Chris Rhomberg is the author of The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor, a riveting analysis of the 1995 Detroit newspaper strike. An associate professor of sociology at Fordham University, Rhomberg studies issues of race, labor, and urban politics in American political development.

Q: By 1995, when the Detroit strike began, the erosion of collective bargaining rights was already firmly established. What drew you to this newspaper strike as opposed to the many other wrenching labor disputes of the 1980s and early 1990s? What did you hope to learn from Detroit?

More Research on Labor Policy
• RSF Program: Future of Work
• RSF Book: They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back! Welfare Activism in an Era of Retrenchment
• RSF Book: Low-Wage America
• RSF Book: America Works: Critical Thoughts on the Exceptional U.S. Labor Market

A: The rise of the current anti-union regime began in the 1980s, but my argument is that such macro-institutional changes do not occur neatly in all places all at once. In the 1990s it was not necessarily clear where things would go next. By that time unions had adopted counter-tactics of community mobilization and striking against unfair labor practices in order to gain some protec-tion against permanent replacement. The National Labor Relations Board became more favorable to unions, under the administration of President Bill Clinton. The labor movement as a whole had begun a progressive revival, symbolized in the October 1995 election of Service Employees International Union president John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO.

Daniel M. Goldstein is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. He studies the global meanings and practices of security and securitization, particularly as these come into conflict with human rights.

As I write, the United States Supreme Court is debating the constitutionality of Arizona’s SB 1070, the state law that imposes extremely harsh penalties on undocumented immigrants, effectively criminalizing the immigrant presence in the state. Whatever the Court decides, this piece of legislation has already had a broad national impact. In states and municipalities across the U.S., legislators and policy makers have introduced laws and ordinances similar to Arizona’s, making it ever more difficult for the undocumented person to obtain a driver’s license, a job, and a place to live, to educate his or her children, and to move about in public.

More Research on Immigration
• Working Paper: Deputizing Discrimination? Causes and Effects of Cross-Deputization Policy in Salt Lake City, Utah
• Report: Lessons from the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act
• L.A. Times: The Anti-Immigrant Game

This legislative trend is part of the “securitization” of immigration in the U.S. – that is, the rendering of immigration (and specifically Latino immigration) as a threat to the security of the American public and the stability of the American way of life. As immigration has become increasingly securitized in recent years, the principal site of immigration control has shifted from the national borders to the spaces within those borders, and from the federal to the local levels of legislation and enforcement, even as the prototypical security threat has extended from the “Islamic terrorist” to the Latino day laborer. In such a context, it is critical to understand the ways in which increasing securitization at the state and local levels is experienced in daily life, and how that experience shapes the perceptions that Latino immigrants and their non-immigrant neighbors have of their own security and how to ensure it. What does security mean in the context of undocumented immigration in the U.S. today, and what effects do laws meant to guarantee it produce in daily life?

STUDYING SECURITIZATION

A Presidential Authority Award from the Russell Sage Foundation in 2011 allowed me to study the impacts that ordinances like those described above have had on undocumented Latino residents of a small New Jersey town, one of the “new destinations” of migrant settlement in the U.S. My research examines the lived experience of securitized immigration, focusing on the ways in which undocumented migrants respond to the increasingly restrictive legal environment within which they must build their lives. As a cultural anthropologist, I rely on a qualitative research methodology grounded in long-term participant-observation in the study community and intensive individual and group interviewing to collect data on local life. This research brings a much-needed ethnographic perspective to the study of immigration and its impacts on local communities in the U.S. Whereas much research on immigration has tended to focus on macro-level policies and politics using surveys and other quantitative methodologies, the ethnographic approach relies on direct personal interactions between ethnographer and research subjects to highlight the daily experience of life in a particular study location. This research site is not understood as a bounded isolate, but rather must be situated within the broader sociocultural, political, and economic context of a wider region, nation, and world. In trying to understand how securitization operates in one town – a place I call, pseudonymously, Hometown, NJ – my intention is not to generalize to all immigrant communities, but to analyze people’s experiences, in depth and detail, in one particular location. By doing so, I hope to suggest the complex and contradictory ways in which anti-immigrant laws can shape local realities.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today on Arizona Senate Bill SB 1070, widely considered the toughest immigration law in the country. Among its provisions, the statute requires state and local police to check the immigration status of people they have stopped if there is a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally. While the oral arguments will likely involve a complicated dissection of the preemption doctrine, we wanted to highlight our research on the enforcement of immigration in different localities around the country. Here are some op-eds and research from our scholars, many supported by our immigration program:

"The anti-immigrant game," by Pratheepan Gulasekaram and [RSF author] Karthick Ramakrishnan in the Los Angeles Times:

Missing from this important legal debate, however, is the larger question of why states and localities are getting involved in immigration enforcement in the first place. The conventional wisdom on these policies is that federal inaction, combined with demographic pressures from immigration, have left these states and cities little choice but to act. According to this logic, new immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, are causing cultural and economic upheavals in places unaccustomed to such transformations. Consequently, laws like Arizona's SB 1070 and Alabama's HB 56 are seen as natural and inevitable responses.

