Deportation proceedings against Canadian MDs may hold lesson for others heading south

Two Alberta physicians who emigrated to a medically underserviced part of Kentucky have learned a harsh lesson about American immigration law. Drs. David Zetter and Sabina Seitz had been settled in western Kentucky for 2 years when the US government launched deportation proceedings against them. American officials allege that they misrepresented themselves when they entered the US on a temporary visa. They may be allowed to stay following a public outcry against their deportation.     

The Truth from the Body: Medical Certificates as Ultimate Evidence for Asylum Seekers

Whether through traditional law or modern torture, the body has always been a privileged site on which to demonstrate the evidence of power. But for immigrants, the poor, and, more generally, the dominated—all of whom have to prove their eligibility to certain social rights—it has also become the place that displays the evidence of truth. In France, as immigration control increases, asylum seekers are more and more submitted to the evaluation of their physical sequels and psychic traumas, as if their autobiographical accounts were not sufficient. In this article, we show how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deal with the dilemmas posed by this situation, how they develop protocols standardizing their expertise, and how their medical authority progressively substitutes itself for the asylum seekers' word. In this process of objectification, it is the experience of the victims as political subjects that is progressively erased.     

Language Learning and the Politics of Belonging: Sudanese Women Refugees Becoming and Being"American"

In this article, I explore the complicated relationship between ideologies of language and language learning, discourses of immigration and belonging, and the actual lived experiences of individual language learners. The analysis demonstrates how questions of educational access, economic stability, and social membership are all influenced by a range of social, political, and historical factors, particularly for recently arrived immigrants and refugees from war-torn African contexts.     

Institutions,information exchange,and migrant social networks in Rome

While a considerable body of work examines immigrant networks, inadequate attention has been devoted to understanding how networks regulate the relationship between immigrants and host institutions. A rich immigrant process may reinforce current power structures by providing a convenient buffer between the elite and challengers. Conversely, immigration may challenge the status quo. I employ social network analysis to examine three understudied immigrant groups in Rome, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, and Peruvians. I find that they have developed systems of problem-solving and sense-making that often interrupt their interactions with host institutions. The state tolerates this because it situates immigrants’ concerns outside its sphere of responsibility.     

Density-dependent immigration promotes population stability in a long-distance migratory bird

The spatial structure of populations determines the relative importance of reproduction, survival and movement on population dynamics. However, the mechanisms by which local individuals and immigrants interact and the subsequent effects of immigrants on productivity are poorly known. We developed an integrated population model (IPM) to study the extent and consequences of immigration on the dynamics of a neotropical migrant (American redstart, Setophaga ruticilla) over an 11-year period in Ontario, Canada. New immigrants represented the majority of the study population each year with higher immigration rates for males than females and for first-year breeders than breeders in their second year or older. Immigration was negatively density dependent, with immigrants replacing previously established breeders in a compensatory manner following their death or emigration. Because of the tradeoff between immigration and apparent survival, neither had a strong influence on population growth and reproductive output was most strongly correlated with a change in abundance between years. However, if immigration ceased, the study population would become locally extinct within 7 years and thus immigrants were essential for local population persistence. We found no evidence for reduced breeding success when immigrants represented a higher proportion of the study population. Our research highlights the importance of movement in the stability of open populations and the strong correlation between the fates of local breeders and the number of immigrants entering the population. We recommend the use of IPMs to address the spatial scale over which immigration occurs and how different scales influence its contribution to population dynamics.     

Recent trends in cesarean section rates in Ontario

To assess the economic impact of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) antibody screening among potential immigrants on Canada''s health care system we estimated the costs and benefits of such screening among the 160 135 immigrants who entered Canada in 1988 using the in-hospital costs of treating AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) over the 10 years after immigration. This economic model was based on current international HIV seroprevalence data, Canadian immigration statistics and estimates of disease progression. Between 343 and 862 of the immigrants were estimated to have been HIV seropositive; with the use of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and the Western blot technique 310 to 780 of them would have been correctly identified as being seropositive, and 33 to 82 would have been incorrectly classified as being seronegative. Another 16 would have been falsely classified as being seropositive. There would have been 151 to 379 cases of AIDS from 1988 to 1998 among the immigrants identified as being HIV-positive. The estimated total cost of screening would have been $3.3 to $3.4 million. The in-hospital costs of treating HIV-infected immigrants in whom AIDS developed between 1989 and 1998 would have been $5.0 to $17.1 million. Accordingly, screening would have saved $1.7 to $13.7 million over the 10 years after immigration. However, we do not advocate screening on the basis of economic analysis alone and acknowledge that any policy regarding such screening must also incorporate social, legal and ethical considerations.     

Immigration and Chinese reproductive behavior in Canada

This study is intended to provide an empirical testing of the minority status hypothesis with regard to the fertility behavior of Chinese immigrants to Canada. The focus is placed on the role of group or social context on actions of individuals. Factors incurred in the immigration process as explained by disruption and assimilation hypotheses are also examined. Using the multi-level contextual analysis, we have found that the relative economic insecurity that comes from minority membership and the course of immigration serves to decrease fertility of minority members, whether they are associated with a pronatalist heritage or not. However, pronatalist traditions do stimulate fecundity of Chinese immigrants as long as their relative economic status is improved and the hardship is gone.     

