The Hispanic population in the United States is a richly diverse and changing segment of our national community. Frank Bean and Marta Tienda emphasize a shifting cluster of populations—Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central and South American, Spanish, and Caribbean—as they examine fertility and immigration, family and marriage patterns, education, earnings, and employment. They discuss, for instance, the effectiveness of bilingual education, recommending instead culturally supportive programs that will benefit both Hispanic and non-Hispanic students. A study of the geographic distribution of Hispanics shows that their tendency to live in metropolitan areas may, in fact, result in an isolation which denies them equal access to schooling, jobs, and health care.

Bean and Tienda offer a critical, much-needed assessment of how Hispanics are faring and what the issues for the future will be. Their findings reveal and reflect differences in the Hispanic population that will influence policy decisions and affect the Hispanic community on regional and national levels.

"...represents the state of the art for quantitative analysis of ethnic groups in the United States." —American Journal of Sociology

FRANK D. BEAN is Ashbel Smith Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin, and codirector of the Program for Research on Immigration Policy at the Urban Institute.

MARTA TIENDA is professor of sociology and subdirector of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago.

A Volume in the RSF Census Series

"From A to Z, from Richard Alba to Min Zhou, this is an impressive and important book. Between its covers are assessments by some of America's most skilled analysts of a liberal conundrum and one of the thorniest problems facing our society today: the effects of immigration on the lives and prospects of African Americans."
-Contemporary Sociology

The American dream of equal opportunity and social mobility still holds a powerful appeal for the many immigrants who arrive in this country each year. but if immigrant success stories symbolize the fulfillment of the American dream, the persistent inequality suffered by native-born African Americans demonstrates the dream's limits. Although the experience of blacks and immigrants in the United States are not directly comparable, their fates are connected in ways that are seldom recognized. Immigration and Opportunity brings together leading sociologists and demographers to present a systematic account of the many ways in which immigration affects the labor market experiences of native-born African Americans.

With the arrival of large numbers of nonwhite immigrants in recent decades, blacks now represent less than 50 percent of the U.S. minority population. Immigration and Opportunity reveals how immigration has transformed relations between minority populations in the United States, creating new forms of labor market competition between native and immigrant minorities. Recent immigrants have concentrated in a handful of port-of-entry cities, breaking up established patterns of residential segregation,and, in some cases, contributing to the migration of native blacks out of these cities. Immigrants have secured many of the occupational niches once dominated by blacks and now pass these jobs on through ethnic hiring networks that exclude natives. At the same time, many native-born blacks find jobs in the public sector, which is closed to those immigrants who lack U.S. citizenship.

While recent immigrants have unquestionably brought economic and cultural benefits to U.S. society, this volume makes it clear that the costs of increased immigration falls particularly heavily upon those native-born groups who are already disadvantaged. Even as large-scale immigration transforms the racial and ethnic make-up of U.S. society—forcing us to think about race and ethnicity in new ways—it demands that we pay renewed attention to the entrenched problems of racial disadvantage that still beset native-born African Americans.

FRANK D. BEAN is professor of sociology and director of the Immigration Policy Research Project at the University of California, Irvine.

STEPHANIE BELL-ROSE was formerly legal counsel and program officer at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard D. Alba, Barry Edmonston, Walter C. Farrell Jr., Mark A. Fossett, William H. Frey, Jennifer E. Glick, Jomas H. Johnson, Karen D. Johnson-Webb, John R. Logan, Jeffrey S. Passel, Alejandro Portes, Michael J. Rosenfeld, Marta Tienda, Jennifer Van Hook, Roger Waldinger, Mary C. Water, Michael J. White, Franklin D. Wilson, Min Zhou.

