The image of the "underclass," framed by persistent poverty, long-term joblessness, school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and drug use, has become synonymous with urban poverty. But does this image tell us enough about how the diverse minorities among the urban poor actually experience and cope with poverty? No, say the contributors to In the Barrios. Their portraits of eight Latino communities—in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Albuquerque, Laredo, and Tucson—reveal a far more complex reality.

In the Barrios responds directly to current debates on the origins of the "underclass" and depicts the cultural, demographic, and historical forces that have shaped poor Latino communities. These neighborhoods share many hardships, yet they manifest no "typical" form of poverty. Instead, each group adapts its own cultural and social resources to the difficult economic circumstances of American urban life. The editors point to continued immigration as an issue of overriding importance in understanding urban Latino poverty. Newcomers to concentrated Latino areas build a local economy that provides affordable amenities and promotes ethnic institutional development. In many of these neighborhoods, a network of emotional as well as economic support extends across families and borders.

The first major assessment of inner-city Latino communities in the United States, In the Barrios will change the way we approach the current debate on urban poverty, immigration, and the underclass.

JOAN MOORE is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

RAQUEL PINDERHUGHES is assistant professor of urban studies at San Francisco State University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Norma Stoltz Chinchilla, Phillip Gonzales, Guillermo J. Grenier, Nora Hamilton, James Loucky, Joan Moore, Felix M. Padilla, Raquel Pinderhughes, Nestor P. Rodriquez, Alex Stepick, Mercer Sullivan, Avelardo Valdez, Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez, James Diego Vigil.

Have the last two decades produced a New York composed of two separate and unequal cities? As the contributors to Dual City reveal, the complexity of inequality in New York defies simple distinctions between black and white, the Yuppies and the homeless. The city's changing economic structure has intersected with an increasingly diversified population, providing upward mobility for some groups while isolating others. As race, gender, ethnicity, and class become ever more critical components of the postindustrial city, the New York experience illuminates not just one great city, or indeed all large cities, but the forces affecting most of the globe.

"The authors constitute an impressive assemblage of seasoned scholars, representing a wide array of pertinent disciplines. Their product is a pioneering volume in the social sciences and urban studies...the twenty-page bibliography is a major research tool on its own." —Choice

JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF is associate professor of political science at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

MANUEL CASTELLS is professor of planning at the University of California, Berkeley and professor of sociology at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.

CONTRIBUTORS: Thomas Bailey, Charles Brecher, Steven Brint, Manuel Castells, Frank DeGiovanni, Matthew Drennan, Stephen Duncombe, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Norman Fainstein, Susan Fainstein, Ian Gordon, Michael Harloe, Richard Harris, Raymond Horton, Sarah Ludwig, Lorraine Minnite, John Mollenkopf, Mitchell Moss, Saskia Sassen, Edward Soja, Mercer Sullivan, Ida Susser, and Roger Waldinger

"In this rigorous piece of scholarship, Model manages to cut through the myths and stereotypes that surround the issue of West Indian American economic achievement. Meticulously examining how the 'West Indian advantage' actually works, West Indian Immigrants is not only a welcome addition to the literature on Caribbean Americans, but also a thoughtful discussion of what West Indian success implies, and does not imply, about native African Americans."
-PHILIP KASINITZ, CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College

"Suzanne Model's West Indian Immigrants is a tour de force, a masterpiece of sociological logic. With exquisite detective work, Model, who proves herself to be a social science equivalent of Hercule Poirot, is able to solve a theoretical mystery that has endured for decades. By showing us definitively the sources of West Indian success in the United States, Model reveals also the continuing power of race to determine life chances."
-RICHARD ALBA, State University of New York at Albany

"Suzanne Model has provided us with a finely-honed demolition of a series of myths, 'wisdoms,' and canards that surround the West Indian immigrant experience in the United States. Cultural determinist explanations for West Indian racial 'exceptionalism' undergo comprehensive destruction. Model argues convincingly that the West Indian experience is better understood in comparison with the general pattern and trajectory of post-Civil War immigrant histories in the United States than in comparison with the African American experience. This is an important book."
-WILLIAM DARITY, Duke University