Immigration,Christian faith communities,and the practice of multiculturalism in the U.S. South

Recent scholarship has declared multiculturalism to be in retreat, yet multiculturalist discourses and practices remain salient in many realms of social reproduction. This paper explores multiculturalism in predominantly white churches in the U.S. South, a region that has seen significant demographic transformations due to immigration. Church outreach to immigrants draws on theologies that reject racial prejudice and that call for the accommodation and celebration of cultural differences. Drawing on qualitative research with pastors and congregants, this article explores how multiculturalist practice is both re-working and reinforcing existing social relationships in Christian faith communities. Multiculturalist practices, we show, disrupt racialized hierarchies long embedded in white churches. But they simultaneously leave racialized distinctions and inequalities intact, in part by maintaining separation between immigrants and non-immigrants. This case illustrates the everyday politics of multiculturalism and the ways in which the boundaries of social membership take shape in ordinary, seemingly non-political spaces.     

Why are Asian-Americans educationally hyper-selected? The case of Taiwan

Several Asian-American groups are more educated than their non-migrant compatriots in Asia and their native-born white competitors in America. Lee and Zhou show that this “educational hyper-selectivity” has significant implications for the socio-economic success of Asian immigrants and their children. But they devote relatively little attention to its causes. This paper develops an answer in the Taiwan case. Using interviews and statistics, it shows that the Taiwanese secured an educational advantage because those arriving before 1965 consisted almost entirely of graduate students. Although they entered on student visas, prevailing political and economic conditions led them to settle in the U.S. After the passage of the Hart–Celler Act, these movers reproduced their advantage by sponsoring the arrival of kin, most of whom were also well-educated. The paper’s conclusion assesses the ability of American immigration law to foster the formation of hyper-selected groups.     

First generation decline: downward mobility among refugees and immigrants

Although immigration researchers, like other social scientists who study mobility, usually look only at upward mobility, immigrants and refugees often suffer from downward mobility. This is particularly true of new arrivals who were professionals in their country of origin and now work as technicians, although newcomers of lower status may experience it as well. For some immigrants and refugees, downward mobility is temporary; others may suffer from it all their lives and even pass the pain on to their children.

This paper discusses the various impacts of downward mobility, the ways immigrants and refugees cope with them successfully or not, and the consequences of their class and status decline for their children. The paper can be read as a follow up to my earlier articles in Ethnic and Racial Studies, ‘Second Generation Decline’, (1992) and ‘Acculturation, Assimilation and Mobility’ (2007).     

Defining difference: the role of immigrant generation and race in American and British immigration studies

Abstract

This article reviews the ways in which Britain and the USA classify and analyse the integration of immigrants and their descendants. While both societies recognize racial differences in their official statistics and in the academic analyses of change over time, the USA tends to classify immigrants and their descendants by immigrant generation much more than Britain does. The importance of the concept of generation in American immigration research is highlighted and it is suggested that studies built on the importance of generation can illuminate social processes of integration in Britain. The complexities of defining and measuring immigrant generation are reviewed, including new developments in the measurement of generation that take into account age at migration, and historical period and cohort effects. Racial and ethnic minority groups formed through immigration may have very different characteristics depending on the average distance of their members from immigration – including the possibility of ‘ethnic leakage’, as more assimilated, later-generation individuals no longer identify with the group.     

Modelling the effect of immigration on drinking behaviour

A drinking model with immigration is constructed. For the model with problem drinking immigration, the model admits only one problem drinking equilibrium. For the model without problem drinking immigration, the model has two equilibria, one is problem drinking-free equilibrium and the other is problem drinking equilibrium. By employing the method of Lyapunov function, stability of all kinds of equilibria is obtained. Numerical simulations are also provided to illustrate our analytical results. Our results show that alcohol immigrants increase the difficulty of the temperance work of the region.     

Male versus female genital alteration: Differences in legal,medical, and socioethical responses

The different legal, social, and medical approaches to ritually based male and female genital circumcision in the United States are highlighted in this article. The religious and historical origins of these practices are briefly examined, as well as the effect of changing policy statements by American medical associations on the number of circumcisions performed. Currently, no state or federal laws single out male circumcision for regulation. The tolerant attitudes toward male circumcision in law, medicine, and societal opinion stand in striking contrast to the attitudes of those disciplines toward even the least invasive form of female genital alteration. US law tacitly condones male circumcision by providing exemptions that are not available for other medical procedures, while criminalizing any similar or even less extensive procedure on females. The increase in immigration, over the past few decades, of people from countries in which female genital alteration is a cultural tradition has brought the issue to the United States. The medical profession's changing approach over time toward male circumcision is primarily responsible for such different legal and societal reactions toward female genital alteration.     

