Race and Immigration

Nazli Kibria, Cara Bowman, Megan O'Leary

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745647920, 9780745647913
• eBook ISBN: 9780745679792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Immigration has long shaped US society in fundamental ways. With Latinos recently surpassing African Americans as the largest minority group in the US, attention has been focused on the important implications of immigration for the character and role of race in US life, including patterns of racial inequality and racial identity. 

This insightful new book offers a fresh perspective on immigration and its part in shaping the racial landscape of the US today. Moving away from one-dimensional views of this relationship, it emphasizes the dynamic and mutually formative interactions of race and immigration. Drawing on a wide range of studies, it explores key aspects of the immigrant experience, such as the history of immigration laws, the formation of immigrant occupational niches, and developments of immigrant identity and community. Specific topics covered include: the perceived crisis of unauthorized immigration; the growth of an immigrant rights movement; the role of immigrant labor in the elder care industry; the racial strategies of professional immigrants; and the formation of pan-ethnic Latino identities. 

Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book will be invaluable for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate-level courses in the sociology of immigration, race and ethnicity.

1

The Race–Immigration Nexus

I’m here today because the time has come for common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform. The time is now. Now is the time. Now is the time. Now is the time.

I’m here because most Americans agree that it’s time to fix a system that’s been broken for way too long. I’m here because business leaders, faith leaders, labor leaders, law enforcement, and leaders from both parties are coming together to say now is the time to find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as the land of opportunity. Now is the time to do this so we can strengthen our economy and strengthen our country’s future. Think about it—we define ourselves as a nation of immigrants. That’s who we are—in our bones. The promise we see in those who come here from every corner of the globe, that’s always been one of our greatest strengths. It keeps our workforce young. It keeps our country on the cutting edge. And it’s helped build the greatest economic engine the world has ever known.

President Barack Obama, January 29, 2013

Around much of the world today, issues of global migration—of movement across national borders—loom large in the political arena. This is certainly the case in the United States, where in the run-up to the 2012 Presidential election, immigration was among the hot-button issues that occupied campaign rhetoric. After winning a second term in office, President Obama spoke fervently of the need to fix the country’s “broken” immigration system. As we see in the above excerpt from a Presidential speech on immigration,¹ U.S. political discourse on immigration has often been couched in nationalist imagery, of America as the “land of opportunity” and a “nation of immigrants.” Drawing on this imagery, in the early months of 2013 President Obama set out a specific plan for immigration reform that included employer accountability, pathways to legalization for immigrants without papers, as well as easier access to visas for high-skilled immigrants.

In the immigration debates of the U.S. today, the theme of race is perhaps most noticeable for its seeming invisibility. When it is mentioned, the distinctiveness of race is depicted as a matter that can be overcome with the passage of time and hard work; over time there is assimilation into the American melting pot. Of course this is far from being always the case. The passage of watershed laws in U.S. immigration history, such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 National Origins Act, were marked by openly expressed and virulent racism. But in early twenty-first century America, an open agenda of racial exclusion is no longer legitimate. Instead, a variety of “race-blind” arguments mark the immigration debates. Thus those who contend that the U.S. needs to build a taller and tighter fence to guard the U.S.-Mexico border do not speak of race, but rather of the need to deter the criminal activities that surround the border regions. Those who argue against an amnesty program for undocumented immigrants do not speak of race, but instead dwell on the importance of rewarding those who follow the laws of the land and punishing those who do not abide by them. And those who assert the need to extend more opportunities for the highly skilled to come to the U.S. do not speak of race, but cite the need for the U.S. to remain competitive in the global economy.

As suggested by these examples, contemporary immigration debates in the U.S. have been framed by an assumption of “color-blindness” or the notion that “race” should not and in fact does not matter today, although it might have in the past. But we would argue that denial of the realities of race and their importance to immigration dynamics and processes in the U.S. does not reduce their significance. It only serves to obscure them. As Omi and Winant (1994) have put it: “Opposing racism requires that we notice race … that we afford it the recognition it deserves and the subtlety it embodies” (159).

A Race Optic and the Race–Immigration Nexus

We approach the study of immigration and race with a “race optic.” To explain this further, let us first take a step back and define “race.” In a race-conscious society such as the U.S., the answer to the question of what race is may seem obvious at first glance. In popular U.S. understandings, racial categories such as “black” and “white” are indicated by physical markers, most notably skin color, that in turn signal innate differences between people. But as we look at how the perceptions and meanings of the markers diverge across time and place, it becomes increasingly clear that these seemingly intrinsic differences are actually social and political constructions.

Drawing on critical race theories (Goldberg 1993; West 1995; Romero 2008), we see race as a political project rooted in histories of western colonialism and imperialism and thus marked by a core commitment to white privilege and power. We also understand race as “an organizing principle of society that persists on its own through its deep entrenchment in social structure and institutions, such that actors need not be conscious of their part in it to enjoy privilege allowing it to endure” (Weiner 2012: 333). Concurrently, race is an ongoing and constantly developing feature of power relations in society.

Specifically, we define a “race optic” to encompass the following ideas:

• Race is an ascribed difference, one that is given and used by those in power to define others as different and inferior from themselves in ways that maintain their own (the dominant group’s) power.

• The ascribed differences of race are essentialized or widely understood to be based on “given,” intrinsic group features.

• Physical distinctions, such as that of skin color, can be used to draw boundaries between races and to signal intrinsic difference.

• Cultural differences, signaled by such markers as language, dress, and food, can be used to draw boundaries between races and to signal intrinsic difference.

• Racial formation or the social construction of race difference is organized by social institutions and the ideas and practices that are part of them.

• Racial boundaries have consequences for those who are defined by them, in terms of choices, opportunities, and resources.