West Indian immigrants to the United States fare better than native-born African Americans on a wide array of economic measures, including labor force participation, earnings, and occupational prestige. Some researchers argue that the root of this difference lies in differing cultural attitudes toward work, while others maintain that white Americans favor West Indian blacks over African Americans, giving them an edge in the workforce. Still others hold that West Indians who emigrate to this country are more ambitious and talented than those they left behind. In West Indian Immigrants,  sociologist Suzanne Model subjects these theories to close historical and empirical scrutiny to unravel the mystery of West Indian success.

West Indian Immigrants draws on four decades of national census data, surveys of Caribbean emigrants around the world, and historical records dating back to the emergence of the slave trade. Model debunks the notion that growing up in an all-black society is an advantage by showing that immigrants from racially homogeneous and racially heterogeneous areas have identical economic outcomes. Weighing the evidence for white American favoritism, Model compares West Indian immigrants in New York, Toronto, London, and Amsterdam, and finds that, despite variation in the labor markets and ethnic composition of these cities, Caribbean immigrants in these four cities attain similar levels of economic success. Model also looks at “movers” and “stayers” from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana, and finds that emigrants leaving all four countries have more education and hold higher status jobs than those who remain. In this sense, West Indians immigrants are not so different from successful native-born African Americans who have moved within the U.S. to further their careers. Both West Indian immigrants and native-born African-American movers are the “best and the brightest”—they are more literate and hold better jobs than those who stay put. While political debates about the nature of black disadvantage in America have long fixated on West Indians’ relatively favorable economic position, this crucial finding reveals a fundamental flaw in the argument that West Indian success is proof of native-born blacks’ behavioral shortcomings. Proponents of this viewpoint have overlooked the critical role of immigrant self-selection.

West Indian Immigrants is a sweeping historical narrative and definitive empirical analysis that promises to change the way we think about what it means to be a black American. Ultimately, Model shows that West Indians aren’t a black success story at all—rather, they are an immigrant success story.

SUZANNE MODEL is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"Finding a balance between loyalty to a national and an ethnic or religious category is a central issue in modern democracies. Just Schools addresses this problem with evidence, insight, and wisdom."
-JEROME KAGAN, Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

"Everyone supports equality, freedom and fairness, in schools and out. As Martha Minow, Richard A. Shweder, and Hazel Rose Markus show, however, there are important tensions embedded in these concepts. Is it fair for schools to encourage all students to develop common values as citizens of one nation, or is it more fair for schools to allow students from diverse groups to pursue their sometimes divergent values? Is it fair for schools to devote substantially more resources to disadvantaged students in an attempt to overcome social hierarchies, or is it more fair for schools to sort students hierarchically according to ability and hard work? The book moves beyond slogans to explore the sometimes conflicting values embedded in our commitments to equality, freedom, and fairness. The distinguished contributors provide both clear conceptual accounts and illuminating empirical descriptions of communities struggling with these conflicts. Contemporary discussions of education policy and practice too often assume that we all agree on the aims of education, such that we can simply figure out which methods work and then allocate resources accordingly. Just Schools reminds us that deeper reflection and debate about aims is also required, especially in a society as diverse as ours."
-STANTON WORTHAM, Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

Educators and policymakers who share the goal of equal opportunity in schools often hold differing notions of what entails a just school in multicultural America. Some emphasize the importance of integration and uniform treatment for all, while others point to the benefits of honoring cultural diversity in ways that make minority students feel at home. In Just Schools, noted legal scholars, educators, and social scientists examine schools with widely divergent methods of fostering equality in order to explore the possibilities and limits of equal education today.

