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

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.

Beginning in the 1990s, immigrants to the United States increasingly bypassed traditional gateway cites such as Los Angeles and New York to settle in smaller towns and cities throughout the nation. With immigrant communities popping up in so many new places, questions about ethnic diversity and immigrant assimilation confront more and more Americans. New Faces in New Places, edited by distinguished sociologist Douglas Massey, explores today’s geography of immigration and examines the ways in which native-born Americans are dealing with their new neighbors.

Using the latest census data and other population surveys, New Faces in New Places examines the causes and consequences of the shift toward new immigrant destinations. Contributors Mark Leach and Frank Bean examine the growing demand for low-wage labor and lower housing costs that have attracted many immigrants to move beyond the larger cities. Katharine Donato, Charles Tolbert, Alfred Nucci, and Yukio Kawano report that the majority of Mexican immigrants are no longer single male workers but entire families, who are settling in small towns and creating a surge among some rural populations long in decline. Katherine Fennelly shows how opinions about the growing immigrant population in a small Minnesota town are divided along socioeconomic lines among the local inhabitants. The town’s leadership and professional elites focus on immigrant contributions to the economic development and the diversification of the community, while working class residents fear new immigrants will bring crime and an increased tax burden to their communities. Helen Marrow reports that many African Americans in the rural south object to Hispanic immigrants benefiting from affirmative action even though they have just arrived in the United States and never experienced historical discrimination. As Douglas Massey argues in his conclusion, many of the towns profiled in this volume are not equipped with the social and economic institutions to help assimilate new immigrants that are available in the traditional immigrant gateways of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. And the continual replenishment of the flow of immigrants may adversely affect the nation’s perception of how today’s newcomers are assimilating relative to previous waves of immigrants.

New Faces in New Places illustrates the many ways that communities across the nation are reacting to the arrival of immigrant newcomers, and suggests that patterns and processes of assimilation in the twenty-first century may be quite different from those of the past. Enriched by perspectives from sociology, anthropology, and geography New Faces in New Places is essential reading for scholars of immigration and all those interested in learning the facts about new faces in new places in America.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.

CONTRIBUTORS: Carl L. Bankston III, Frank D. Bean, Chiara Capoferro, Katharine M. Donato, Katherine Fennelly, David Griffith, Charles Hirschman, Michael Jones-Correa, William Kandel, Yukio Kawano, Mark A. Leach, Helen B. Marrow, Alfred Nucci, Emilio A. Parrado, Debra Lattanzi Shutika, Charles Tolbert, Jamie Winders. 

The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the most unequal income distribution of any advanced industrialized nation. While other developed countries face similar challenges from globalization and technological change, none rivals America’s singularly poor record for equitably distributing the benefits and burdens of recent economic shifts. In Categorically Unequal, Douglas Massey weaves together history, political economy, and even neuropsychology to provide a comprehensive explanation of how America’s culture and political system perpetuates inequalities between different segments of the population.

Categorically Unequal is striking both for its theoretical originality and for the breadth of topics it covers. Massey argues that social inequalities arise from the universal human tendency to place others into social categories. In America, ethnic minorities, women, and the poor have consistently been the targets of stereotyping, and as a result, they have been exploited and discriminated against throughout the nation’s history. African-Americans continue to face discrimination in markets for jobs, housing, and credit. Meanwhile, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border has discouraged Mexican migrants from leaving the United States, creating a pool of exploitable workers who lack the legal rights of citizens. Massey also shows that women’s advances in the labor market have been concentrated among the affluent and well-educated, while low-skilled female workers have been relegated to occupations that offer few chances for earnings mobility. At the same time, as the wages of low-income men have fallen, more working-class women are remaining unmarried and raising children on their own. Even as minorities and women continue to face these obstacles, the progressive legacy of the New Deal has come under frontal assault. The government has passed anti-union legislation, made taxes more regressive, allowed the real value of the federal minimum wage to decline, and drastically cut social welfare spending. As a result, the income gap between the richest and poorest has dramatically widened since 1980. Massey attributes these anti-poor policies in part to the increasing segregation of neighborhoods by income, which has insulated the affluent from the social consequences of poverty, and to the disenfranchisement of the poor, as the population of immigrants, prisoners, and ex-felons swells.

America’s unrivaled disparities are not simply the inevitable result of globalization and technological change. As Massey shows, privileged groups have systematically exploited and excluded many of their fellow Americans. By delving into the root causes of inequality in America, Categorically Unequal provides a compelling argument for the creation of a more equitable society.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Centennial Series

Addressing the disparity in test scores between black and white children remains one of the greatest social challenges of our time. Between the 1960s and 1980s, tremendous strides were made in closing the achievement gap, but that remarkable progress halted abruptly in the mid 1980s, and stagnated throughout the 1990s. How can we understand these shifting trends and their relation to escalating economic inequality? In Steady Gains and Stalled Progress, interdisciplinary experts present a groundbreaking analysis of the multifaceted reasons behind the test score gap—and the policies that hold the greatest promise for renewed progress in the future.

