended family reunification, and with secondary goals of permitting humanitarian admissions (which will not be addressed here) and necessary labor inflows. Almost from the start, the system proved problematic, and by 1970 (just two years after the 1965 amendments were implemented) major new nonimmigrant programs (the L and H-1 programs) were being tacked on to the LPR system and Congress began devoting sustained attention to the problem of undocumented inflows. Yet even as …

Pia M. Orrenius and Roberto Coronado, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Abstract: In the 1990s, the border led the nation in the decline of property-related crimes, while violent crime rates fell twice as fast in the U.S. than in the median border county. This paper asks how changes in illegal immigration and border enforcement have played a role in generating these divergent trends. We find that while migrant apprehensions are correlated with a greater incidence of violent crime, they are not systematically associated with higher rates of property crime. Border patrol enforcement is associated with lower property crime rates but higher …

Tomás R. Jiménez, University of California – San Diego
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of immigrant replenishment on ethnic identity formation by considering the case of the Mexican-origin population. The literature on immigration, race and ethnicity largely assumes that the symbolic, optional, and consequence-free nature of ethnic identity found among white ethnics is a function of the measures of assimilation that sociologists commonly deploy: socioeconomic status, residential location, language abilities, and intermarriage. But this literature fails to adequately explain the role of immigration patterns in the formation of ethnic identity. Using 123 in-depth interviews with latter-generation Mexican Americans in Garden …

Gordon H. Hanson, University of California – San Diego and National Bureau of Economic Research
Summary: In this manuscript, I consider the interplay between public finance and U.S. immigration policy. Immigration is making the U.S. population larger and more ethnically diverse and the U.S. labor force more abundant in low-skilled labor. One consequence of these changes has been lower wages for low-skilled U.S. workers. More generally, the benefits and costs of immigration appear to be distributed quite unevenly. Capital owners, land owners, and employers capture most of the benefits associated with immigration, which they enjoy in the form of higher factor …