The contributors to Just Schools combine empirical research with rich ethnographic accounts to paint a vivid picture of the quest for justice in classrooms around the nation. Legal scholar Martha Minow considers the impact of school choice reforms on equal educational opportunities. Psychologist Hazel Rose Markus examines culturally sensitive programs where students exhibit superior performance on standardized tests and feel safer and more interested in school than those in color-blind programs. Anthropologist Heather Lindkvist reports on how Somali Muslims in Lewiston, Maine, invoked the American ideal of inclusiveness in winning dress-code exemptions and accommodations for Islamic rituals in the local public school.  Political scientist Austin Sarat looks at a school system in which everyone endorses multiculturalism but holds conflicting views on the extent to which culturally sensitive practices should enter into the academic curriculum. Anthropologist Barnaby Riedel investigates how a private Muslim school in Chicago aspires to universalist ideals, and education scholar James Banks argues that schools have a responsibility to prepare students for citizenship in a multicultural society. Anthropologist John Bowen offers a nuanced interpretation of educational commitments in France and the headscarf controversy in French schools. Anthropologist Richard Shweder concludes the volume by connecting debates about diversity in schools with a broader conflict between national assimilation and cultural autonomy.

As America’s schools strive to accommodate new students from around the world, Just Schools provides a provocative and insightful look at the different ways we define and promote justice in schools and in society at large.

MARTHA MINOW is Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

RICHARD A. SHWEDER is William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.

HAZEL ROSE MARKUS is Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychology and director of the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: James A. Banks, John R. Bowen, Heather L. Lindkvist, Barnaby Riedel, Austin Sarat. 

"Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City is an exemplary contribution to the literature on international migration, Asian American studies, ethnic economies, and ethnic conflict. It advances our understanding of the social position of Korean American business owners from the early 1990s to the present and in so doing provides a timely portrait of contemporary conditions in urban America."
-JOURNAL OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

"Min has provided a highly readable account of how Korean business owners collectively handle their relationships with other ethnic groups. It reminds us that the study of ethnic businesses should also explore their collective activities."
-AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

"In Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival, Pyong Gap Min draws on ethnography, in-depth interviews, survey research and an analysis of the ethnic and mainstream press between the 1980s and the present to explore a paradigmatic case of immigrant entrepreneurship-that of Korean greengrocers in New York. Min's research shows how the entrepreneurs relied on high levels of ethnic solidarity to address their conflicts with white suppliers, black customers. and government agencies. Once conflicts subsided, so did levels of ethnic solidarity. This elegantly theorized book adds considerably to our understanding of the Korean-American experience, ethnic entrepreneurship, and contemporary urban America."
-STEVEN J. GOLD, professor, graduate program director, and associate chair, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University

"Pyong Gap Min's Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival returns to and amplifies our knowledge of the celebrated black-Korean economic conflicts of the early 1990s in New York City. Here finally is the scholarly follow-up that explains why those ethnic conflicts ended. However, Min's richly detailed book also disperses persistent misunderstandings of the whole era by showing that Korean immigrant entrepreneurs had collective conflicts with whites and Latinos as well as blacks in that stormy period. In explaining all this, with very rich evidence, Min criticizes a social science community that has paid lip service to the role of ethnic organizations without empirically examining that role .... Min depicts a gritty ethic entrepreneurship as it is, not as it's supposed to be."
-IVAN LIGHT, professor of sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

"Based on more than fifteen years of fieldwork in New York City, in-depth surveys, and secondary sources (census data, newspapers), Min has written the definitive social history of Korean small businesses and their struggles and also breathed new life into middleman minority theory. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival will be required reading for scholars and student in immigrant and ethic studies and also in economic sociology."
-CHARLES HIRSCHMAN, Boeing International Professsor of Sociology and Public Affairs, University of Washington

Generations of immigrants have relied on small family businesses in their pursuit of the American dream. This entrepreneurial tradition remains highly visible among Korean immigrants in New York City, who have carved out a thriving business niche for themselves operating many of the city’s small grocery stores and produce markets. But this success has come at a price, leading to dramatic, highly publicized conflicts between Koreans and other ethnic groups. In Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival, Pyong Gap Min takes Korean produce retailers as a case study to explore how involvement in ethnic businesses—especially where it collides with the economic interests of other ethnic groups—powerfully shapes the social, cultural, and economic unity of immigrant groups.