A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology

Winner of the 2003 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography

"Bean and Stevens's authoritative book provides an astute and carefully balanced analysis of the continuous interaction between migration and American society."
-ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES

America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity provides a well-researched, accessible, and policy-relevant investigation of the broader impact of recent immigration on American society. It is a must read for scholars of migration and race and ethnicity, and it will make an excellent textbook for use in upper division and graduate-level classes in the social sciences, history, and related disciplines."
-AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

"The singular accomplishment of this impressive volume is its simultaneous consideration of the two anxieties that continue to vex sound immigration policy-that newcomers undermine economic prosperity; that they increase ethnic tensions and fragmentation. Policy-making will find here a much needed empirically rich, nuanced treatment of economic and cultural issues."
-KENNETH PREWITT, Columbia University

A timely, insightful, and comprehensive book by some of the leading and most experienced scholars on American immigration. America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity should be immediately placed in the 'must read' box of scholars and students alike."
-JAMES P. SMITH, RAND

"If I could recommend a curriculum for decisionmakers new to immigration issues, this volume would be my choice. By examining all the key issues, scholarship, and perceptions that surround immigration, and by applying clear-eyed, non-ideological analysis to them, the authors have provided important new insights for long-time students of the issues, as well as a practical policy handbook for real-world actors."
-DORIS MEISSNER, Migration Policy Institute

"Now in the midst of the largest immigration wave ever, the United States is, it seems, the only post industrial democracy in the world where immigration is both history and destiny. Over the last couple of decades this 'new immigration' has generated important new empirical, conceptual, and theoretical work. America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity is a critical addition to this new corpus of scholarship. The authors raise important new questions and proceed to deploy carefully crafted empirical data to systematically enhance our understanding of the complex dynamics at hand. The senior author is one of sociology's maitre penseurs and it shows: America's Newcomers will become a standard reference to social scientists, policy makers, and the informed public at large about one of the most important and urgent social concerns of our times. It is an exquisite achievement."
-MARCELO M. SUÁREZ-OROZCO, Harvard University

The attacks of September 11, 2001, facilitated by easy entry and lax immigration controls, cast into bold relief the importance and contradictions of U.S. immigration policy. Will we have to restrict immigration for fear of future terrorist attacks? On a broader scale, can the country's sense of national identity be maintained in the face of the cultural diversity that today's immigrants bring? How will the resulting demographic, social, and economic changes affect U.S. residents? As the debate about immigration policy heats up, it has become more critical than ever to examine immigration's role in our society. With a comprehensive social scientific assessment of immigration over the past thirty years, America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity provides the clearest picture to date of how immigration has actually affected the United States, while refuting common misconceptions and predicting how it might affect us in the future.

Frank Bean and Gillian Stevens show how, on the whole, immigration has been beneficial for the United States. Although about one million immigrants arrive each year, the job market has expanded sufficiently to absorb them without driving down wages significantly or preventing the native-born population from finding jobs. Immigration has not led to welfare dependency among immigrants, nor does evidence indicate that welfare is a magnet for immigrants. With the exception of unauthorized Mexican and Central American immigrants, studies show that most other immigrant groups have attained sufficient earnings and job mobility to move into the economic mainstream. Many Asian and Latino immigrants have established ethnic networks while maintaining their native cultural practices in the pursuit of that goal. While this phenomenon has led many people to believe that today's immigrants are slow to enter mainstream society, Bean and Stevens show that intermarriage and English language proficiency among these groups are just as high—if not higher—as among prior waves of European immigrants. America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity concludes by showing that the increased racial and ethnic diversity caused by immigration may be helping to blur the racial divide in the United States, transforming the country from a biracial to multi-ethnic and multi-racial society. Replacing myth with fact, America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity contains a wealth of information and belongs on the bookshelves of policymakers, pundits, scholars, students, and anyone who is concerned about the changing face of the United States.

FRANK D. BEAN is professor of sociology and director, Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy, University of California, Irvine.

GILLIAN STEVENS is associate professor of sociology at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States examines in comprehensive detail the most rapidly growing and quickly changing minority group in the United States. Once a small population, this group is now recognized by official census counts and by society as a diverse people, comprised of Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Samoans, and many other heritages. However, the conception that Asians are a single and successful model minority still exists, though they are in fact a complex and multidimensional people still struggling in the pursuit of the American dream.