These reasons, however, do not stand up to empirical investigation. In our new systematic study of these state and local immigration laws, the data show that commonly assumed factors — e.g., the growth of immigrant populations, immigrant-caused economic stress, prevalence of Spanish speakers and overcrowded housing — make no significant difference in the proposal or passage of these restrictive immigration laws.

By contrast, political partisanship consistently predicts when and where states and localities will introduce restrictive immigration laws, with Republican-heavy areas especially likely to do so. For instance, restrictive ordinances are 93% more likely to pass in Republican counties than in Democratic ones. At the state level, there is a 47% difference between Republican-heavy states and Democrat-heavy states.

The available research on the death penalty cannot be used by policymakers to determine if capital punishment deters, increases, or has no effect on the nation's homicide rate, according to a new report from the National Research Council. A panel of experts, chaired by Visiting Scholar Daniel Nagin, evaluated dozens of studies conducted since 1976, when a four-year moratorium on capital punishment was lifted. The panel found that the research could not determine if the death penalty is less or more effective than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without parole.

Here's an excerpt from the NRC's press release:

The lack of evidence about the deterrent effect of capital punishment -- whether it is positive, negative, or zero -- should not be construed as favoring one argument over another, the report stresses. "Fundamental flaws in the research we reviewed make it of no use in answering the question of whether the death penalty affects homicide rates," said Daniel S. Nagin, Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "We recognize that this conclusion may be controversial to some, but no one is well-served by unsupportable claims about the effect of the death penalty, regardless of whether the claim is that the death penalty deters homicides, has no effect on homicide rates or actually increases homicides."

The latest issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science features new immigration research from former RSF Visiting Scholars Robert J. Sampson and Jamie Winders. Sampson co-edited the journal issue, which examines immigration and the changing fabric of American cities. In the introduction to the issue, Sampson explains the themes of the collected research:

[We wanted] to bring together a leading set of scholars to present new research on trends in the spatial forms of immigration that are transforming the American landscape—the effects of "the world in a city," as it were. We aimed for a distinctive analytic focus—as a whole the volume is characterized by a comparative approach, an examination of recent immigration trends, disaggregation by ethnicity or immigrant type wherever possible, a focus on core features of the nation's social fabric...and empirical study going beyond the big cities of traditional concern to a host of smaller cities and towns reaching into far-flung pockets of the country.

The journal also includes an article from Jamie Winders, a geography professor at Syracuse University. Entitled "Seeing Immigrants: Institutional Visibility and Immigration Incorporation in New Immigrant Destinations," the article continues the research Winders conducted as a RSF Visiting Scholar in 2010-2011. Here is the abstract:

Since the 1990s, immigrant settlement has expanded beyond gateway cities and transformed the social fabric of a growing number of American cities. In the process, it has raised new questions for urban and migration scholars. This article argues that immigration to new destinations provides an opportunity to sharpen understandings of the relationship between immigration and the urban by exploring it under new conditions. Through a discussion of immigrant settlement in Nashville, Tennessee, it identifies an overlooked precursor to immigrant incorporation—how cities see, or do not see, immigrants within the structure of local government. If immigrants are not institutionally visible to government or nongovernmental organizations, immigrant abilities to make claims to or on the city as urban residents are diminished. Through the combination of trends toward neighborhood-based urban governance and neoliberal streamlining across American cities, immigrants can become institutionally hard to find and, thus, plan for in the city.

Why do so many Americans receive such a big tax refund? Every year, the IRS sends a check of around $3,000 to Americans who paid more taxes than they should. The excess withholding is a puzzle: why do consumers prefer to give the U.S. government an interest-free loan? Wouldn't a quick trip to the payroll administrator be worth the effort if it meant a bigger paycheck? Michael Barr, an editor of the RSF volume Insufficient Funds, spoke to the Wall Street Journal last week about his research on the problem:

"People want to have a ready way to save," says Michael Barr, a University of Michigan law professor and a former Obama and Clinton Treasury official. "For some families, tax time is a good time to do so."