Korean produce merchants, caught between white distributors, black customers, Hispanic employees, and assertive labor unions, provide a unique opportunity to study the formation of group solidarity in the face of inter-group conflicts. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival draws on census and survey data, interviews with community leaders and merchants, and a review of ethnic newspaper articles to trace the growth and evolution of Korean collective action in response to challenges produce merchants received from both white suppliers and black customers.

When Korean produce merchants first attempted to gain a foothold in the city’s economy, they encountered pervasive discrimination from white wholesale suppliers at Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. In response, Korean merchants formed the Korean Produce Association (KPA), a business organization that gradually evolved into a powerful engine for promoting Korean interests. The KPA used boycotts, pickets, and group purchasing to effect enduring improvements in supplier-merchant relations.

Pyong Gap Min returns to the racially charged events surrounding black boycotts of Korean stores in the 1990s, which were fueled by frustration among African Americans at a perceived economic invasion of their neighborhoods. The Korean community responded with rallies, political negotiations, and publicity campaigns of their own. The disappearance of such disputes in recent years has been accompanied by a corresponding reduction in Korean collective action, suggesting that ethnic unity is not inevitable but rather emerges, often as a form of self-defense, under certain contentious conditions. Solidarity, Min argues, is situational.

This important new book charts a novel course in immigrant research by demonstrating how business conflicts can give rise to demonstrations of group solidarity. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival is at once a sophisticated empirical analysis and a riveting collection of stories—about immigration, race, work, and the American dream.

PYONG GAP MIN is professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Sharp decreases in union membership over the last fifty years have caused many to dismiss organized labor as irrelevant in today’s labor market. In the private sector, only 8 percent of workers today are union members, down from 24 percent as recently as 1973. Yet developments in Southern California—including the successful Justice for Janitors campaign—suggest that reports of organized labor’s demise may have been exaggerated. In L.A. Story, sociologist and labor expert Ruth Milkman explains how Los Angeles, once known as a company town hostile to labor, became a hotbed for unionism, and how immigrant service workers emerged as the unlikely leaders in the battle for workers’ rights.

L.A. Story shatters many of the myths of modern labor with a close look at workers in four industries in Los Angeles: building maintenance, trucking, construction, and garment production. Though many blame deunionization and deteriorating working conditions on immigrants, Milkman shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Her analysis reveals that worsening work environments preceded the influx of foreign-born workers, who filled the positions only after native-born workers fled these suddenly undesirable jobs. Ironically, L.A. Story shows that immigrant workers, who many union leaders feared were incapable of being organized because of language constraints and fear of deportation, instead proved highly responsive to organizing efforts. As Milkman demonstrates, these mostly Latino workers came to their service jobs in the United States with a more group-oriented mentality than the American workers they replaced. Some also drew on experience in their native countries with labor and political struggles. This stock of fresh minds and new ideas, along with a physical distance from the east-coast centers of labor’s old guard, made Los Angeles the center of a burgeoning workers’ rights movement.

Los Angeles’ recent labor history highlights some of the key ingredients of the labor movement’s resurgence—new leadership, latitude to experiment with organizing techniques, and a willingness to embrace both top-down and bottom-up strategies. L.A. Story’s clear and thorough assessment of these developments points to an alternative, high-road national economic agenda that could provide workers with a way out of poverty and into the middle class.

RUTH MILKMAN is professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Despite ongoing efforts to maintain ethical standards, highly publicized episodes of corporate misconduct occur with disturbing frequency. Firms produce defective products, release toxic substances into the environment, or permit dangerous conditions to existin their workplaces. The propensity for irresponsible acts is not confined to rogue companies, but crops up in even the most respectable firms. Codes of Conduct is the first comprehensive attempt to understand these problems by applying the principles of modern behavioral science to the study of organizational behavior.