"...a major addition to the literature on recent immigration. The book is lucidly written by three demographers eager to convey their findings and analyses to general readers as well as to fellow professionals. It provides easily accessible information and useful commentary, making it an excellent resource for anyone interested in those groups now lumped together under a single Census Bureau rubric." —Choice

"This is a demographer's delight....The major question addressed in this book is: How well are the new Asian immigrants adapting to American society? Barringer, Gardner, and Levin cogently argue and convincingly demonstrate that the response to the question is much more complex than suggested by articles in the popular press....an important book and highly recommended." —Contemporary Sociology

"For the real scoop on the state of Asian America, turn to the Russell Sage Foundation's excellent Asians and Pacific Islanders of the United States. The best demographic overview, it makes a strong case for Asian-American success without overlooking genuine problems." —Reason

"...a comprehensive study of the size, diversity, and complexity of the Asian and Pacific Islander populations based on the 1980 census and subsequent mid-census assessments prior to the 1990 census....sheds a particularly interesting light on the shifting nature of recent Asian and Pacific Islander immigration and the related but often undocumented secondary movement of populations after arrival."—The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

HERBERT BARRINGER is professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii–Manoa.

ROBERT W. GARDNER was assistant director of the East-West Population Institute, Hawaii. He now teaches demography at the Harvard School of Public Health.

MICHAEL J. LEVIN is a member of the Population Division of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

A Volume in the RSF Census Series

In 1899 the great African American scholar, W.E.B. DuBois, published The Philadelphia Negro, the first systematic case study of an African American community and one of the foundations of American sociology. DuBois prophesied that the color line would be the problem of the twentieth century. One hundred years later, Problem of the Century reflects upon his prophecy, exploring the ways in which the color line is still visible in the labor market, the housing market, education, family structure, and many other aspects of life at the turn of a new century.

The book opens with a theoretical discussion of the way racial identity is constructed and institutionalized. When the government classifies races and confers group rights upon them, is it subtly reenforcing damaging racial divisions, or redressing the group privileges that whites monopolized for so long? The book also delineates the social dynamics that underpin racial inequality. The contributors explore the causes and consequences of high rates of mortality and low rates of marriage in black communities, as well as the way race affects a person's chances of economic success. African Americans may soon lose their historical position as America's majority minority, and the book also examines how race plays out in the sometimes fractious relations between blacks and immigrants. The final part of the book shows how the color line manifests itself at work and in schools. Contributors find racial issues at play on both ends of the occupational ladder—among absentee fathers paying child support from their meager earnings and among black executives prospering in the corporate world. In the schools, the book explores how race defines a student's peer group and how peer pressure affects a student's grades.

Problem of the Century draws upon the distinguished faculty of sociologists at the University of Pennsylvania, where DuBois conducted his research for The Philadelphia Negro. The contributors combine a scrupulous commitment to empirical inquiry with an eclectic openness to different methods and approaches. Problem of the Century blends ethnographies and surveys, statistics and content analyses, census data and historical records, to provide a far-reaching examination of racial inequality in all its contemporary manifestations.

ELIJAH M. ANDERSON is Charles and William Day Professor of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania.

CONTRIBUTORS: Linda H. Aiken, Ivar Berg, Mary Blair-Loy, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, Randall Colins, Kathryn Edin, Irma T. Elo, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr.,  Jerry A. Jacobs,  Grace Kao,  Robin Leidner, Janice F. Madden, Ewa Morawska, Timothy J. Nelson, Samuel H. Preston,  Douglas M. Sloane, Tukufu Zuberi.  

One of Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Books of 2000

For those interested in understanding the historical and scientific context of the census adjustment controversy, Who Counts? is absolutely essential reading. —Science

Ever since the founding fathers authorized a national headcount as the means of apportioning seats in the federal legislature, the decennial census has been a political battleground. Political power, and more recently the allocation of federal resources, depend directly upon who is counted and who is left out. Who Counts? is the story of the lawsuits, congressional hearings, and bureaucratic intrigues surrounding the 1990 census. These controversies formed largely around a single vexing question: should the method of conducting the census be modified in order to rectify the demonstrated undercount of poor urban minorities? But they also stemmed from a more general debate about the methods required to count an ever more diverse and mobile population of over two hundred million. The responses to these questions repeatedly pitted the innovations of statisticians and demographers against objections that their attempts to alter traditional methods may be flawed and even unconstitutional.