When in America,do as the Americans? The evolution of health behaviors and outcomes across immigrant cohorts

This study seeks to understand US immigrants’ health-related behaviors and outcomes across arrival cohorts. We simultaneously examine risky consumption choices (smoking and drinking) and physical health conditions (asthma, diabetes, vision problems, and coronary heart diseases) using data from the National Health Interview Surveys (1989–2018). We incorporate cohort fixed-effects and the interactions between cohort effects and years since immigration into our empirical framework to capture the dynamics of immigrant health over time. For all health indicators, we find that there are important differences between arriving immigrants and natives. Despite some heterogeneity in the dynamics of unhealthy behaviors, this heterogeneity seems to dissipate as we explore longer-term health outcomes. Overall, our findings provide an interesting outlook on how the integration into the host society affects American immigrants’ health. We contribute new results to the immigrant assimilation literature, which has primarily focused on obesity and wages.     

The process of ethnogenesis among Haitian and Israeli immigrants in the United States

This article examines the process of ethnic identity formation among two different groups of recent immigrants to the United States: secular kibbutz‐born Israelis and middle‐class Haitians. While the two groups are different in a number of ways, they share an ambivalence with the identities that American society would assign to them ‐ as Jews and blacks respectively. By contrasting these two case studies we identify the role of the ‘proximal host’, the category to which the immigrants would be assigned following immigration. The determination of the ultimate definition of the ethnic identities of these immigrants is a result of the interaction of the conception of identity the immigrants bring with them from their countries of origin, the definitions and reactions of the proximal host group, and the overall ordering and definitions of American society. The ambivalence of both groups of immigrants towards their post‐immigration identities is a result of both macro‐forces determining the definition of categories and micro‐forces of individual choice. In conclusion we show that because of the primacy of race in American society, Israelis are likely to face many more options in the determination of their identities, than are Haitians, although they both face a similar structural dilemma.     

Human migratory flows

The presence of immigrants in the European states in the last twenty years has considerably increased. This increase is evidently due to the numerous waves of immigrants coming from East European countries. With regard to the present situation, 70% of the population increase of the European Union countries, in the course of the year 2000, was due to immigration. The destinations of about two-thirds of this migratory flow are Germany, Great Britain and Italy. These migratory movements originate in the more or less prevalent influence of demographic, economic and political forces. Historically Italy represented more a source of emigration than a destination for immigration; immigration came to exceed emigration for the first time in recent history only in 1973. It is interesting to note that a large proportion of the foreigners have been in Italy for a certain length of time. The immigration phenomenon, is however characterized by a considerable increase in the illegal flows. The impact with the new realities becomes extremely traumatic for the immigrants and in the end there is a significant possibility of psychological destabilization.     

How normative debates about immigration shape analyses of the assimilation processes of second-generation youth: lessons from Spanish Legacies

In Spanish Legacies, Portes, Aparicio, and Haller offer the results of their longitudinal study on the assimilation of the children of immigrants in Spanish society. Thanks to their study design, which parallels the earlier Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study conducted by Portes and Rumbaut, the authors are able to compare assimilation trajectories in Spain with those of second-generation youth in the United States. This comparison raises important considerations about how immigration policy shapes assimilation processes. More centrally, the contrast between the cases invites a deeper consideration of normative questions that not only undergird immigration policy but also shape the assimilation experiences of the second generation. The juxtaposition of the two cases also elicits provocations about how the sociological theories about assimilation might have been different if they had been developed based on the Spanish, rather than the American, experience, and how those Spanish-inflected theories might support different directions of inquiry.     

The role of language and the presence of previous immigration cohorts in immigrant political engagement: Ecuadorian collective action in New York City and Madrid

Scholarship on immigration has recently begun to examine the social process by which immigrants make collective demands. By focussing on the case of Ecuadorian immigrants in New York City and Madrid, this comparative analysis shows that in addition to differences in the political opportunity structures in these cities, there are at least two additional contextual differences shaping the ways in which participants in this study mobilize. Mobilization is shaped by the presence or absence of previous immigration cohorts and by linguistic differences. The findings reveal the value of undertaking comparative case analysis to shed light on immigrant collective political engagement.     

Effects of conspecific and heterospecific residents on patterns of immigration in two species of voles

Studies with birds have shown that presence and density of resident conspecifics and heterospecifics can influence patterns of habitat selection. There have been few studies on the effects of social cues on rates of immigration in mammals. We report results from a long-term live trapping study of immigration in two species of voles, Microtus ochrogaster Wagner, 1842 and Microtus pennsylvanicus Ord, 1815, in bluegrass habitat in east-central Illinois, USA. We compare immigration into control sites from which no individuals of either species were removed with immigration into experimental sites from which either conspecifics or heterospecifics were removed. We focus on characteristics of immigrants and rates of immigration in relation to density in destination habitats. Within each species, immigrants into control and removal sites were similar with respect to body mass and reproductive condition, indicating no major differences in the physical condition of immigrants into sites with established populations and sites without established populations. For both species, density of conspecifics at a site positively influenced rate of immigration at that site. Density of heterospecifics at destination sites did not significantly influence rate of immigration for either species. These results suggest that site selection by dispersing M. ochrogaster and M. pennsylvanicus is characterized by conspecific attraction.