The US immigration regime: Immigration policies, hegemony, and social movements
Bonzom, Mathieu
The US immigration regime: Immigration policies, hegemony, and social movements - 2015.
67
Although the US immigration system is often described as “broken,” this article attempts to give an account of its political dynamics and its implications for immigrant social movements. Drawing on contemporary research on immigration policy and on immigrant mobilizations, as well as the political philosophy of Antonio Gramsci (in particular, the concept of hegemony), it is possible to understand the US immigration regime as an unstable but functional synthesis of partially contradictory political demands formulated by economic and political elites, by determined opponents of mass immigration, and by immigrants themselves. Unequally satisfactory to these different parties, such a synthesis nonetheless favors their consent to a common policy, which maintains a large immigrant population with more or less limited rights but which is willing to wait for them. Any analysis of the sectors of civil society and social movements with a concern for immigrants must take into account this complex functioning, which it is harder to escape from than to contribute to. The theory of the immigration regime opens the way to a research program on movements and organizations advocating for immigrants’ rights that considers in a new light the influence of the state and the dominant sectors of society.
The US immigration regime: Immigration policies, hegemony, and social movements - 2015.
67
Although the US immigration system is often described as “broken,” this article attempts to give an account of its political dynamics and its implications for immigrant social movements. Drawing on contemporary research on immigration policy and on immigrant mobilizations, as well as the political philosophy of Antonio Gramsci (in particular, the concept of hegemony), it is possible to understand the US immigration regime as an unstable but functional synthesis of partially contradictory political demands formulated by economic and political elites, by determined opponents of mass immigration, and by immigrants themselves. Unequally satisfactory to these different parties, such a synthesis nonetheless favors their consent to a common policy, which maintains a large immigrant population with more or less limited rights but which is willing to wait for them. Any analysis of the sectors of civil society and social movements with a concern for immigrants must take into account this complex functioning, which it is harder to escape from than to contribute to. The theory of the immigration regime opens the way to a research program on movements and organizations advocating for immigrants’ rights that considers in a new light the influence of the state and the dominant sectors of society.
Réseaux sociaux