Who Counts? offers a detailed review of the preparation, implementation, and aftermath of the last three censuses. It recounts the growing criticisms of innaccuracy and undercounting, and the work to develop new enumeration strategies. The party shifts that followed national elections played an increasingly important role in the politization of the census, as the Department of Commerce asserted growing authority over the scientific endeavors of the Census Bureau. At the same time, each decade saw more city and state governments and private groups bringing suit to challenge census methodology and results. Who Counts? tracks the legal course that began in 1988, when a coalition led by New York City first sued to institute new statistical procedures in response to an alleged undercount of urban inhabitants. The challenge of accurately classifying an increasingly mixed population further threatens the legitimacy of the census, and Who Counts? investigates the difficulties of gaining unambiguous measurements of race and ethnicity, and the proposal that the race question be eliminated in favor of ethnic origin. Who Counts? concludes with a discussion of the proposed census design for 2000, as well as the implications of population counts on the composition and size of Congress. This volume reveals in extraordinary detail the interplay of law, politics, and science that propel the ongoing census debate, a debate whose outcome will have a tremendous impact on the distribution of political power and economic resources among the nation's communities.

MARGO J. ANDERSON is professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

STEPHEN E. FIENBERG is Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Change at Carnegie Mellon University.

A Volume in the RSF Census Series

New York has eight million deeply personal and unique stories of pain and perseverance from September 11, 2001. But the toll of tragedy is greater than the anguish it inflicts on individuals—communities suffer as well. In Wounded City, editor Nancy Foner brings together an accomplished group of scholars to document how a broad range of communities—residential, occupational, ethnic, and civic—were affected and changed by the World Trade Center attacks.

Using survey data and in-depth ethnographies, the book offers sophisticated analysis and gives voice to the human experiences behind the summary statistics, revealing how the nature of these communities shaped their response to the disaster. Sociologists Philip Kasinitz, Gregory Smithsimon, and Binh Pok highlight the importance of physical space in the recovery process by comparing life after 9/11 in two neighborhoods close to ground zero—Tribeca, which is nestled close to the city’s downtown, and Battery Park City, which is geographically and structurally separated from other sections of the city. Melanie Hildebrandt looks at how social solidarity changed in a predominantly Irish, middle class community that was struck twice with tragedy: the loss of many residents on 9/11 and a deadly plane crash two months later. Jennifer Bryan shows that in the face of hostility and hate crimes, many Arab Muslims in Jersey City stressed their adherence to traditional Islam. Contributor Karen Seeley interviews psychotherapists who faced the challenge of trying to help patients deal with a tragedy that they themselves were profoundly affected by. Economist Daniel Beunza and sociologist David Stark paint a picture of organizational resilience as they detail how securities traders weathered successive crises after evacuating their downtown office and moving temporarily to New Jersey. Francesca Polletta and Lesley Wood look at a hopeful side of a horrible tragedy: civic involvement in town meetings and public deliberations to discuss what should be done to rebuild at ground zero and help New Yorkers create a better future in the footprints of disaster.

New Yorkers suffered tremendous losses on September 11, 2001: thousands of lives, billions of dollars, the symbols of their skyline, and their peace of mind. But not lost in the rubble of the World Trade Center were the residential, ethnic, occupational, and organizational communities that make up New York’s rich mosaic. Wounded City gives voice to some of those communities, showing how they dealt with unforeseen circumstances that created or deepened divisions, yet at the same brought them together in suffering and hope. It is a unique look at the aftermath of a devastating day and the vitality of a diverse city.

NANCY FONER is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

CONTRIBUTORS: Daniel Buenza, Jennifer L. Bryan, Margaret M. Chin, Monisha Das Gupta, Kai Erikson, Sandra Garcia, Irwin Garfinkel, Melanie D. Hildebrandt, Philip Kasinitz, Neeraj Kaushal, William Kornblum, Steven Lang, Binh Pok, Francesca Polletta, Julia Rothenberg, Karen Seeley, Gregory Smithsimon, David Stark, Julien Teitler, Lesley Wood.