In the mid-2000s, Mr. Barr and colleagues surveyed about 650 low- and moderate-income families in the Detroit area who had filed tax returns in 2003 or 2004. About 82% received refunds—either because they had overpaid or because they qualified for the federal Earned Income Credit, a federal cash bonus to low-wage workers that is paid through the IRS. [...]

In fact, Mr. Barr and co-author Jane Dokko of the Federal Reserve Board, found these folks don't want smaller tax refunds. In the survey, researchers offered them choices: Withhold $100 a month more and get a bigger refund (an option favored by 35%), withhold the same amount and get the same refund (46%) or withhold less and get a smaller refund (only 19%.) This and other survey findings appear in a coming Brookings Institution book, "No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans."

The Wall Street Journal profiled economist Yale psychologist Laurie Santos and her work on the origins of human irrationality. Santos, who co-published a study funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, conducts experiments with Capuchin monkeys in her lab to observe if systemic decision-making errors like loss aversion extend beyond the human species. Her research has produced some surprising results:

In one experiment, they gave each monkey a wallet filled with 12 flat aluminum tokens, monkey money that the animals could trade for food. Right away, the scientists saw the similarities to human behavior. When researchers slashed the price on certain foods, the monkeys sought out the best deal. They also typically spent all their cash at once and didn't bother to save.

Then researchers decided to test a more complex economic theory which shows that people do not judge price in a vacuum. Sitting with the team at the coffee shop, Dr. Santos could see how the concept worked in her own life. Many days, she feels guilty about spending $2.20 on a cup of coffee. But when she looks up at the chalk board listing drink prices, the Nutella Latte goes for $3.85 and the Ginger Snap is $4.15. "My $2 cup doesn't seem as expensive anymore," she said.

Monkeys make similar assessments. In one experiment, a researcher showed a monkey two pieces of apple but handed over one in exchange for a token. A second researcher showed one piece of apple and gave the slice to the monkey for the token. The monkeys strongly preferred to trade with the second researcher. They did not like being offered two apple pieces and then only getting one.

For more information on this line of inquiry, see Santos' RSF-funded study: "How Basic Are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior." Here is the abstract:

Economist Jesse Rothstein has published a working paper supported by the Foundation's Great Recession initiative. Entitled "The Labor Market Four Years Into the Crisis: Assessing Structural Explanations," the report seeks to understand why unemployment has remained so high in America since the economic crisis. As he states in the paper, economists offer two possible explanations:

One camp, of which Paul Krugman is perhaps the most prominent member (see also Romer 2011), argues that recent poor outcomes are primarily reflective of a shortfall of aggregate demand. This camp prescribes aggressively stimulative monetary policy – which would have to take unconventional forms, as the federal funds rate has been at or near its zero lower bound since late 2008 – and additional fiscal stimulus to raise effective demand.

A second camp points to “structural” factors as important impediments to labor market recovery. This diagnosis comes in several flavors. Some focus on mismatch between the types of labor supplied by workers and the types demanded by employers. As Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, described it in a 2010 speech, “Firms have jobs, but can’t find appropriate workers. The workers want to work, but can’t find appropriate jobs. There are many possible sources of mismatch—geography, skills, demography—and they are probably all at work” (Kocherlakota 2010).

But after reviewing the evidence, Rothstein argues there is little evidence for the structural hypothesis:

In the second installment of our Election 2012 series, economist David Neumark discusses President Obama's proposal to increase funding for community colleges. Read more of his research on education and labor policy in his RSF book Improving School-to-Work Transitions.

One component of President Obama’s efforts to increase educational levels of the workforce is increased support for community colleges. Research points to the potential value of community colleges in helping young people make successful school-to-work transitions, in part by highlighting the links between what community colleges offer and the needs of the labor market, and how community colleges are able to respond to these needs. Community colleges can perform an important function in adult education, which can help meet the challenges of an aging population by enabling older workers to retool and remain productive at work.

A volume I edited based on a conference supported by the Russell Sage Foundation (Neumark, 2007) explored a number of policies and programs to improve the school-to-work transition, at both the high school and college level. The high school-level policies include activities supported under the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 and Career Academies. Career and Technical Education programs span high schools and community colleges. And the post-high school manifestation of school-to-work is community colleges. There is longitudinal evidence that high school programs boosted subsequent employment or the accumulation of skills. And the most compelling evidence of positive impacts comes from an experimental evaluation of the Career Academy model (Kemple, 2008).

COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND EMPLOYMENT

What about community colleges? In support of the President’s efforts, the White House argues that “Community Colleges are particularly important for students who are older, working, or need remedial classes. Community colleges work with businesses, industry and government to create tailored training programs to meet economic needs like nursing, health information technology, advanced manufacturing, and green jobs."

The research record is supportive of this claim on both counts.