• The dynamics of race interact with those of other axes of difference and inequality, including class, gender, nationality, and immigration status.

How does “race” compare with “ethnicity,” a concept with which it is often paired? A popular definition is that racial boundaries emerge from physical differences between peoples in contrast to ethnic boundaries, which are a product of cultural differences. As Cornell and Hartmann (1998) have noted, this way of differentiating the concepts of race and ethnicity overlooks the central role of power and external assignment in the creation of racial boundaries. Race and ethnicity are both social constructions. But racial boundaries are especially rooted in the efforts of dominant groups to create distinctions that affirm their power and superiority. Rather than external assignment, the emergence of ethnic groups involves self-assertions of collective identity that are based on “perceived common ancestry, the perception of a shared history of some sort, and shared symbols of peoplehood” (1998: 32). But along with these differences in underlying dynamics, it is also the case that racial and ethnic boundaries can overlap, as those who find themselves defined by others as a group also come to see themselves in collective terms. Racial boundaries thus shape and constrain the terrain of ethnic identity, in some cases facilitating and in other cases restricting ethnic formations.

Our analysis of immigration draws on a “race optic” or a perspective that looks closely at the significance of race in relation to the social phenomena under study. A race optic on immigration urges us to consider a set of critical questions about the ways in which racial divisions both shape and are shaped by immigrant arenas and experiences. For example, how are changes in immigration law informed by contests of racial power and privilege? How are racial ideologies shaped by the strategies that immigrants use to get ahead in the labor market? Do these strategies affirm prevailing racial boundaries? Or do they challenge them, thus fomenting struggles and changes in the racial order?

By posing and addressing these and other questions, we analyze the “race–immigration nexus”—a fluid and intertwined bundle of linkages between race and immigration, specifically among the institutions, ideologies, and practices that define these arenas. In the chapters that follow we look at selected aspects of the U.S. immigrant experience—laws, occupations, and identity formations. Through in-depth analysis of selected episodes and cases in the United States, we explore how these various arenas have been part of the ongoing formation of the U.S. race–immigration nexus.

Throughout the world, in societies as diverse as Australia, France, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates, the politics of immigration, race, and nation are deeply intertwined. If there are important similarities in the race–immigration nexus of these societies, there are also vast differences, reflecting the particular conditions under which the nexus has emerged. In the case of the United States—the focus of this book—the national context has generated a race–immigration nexus that is marked by some notable themes. These include a national ideology of America as an immigrant country and a racial order in which a black-white division has played a pivotal role. We now turn to take a closer look at these themes and the many contradictions and uncertainties that have been part of them.

A Nation of Immigrants

Oscar Handlin (1951) has noted that the history of America is the history of the immigrant. Immigration has been central to the U.S. nation-building project. The colonization of North America occurred through the establishment of settlements by European migrants in “the New World.” The United States has also repeatedly sought labor from abroad in its quest for economic development. This import of labor has taken many different forms in the course of U.S. history, from the slave labor of Africans to the migrant labor of Europeans. In the contemporary United States, the labor market includes workers from abroad who toil in low-wage jobs in the agriculture and service industries, as well as high-skilled foreign professionals who are actively recruited by U.S. companies that are anxious to remain competitive in the global economy. Across these different circumstances, immigrants have been a vital part of the U.S. economy, past and present.

The importance of immigration to U.S. nation-building is also reflected in the country’s ethos of national identity. Scholars often describe the United States as having an official doctrine of civic nationalism; it is adherence to shared civic values, such as commitment to freedom of religion, that binds the nation together. Civic nationalism signals the identity of America as an immigrant-receiving society. It suggests receptivity to the integration of immigrants, especially in contrast to ethnic nationalism, in which it is the idea of shared ancestry that gives meaning to national identity and community. More generally, immigration has been a key theme in the myths, symbols, and narratives of U.S. nationalism.

Underlying the idea of America as an immigrant country is a larger one—that of American exceptionalism. In this overarching narrative, the United States is an exceptional, even unique, country in human history and worldly affairs. It is a refuge of liberty, a moral leader that has been anointed by Divine Providence to assume a place of political and economic supremacy in the world. From the historical conquest of Native American lands to contemporary military campaigns abroad, American exceptionalism has provided “an unlimited charter for a kind of explicitly and sanctimoniously ‘anti-colonial’ imperialism” (De Genova 2012: 252). It has, in short, shrouded the nation’s exercise of power in a veil of moral imperative.

The narrative of American exceptionalism is deeply entwined with that of America as an immigrant country. It is a country that in its special greatness, its commitment to freedom and opportunity, attracts people from all over the world. Consider, for example, the Statue of Liberty, that icon of American freedom, and the verse by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed beneath it:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!²

The Statue of Liberty represents the idea of America as an immigrant nation. As it symbolically beckons immigrants to its shores, it also affirms the idea of America as a land of opportunity—of the American Dream. It is a place where dreams can come true, where immigrants can achieve success through hard work and determination. As they do so they also become American, merging into the great “melting pot” of America. Indeed, the exceptionalism of America stems also from its capacity to assimilate, to effectively integrate newcomers into its midst. In 1782, the French-American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur published an influential volume of narrative essays entitled Letters from an American Farmer in which he wrote:

What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country … He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.³

Nested in American exceptionalism, the notion of America as an immigrant country can mask the significance of larger political and economic conditions in shaping migration flows and settlements. That is, if America as a land of freedom and opportunity has attracted immigrants, it is also the case that America has actively sought immigrants to meet ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• TitlePage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Race–Immigration Nexus
• 2 Immigration Policy and Racial Formations
• 3 Race and the Occupational Strategies of Immigrants
• 4 Immigrant Identities and Racial Hierarchies
• Conclusions: Race, Immigration, and the American Dream
• Notes
• References
• Index