A September 11 Initiative Volume

"Anyone serious about immigration studies needs to read this book."
-Choice

"Immigration is transforming America. It's also producing a new generation of immigration researchers, fully equipped with the tools needed to illuminate the distinctive immigrant reality of the twenty-first century. This new collection offers a first harvest of today's emerging scholarship, assembling authors from a variety of disciplines, who engage this always vital topic in new, incisive, and stimulating ways."
-ROGER WALDINGER, UCLA

"Immigration Research for a New Century offers an incredible potpourri of research on the post-1965 wave of immigrants to the United States by a new generation of younger immigration scholars. The chapters cover almost every group from high tech engineers in Silicon Valley to Nuer refugees from the Sudan in Minnesota. Many of these studies report novel findings and fresh interpretations. For example, Greta Gilbertson and Audrey Singer find that some Dominican immigrants acquire U.S. citizenship not as the final stage of settlement, but as an insurance policy before returning to the Dominican Republic. In another chapter, Jennifer Lee explains the advantages of immigrant entrepreneurs relative to African American small businesses through differential access to networks of wholesalers and suppliers. Several papers describe the organization and content of 'transnational ties' among contemporary immigrants in the United States. There are many more gems sprinkled among the chapters in this fine volume."
-CHARLES HIRSCHMAN, University of Washington, Seattle

"This thought-provoking book offers fresh, valuable insights into a wide range of issues in immigration research. A prominent characteristic and strength of this volume is the immigration research from a broad disciplinary and methodological spectrum. This fine collection should not be missed by any student of immigration."
-PHILIP Q. YANG, Contemporary Sociology

The rapid rise in immigration over the past few decades has transformed the American social landscape, while the need to understand its impact on society has led to a burgeoning research literature. Predominantly non-European and of varied cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, the new immigrants present analytic challenges that cannot be wholly met by traditional immigration studies. Immigration Research for a New Century demonstrates how sociology, anthropology, history, political science, economics, and other disciplines intersect to answer questions about today's immigrants.

In Part I, leading scholars examine the emergence of an interdisciplinary body of work that incorporates such topics as the social construction of race, the importance of ethnic self-help and economic niches, the influence of migrant-homeland ties, and the types of solidarity and conflict found among migrant populations. The authors also explore the social and national origins of immigration scholars themselves, many of whom cameof age in an era of civil rights and ethnic reaffirmation, and may also be immigrants or children of immigrants. Together these essays demonstrate how social change, new patterns of immigration, and the scholars' personal backgrounds have altered the scope and emphases of the research literature, allowing scholars to ask new questions and to see old problems in new ways.

Part II contains the work of anew generation of immigrant scholars, reflecting the scope of a field bolstered by different disciplinary styles. These essays explore the complex variety of the immigrant experience, ranging from itinerant farmworkers to Silicon Valley engineers. The demands ofthe American labor force, ethnic, racial, and gender stereotyping, and state regulation are all shown to play important roles in the economic adaptation of immigrants. The ways in which immigrants participate politically, their relationships among themselves, their attitudes toward naturalization and citizenship, and their own sense of cultural identity are also addressed.

Immigration Research for a New Century examines the complex effects that immigration has had not only on American society but on scholarship itself, and offers the fresh insights of a new generation of immigration researchers.

NANCY FONER is professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Purchase.

RUBÉN G. RUMBAUT is professor of sociology at Michigan State University.

STEVEN J. GOLD is professor and associate chair in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Steven J. Gold, Rafael Alarcon, Nancy C. Carnevale, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Josh DeWind, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Herbert J. Gans, Greta Gilbertson, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Jon D. Holtzman, Jane Junn, Kathy A. Kaufman, Fred Krissman, Gallya Lahav, Jennifer Lee, Peggy Levitt, Howard Markel, Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, George J. Sanchez, Audrey Singer, Alexandra Minna Stern, Ayumi Takemaka, Mary C. Waters, Steven S. Zahniser, Aristide R. Zolberg. 