Codes of Conduct probes the psychological and social processes through which companies and their managers respond to a wide array of ethical dilemmas, from risk and safety management to the treatment of employees. The contributors employ a wide range of case studies to illustrate the effects of social influence and group persuasion, organizational authority and communication, fragmented responsibility, and the process of rationalization. John Darley investigates how unethical acts are unintentionally assembled within organizations as a result of cascading pressures and social processes. Essays by Roderick Kramer and David Messick and by George Loewenstein focus on irrational decision making among managers. Willem Wagenaar examines how worker safety is endangered by management decisions that focus too narrowly on cost cutting and short time horizons. Essays by Baruch Fischhoff and by Robyn Dawes review the role of the expert in assessing environmental risk.

Robert Bies reviews evidence that employees are more willing to provide personal information and to accept affirmative action programs if they are consulted on the intended procedures and goals. Stephanie Goodwin and Susan Fiske discuss how employees can be educated to base office judgments on personal qualities rather than on generalizations of gender, race, and ethnicity. Codes of Conduct makes an important scientific contribution to the understanding of decisionmaking and social processes in business, and offers clear insights into the design of effective policies to improve ethical conduct.

DAVID M. MESSICK is at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

ANN E. TENBRUNSEL is at the College of Business Administration, University of Notre Dame.

CONTRIBUTORS: Jonathan Baron, Max H. Bazerman, Maura A. Belliveau, Francisco J. Benzoni, Robert J. Bies, Marilynn B. Brewer, Robert B. Cialdini, John M. Darley, Robyn M. Dawes, Thomas Donaldson, Baruch Fischhoff, Susan T. Fiske, Robert H. Frank, Stephanie A. Goodwin, Russell Hardin, Helmut Jungermann, Joshua Klayman, Roderick M. Kramer, George Loewenstein, Robert Mauro, Ann L. McGill, David M. Messick, Myron Rothbart, Ann E. Tenbrunsel, Tom R. Tyler, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Willem A. Wagenaar, and Patricia H. Werhane.

"Culture and Resource Conflict will be of great value to people interested in the roots of intergroup conflict, in cultural psychology, and in the way that the human mind operates to understand the physical and social environment."
-RICHARD E. NISBETT, Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

"A dazzling and singular contribution to two disciplines, bringing rich and disarmingly personal ethnography to psychology, and rigorous cognitive science to ethnology. By far the best collaboration of psychologists and anthropologists to date, providing a unique and innovative purchase on the tragedy of the commons. Culture and Resource Conflict will be the gold standard of interdisciplinary work for a long time to come."
-LAWRENCE A. HIRSCHFELD, professor of anthropology and of psychology, New School for Social Research

In a multi-cultural society, differing worldviews among groups can lead to conflict over competing values and behaviors. Nowhere is this tension more concrete than in the wilderness, where people of different cultures hunt and fish for the same animals. White Americans tend to see nature as something external which they have some responsibility to care for. In contrast, Native Americans are more likely to see themselves as one with nature. In Culture and Resource Conflict, authors Douglas Medin, Norbert Ross, and Douglas Cox investigate the discord between whites and Menominee American Indians over hunting and fishing, and in the process, contribute to our understanding of how and why cultures so often collide.

Based on detailed ethnographic and experimental research, Culture and Resource Conflict finds that Native American and European American hunters and fishermen have differing approaches—or mental models—with respect to fish and game, and that these differences lead to misunderstanding, stereotyping, and conflict. Menominee look at the practice of hunting and fishing for sport as a sign of a lack of respect for nature. Whites, on the other hand, define respect for nature more on grounds of resource management and conservation. Some whites believe—contrary to fact—that Native Americans are depleting animal populations with excessive hunting and fishing, while the Menominee protest that they only hunt what they need and make extensive use of their catch. Yet the authors find that, despite these differences, the two groups share the fundamental underlying goal of preserving fish and game for future generations, and both groups see hunting and fishing as deeply meaningful activities. At its core, the conflict between these two groups is more about mistrust and stereotyping than actual disagreement over values.