Honorable Mention 2005 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

"[This] is the most valuable single collection that deals with the sprawling domain flagged by its subtitle: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States .... The many virtues of Not Just Black and White render it a great gift to us all."
-JOURNAL OF AMERICAN ETHNIC HISTORY

"In this marvelous volume, the leading historical and sociological thinkers consider how American ways of organizing society, culture, power, and place have framed relations among immigrants, racial minority groups, and native whites. This extraor- dinary combination of historiography, theoretical synthesis, and case studies is now the best single volume on these topics."
-JOHN MOLLENKOPF, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center

"Not Just Black and White brings some of the finest minds across the disciplines to bear on U.S. diversity in all its depth and complexity. Rare among collections of this kind, Nancy Foner and George Fredrickson's volume sets immigration in full conversation with the contiguous histories and legacies of slavery and conquest. The resulting analysis is vibrant, politically alive, rich in its provocations. This is a terrific contribution-a great tool in the classroom, to be sure, but with any luck it will leave its mark on our civic life as well."
-MATTHEW FRYE JACOBSON, professor of American studies, history, and African American studies, Yale University

"'Presentism' is too often the social scientist's abiding sin and all the more so among the students of international migration, who often tell us that today's mass migrations represent something never seen before. Unfortunately, the present is but tomorrow's past, which is why the quest to understand our own times requires systematic comparison with the mass migrations of the century that's just gone by. For just such an effort, Nancy Foner and George Fredrickson's collection of original essays by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists is the ideal source. Asking how immigration has remade those divided people we call Americans, this book yields surprising insights into both the continuities between 'now' and 'then,' as well as those qualities that make the two eras of mass migration distinct."
-ROGER WALDINGER, professor and chair, Department of Sociology, U.C.L.A.

Immigration is one of the driving forces behind social change in the United States, continually reshaping the way Americans think about race and ethnicity. How have various racial and ethnic groups—including immigrants from around the globe, indigenous racial minorities, and African Americans—related to each other both historically and today? How have these groups been formed and transformed in the context of the continuous influx of new arrivals to this country? In Not Just Black and White, editors Nancy Foner and George M. Fredrickson bring together a distinguished group of social scientists and historians to consider the relationship between immigration and the ways in which concepts of race and ethnicity have evolved in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.

Not Just Black and White opens with an examination of historical and theoretical perspectives on race and ethnicity. The late John Higham, in the last scholarly contribution of his distinguished career, defines ethnicity broadly as a sense of community based on shared historical memories, using this concept to shed new light on the main contours of American history. The volume also considers the shifting role of state policy with regard to the construction of race and ethnicity. Former U.S. census director Kenneth Prewitt provides a definitive account of how racial and ethnic classifications in the census developed over time and how they operate today. Other contributors address the concept of panethnicity in relation to whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans, and explore socioeconomic trends that have affected, and continue to affect, the development of ethno-racial identities and relations. Joel Perlmann and Mary Waters offer a revealing comparison of patterns of intermarriage among ethnic groups in the early twentieth century and those today. The book concludes with a look at the nature of intergroup relations, both past and present, with special emphasis on how America’s principal non-immigrant minority—African Americans—fits into this mosaic.

With its attention to contemporary and historical scholarship, Not Just Black and White provides a wealth of new insights about immigration, race, and ethnicity that are fundamental to our understanding of how American society has developed thus far, and what it may look like in the future.

NANCY FONER is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, State University of New York, Purchase.

GEORGE M. FREDRICKSON is Edgar E. Robinson Professor of History Emeritus, Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard Alba, James Barrett, Albert M. Camarillo, Stephen Cornell, Nancy Denton, Yen Le Espiritu, Neil Foley, Steven Gold, Douglas Hartmann, Victoria Hattam, John Higham, Jose Itzigsohn, Gerald Jaynes, Philip Kasinitz, Erika Lee, John Lie, Joel Perlmann, Kenneth Prewitt, David Roediger, Joe W. Trotter, Mary C. Waters.