Combining the strengths of psychology and anthropology, Culture and Resource Conflict shows how misunderstandings about the motives of others can lead to hostility and conflict. As debates over natural resources rage worldwide, this unique book demonstrates the obstacles that must be overcome for different groups to reach consensus over environmental policy.

DOUGLAS L. MEDIN is professor of psychology and education and social policy at Northwestern University.

NORBERT O. ROSS is assistant professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University.

DOUGLAS G. COX is an environmental specialist at the Hilary J. Waukau Environmental Services Center on the Menominee reservation in Wisconsin.

"Bill Maurer has a unique talent for communicating the most sophisticated theoretical con cepts in ways that can be brought to bear upon pressing social issues. Pious Property engages with matters of immediate political concern in a way that is both remarkably sensitive to the complexities of the issues and yet always accessible to a broad readership. Along the way, it provides a powerful demonstration of the unique contributions ethnography can make to our understanding of cutting edge policy problems."
-ANNELISE RILES, professor of anthropology and law, Cornell University

"How do Muslims in the United States finance their homes? And by what means, given the religious injunction against interest, do Islamic bankers make mortgages available to their cli ents? In this fascinating, highly accessible new book, Bill Maurer, one of the most imaginative anthropologists of his generation, shows us how the ordinary practice of house-buying illumi nates contemporary Islamic law and, yet more significantly, the cultural citizenship of Muslim Americans in the delicate years since 9/11. Breaking with received social science concepts, Pious Property offers an intriguing analysis of the way in which home finance, filtered through Islam, has acquired a 'charisma of form' at the point of intersection between the religious and secular. In so doing, it succeeds splendidly-and importantly-in unsettling Euro-American stereotypes of Islam and Muslims."
-JOHN COMAROFF, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, and senior research fellow, American Bar Foundation

"Pious Property is a magnificent contribution to the growing literature on Muslims in the United States. Accessible, cogent, and original, by a leading anthropologist of law and society, this book provides valuable insight into the marriage of pragmatism and idealism evident in the expansion of Islamic financial instruments. By touching on the historical debates about the sinfulness of interest-bearing debt in Christian terms, Bill Maurer draws significant parallels and makes sense of how the contemporary context of opportunity (the American dream) conditions the evolution of Muslim practices in the United States. This book will bring the study of American Islam to the fore of mainstream scholarship about the relationship between law, religion, and economics."
-KATHLEEN M. MOORE, associate professor and chair, Law and Society Program, University of California, Santa Barbara

Owning a home has always been central to the American dream. For the more than one million Muslims in the United States, this is no exception. However, the Qur'an forbids the payment of interest, which places conventional home financing out of reach for observant Muslims. To meet the growing Muslim demand for home purchases, a market for home financing that would be halal, or permissible under Islamic law, has emerged. In Pious Property, anthropologist William Maurer profiles the emergence of this new religiously based financial service and explores the ways it reflects the influence of Muslim practices on American economic life and vice versa.

Pious Property charts the development of Islamic mortgages in America, starting with Islamic interpretations of the prohibition against riba—literally translated as "increase" but interpreted as "usury" or "interest." Maurer then explores the different practices that have emerged as permissible options for Islamic homebuyers—such as lease-to-own arrangements, profit-loss sharing, and cost-plus contracts—and explains how they have gained acceptance in the Islamic community by relying on payment schemes that avoid standard interest rate payments. Using interviews with Muslim homebuyers and financiers, and in-depth analysis of two companies that provide mortgage alternatives to Muslims, Maurer discovers an interesting paradox: progressive Muslims tend to use financial contracts that seemingly comply better with the prohibition against interest, while traditional Muslims seem more inclined to take on financing very similar to interest-based mortgages. Maurer finds that Muslims make their decisions about using Islamic mortgage alternatives based not only on the views of religious scholars, but also on their conceptions of how business is supposed to be conducted in America. While one form of Islamic financing is seemingly more congruent with the prohibition against riba, the other exhibits more of the qualities of American mortgages—anonymity and standardized forms. The appearance that an Islamic financing instrument is legal and professional leaves many Muslim homebuyers with the impression that it is halal, revealing the influence of American capitalism on Muslim Americans’ understanding of their religious rules.