"Immigrants and Welfare assembles the authoritative set of papers on the history, law, and social science of immigration and welfare reform. It is required reading as the United States prepares for an epic exploration of immigration and immigrants in a well-ordered society: How do societies recruit their members? What are the criteria for membership? What characteristics are desirable and undesirable in recruits? What characteristics merit differential treatment? How do societies mentor their recruits? How do societies put boundaries on their bounty?"
-GUILLERMINA JASSO, Silver Professor, Department of Sociology, New York University

"In the mid-1990s, the U.S. government not only 'ended welfare as we know it,' but it also fundamentally altered its relationships with immigrants and their progeny through changes in welfare and immigration law that have been much less well-regarded in policy and research circles. The legislative changes created new distinctions in the definition of what it meant to be a member of U.S. society and to be eligible for needed assistance, drawing sharper lines between immigrants and natives, and within groups of immigrants. In this incisive volume, Michael E. Fix and his colleagues give us the most comprehensive compilation of the evidence on immigrants' use of public benefits before and after welfare reform. It both challenges some of the popular misconceptions about immigrants' costs to the polity that fueled a backlash against newcomers to the country in the welfare and immigration law changes of the 1990s, and vigorously informs us about the impacts of those changes for immigrants and their children. Immigrants and Welfare is timely and much-needed. Just as the nation prepares in the coming year to debate necessary comprehensive immigration reform, we can only hope that our leaders take these facts into account and lead us to where the evidence and our values suggest is a better place."
-AJAY CHAUDRY, director, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, The Urban Institute

"Immigrants and Welfare takes a careful look at the aftermath of the landmark welfare reform legislation of the mid-1990s. The volume's contributors examine the reweaving of the American safety net for immigrants and their families, both citizens and noncitizens. The research challenges oft-made assertions that the U.S. welfare system provides a strong magnet for immigrants destined to become dependent on public assistance, and instead points to the potential benefits of providing more coherent and less restrictive policies for new arrivals and their families. This informed volume is necessary reading for those interested in the continuing debate of U.S. immigration policy."
-MICHAEL J. WHITE, professor of sociology and director, Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University 

The lore of the immigrant who comes to the United States to take advantage of our welfare system has a long history in America’s collective mythology, but it has little basis in fact. The so-called problem of immigrants on the dole was nonetheless a major concern of the 1996 welfare reform law, the impact of which is still playing out today. While legal immigrants continue to pay taxes and are eligible for the draft, welfare reform has severely limited their access to government supports in times of crisis. Edited by Michael Fix, Immigrants and Welfare rigorously assesses the welfare reform law, questions whether its immigrant provisions were ever really necessary, and examines its impact on legal immigrants’ ability to integrate into American society.

Immigrants and Welfare draws on fields from demography and law to developmental psychology. The first part of the volume probes the politics behind the welfare reform law, its legal underpinnings, and what it may mean for integration policy. Contributor Ron Haskins makes a case for welfare reform’s ultimate success but cautions that excluding noncitizen children (future workers) from benefits today will inevitably have serious repercussions for the American economy down the road. Michael Wishnie describes the implications of the law for equal protection of immigrants under the U.S. Constitution.

The second part of the book focuses on empirical research regarding immigrants’ propensity to use benefits before the law passed, and immigrants’ use and hardship levels afterwards. Jennifer Van Hook and Frank Bean analyze immigrants’ benefit use before the law was passed in order to address the contested sociological theories that immigrants are inclined to welfare use and that it slows their assimilation. Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Everett Henderson track trends before and after welfare reform in legal immigrants’ use of the major federal benefit programs affected by the law. Leighton Ku looks specifically at trends in food stamps and Medicaid use among noncitizen children and adults and documents the declining health insurance coverage of noncitizen parents and children. Finally, Ariel Kalil and Danielle Crosby use longitudinal data from Chicago to examine the health of children in immigrant families that left welfare.

Even though few states took the federal government’s invitation with the 1996 welfare reform law to completely freeze legal immigrants out of the social safety net, many of the law’s most far-reaching provisions remain in place and have significant implications for immigrants. Immigrants and Welfare takes a balanced look at the politics and history of immigrant access to safety-net supports and the ongoing impacts of welfare.

MICHAEL E. FIX is senior vice president and director of studies at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and co-director of MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.

CONTRIBUTORS: Michael E. Fix, Frank D. Bean, Randy Capps, Danielle A. Crosby, Ron Haskins, Everett Henderson, Ariel Kalil, Neeraj Kaushal, Leighton Ku, Jennifer Van Hook, and Michael J. Wishnie.

Copublished with the Migration Policy Institute