The market for halal financial products exists at the intersection of American and Islamic culture and is emblematic of the way that, for centuries, America's newcomers have adapted to and changed the fabric of American life. In Pious Property, William Maurer explores this rapidly growing economic phenomenon with historical perspective and scholarly insight.

BILL MAURER is associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.
 

Winner of the 2004 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography

Honorarble Mention 2004 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

"Beyond Smoke and Mirrors is a book that needed to be written. The authors have achieved an extraordinary synthesis of hard facts and social theory and brought it to bear on the current state of immigration to the United States. Whoever wishes to understand the chaos that well-intended but misinformed immigration policies have produced should read this book; whoever wants to know what needs to be done to correct the situation should make it a top priority."
-ALEJANDRO PORTES, Princeton University

"Douglas Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan Malone provide a fresh perspective of Mexican migration history by systematically tracing the predictable consequences of highly unsystematic policy regimes. The authors provide an incisive diagnosis of the current policy dilemma by marshalling new and compelling evidence to expose the flagrant contradiction of allowing the free flow of goods and capital, but not people, and they argue for much-needed policy reforms. This highly accessible volume is a must read for students of U.S .- Mexico relations."
-MARTA TIENDA, Princeton University

"Beyond Smoke and Mirrors is the most comprehensive, penetrating, and interesting treatment yet written of the origins and changes in both Mexican migration to the United States and U.S. migration policies in the post-World War II period. Offering pioneering analyses and provocative policy proposals, as well as a wealth of information about the contexts within which migration takes place and policies become formulated and adopted, the book is 'must' reading not only for students and faculty but also scholars and policymakers."
-FRANK D. BEAN, University of California, Irvine

Migration between Mexico and the United States is part of a historical process of increasing North American integration. This process acquired new momentum with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which lowered barriers to the movement of goods, capital, services, and information. But rather than include labor in this new regime, the United States continues to resist the integration of the labor markets of the two countries. Instead of easing restrictions on Mexican labor, the United States has militarized its border and adopted restrictive new policies of immigrant disenfranchisement. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors examines the devastating impact of these immigration policies on the social and economic fabric of the Mexico and the United States, and calls for a sweeping reform of the current system.

Beyond Smoke and Mirrors shows how U.S. immigration policies enacted between 1986–1996—largely for symbolic domestic political purposes—harm the interests of Mexico, the United States, and the people who migrate between them. The costs have been high. The book documents how the massive expansion of border enforcement has wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives, yet has not deterred increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants from heading north. The authors also show how the new policies unleashed a host of unintended consequences: a shift away from seasonal, circular migration toward permanent settlement; the creation of a black market for Mexican labor; the transformation of Mexican immigration from a regional phenomenon into a broad social movement touching every region of the country; and even the lowering of wages for legal U.S. residents. What had been a relatively open and benign labor process before 1986 was transformed into an exploitative underground system of labor coercion, one that lowered wages and working conditions of undocumented migrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens alike.

Beyond Smoke and Mirrors offers specific proposals for repairing the damage. Rather than denying the reality of labor migration, the authors recommend regularizing it and working to manage it so as to promote economic development in Mexico, minimize costs and disruptions for the United States, and maximize benefits for all concerned. This book provides an essential "user's manual" for readers seeking a historical, theoretical, and substantive understanding of how U.S. policy on Mexican immigration evolved to its current dysfunctional state, as well as how it might be fixed.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

JORGE DURAND is professor and investigator in the Department for the Study of Social Movements at the Universidad de Guadalajara.

NOLAN J. MALONE is a doctoral candidate in demography at the University of Pennsylvania.