Steady Gains and Stalled Progress shows that while income inequality does not directly lead to racial differences in test scores, it creates and exacerbates disparities in schools, families, and communities—which do affect test scores. Jens Ludwig and Jacob Vigdor demonstrate that the period of greatest progress in closing the gap coincided with the historic push for school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Stagnation came after efforts to integrate schools slowed down. Today, the test score gap is nearly 50 percent larger in states with the highest levels of school segregation.  Katherine Magnuson, Dan Rosenbaum, and Jane Waldfogel show how parents’ level of education affects children’s academic performance: as educational attainment for black parents increased in the 1970s and 1980s, the gap in children’s test scores narrowed. Sean Corcoran and William Evans present evidence that teachers of black students have less experience and are less satisfied in their careers than teachers of white students. David Grissmer and Elizabeth Eiseman find that the effects of economic deprivation on cognitive and emotional development in early childhood lead to a racial divide in school readiness on the very first day of kindergarten. Looking ahead, Helen Ladd stresses that the task of narrowing the divide is not one that can or should be left to schools alone. Progress will resume only when policymakers address the larger social and economic forces behind the problem. Ronald Ferguson masterfully interweaves the volume’s chief findings to highlight the fact that the achievement gap is the cumulative effect of many different processes operating in different contexts.

The gap in black and white test scores is one of the most salient features of racial inequality today. Steady Gains and Stalled Progress provides the detailed information and powerful insight we need to understand a complicated past and design a better future.

KATHERINE MAGNUSON is assistant professor of social work and a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

JANE WALDFOGEL is professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Berends, Mary E. Campbell, Sean P. Corcoran, Elizabeth Eiseman, William N. Evans, Ronald F. Ferguson,  David Grissmer,  Robert Haveman,  Helen F. Ladd,  Jens Ludwig, Roberto V. Penaloza,  Meredith Phillips,  Dan T. Rosenbaum,  Jacob L. Vigdor, Tina Wildhagen, Barbara L. Wolfe.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

Stewart Macaulay teaches contracts at the University of Wisconsin Law School and is interested in the part the legal system plays in implementing, regulating, and hindering economic relationships, and how it does these things. This book is a descriptive analysis of organizational change that has resulted from automobile dealers' attempts to find a legal remedy for what they consider unfair practices of the manufacturers. It advances our understanding of the limitations and the positive functions of formal rules in the regulation of human conduct, and shows how informal procedures can develop as a result of pressure for changes in the formal rules.

STEWART MACAULAY teaches contracts at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

This comprehensive work—relevant to the major issue of the relation of social knowledge to political power—argues for strengthening the role of the social sciences in the federal government. It calls for a central organization for the social sciences and for better integration of research within the federal agencies. It underscores the various factors that might help to bring about this goal.

GENE M. LYONS is professor of government at Dartmouth College.
 

The reach of the social and behavioral sciences is currently so broad and interdisciplinary that staying abreast of developments has become a daunting task. The thirty papers that constitute Leading Edges in Social and Behavioral Science provide a unique composite picture of recent findings and promising new research opportunities within most areas of social and behavioral research. Prepared by expert scholars under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, these timely and well-documented reports define research priorities for an impressive range of topics:

Part I: Mind and Brain

Part II: Behavior in Social Context

Part III: Choice and Allocation

Part IV: Evolving Institutions

Part V: Societies and International Orders

Part VI: Data and Analysis

R. DUNCAN LUCE is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and director of the Irvine Research Center in Mathematic Behavioral Science at the University of California, Irvine.

NEIL J. SMELSER is University Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

DEAN R. GERSTEIN is study director at the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

CONTRIBUTORS: Norma Graham, Linda Bartosik, Albert S. Bregman, Julian Hichberg, Azriel Rosenfeld, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, R. Duncan Luce, Richard Thompson, Carol Barnes, Thomas Carew, Lon Cooper, Michela Gallagher, Michael Posner, Robert Rescola, Daniel Schachter, Larry Squire, Alan Wagner, Saul Steinebers, Fergus I.M. Clark, John Jonedes, Walter Kinsch, Stephen M. Kosslyn, James L. McClelland, Raymond S. Nickerson, James Greeno, Frederick J. Newmeyer, Antonio R. Damasio, Merrill Garrett, Mark Lieberman, David Lightfoot, Howard Poizner, Thomas Roeper, Eleanor Saffran, Ivan Sag, Victoria Fromkin, Herbert Pick, Ann L. Brown, Carol Dweck, Robert Emde, Frank Keil, David Klahr, Ross S. Parke, Steven Pinker, Rochel Gelman, David S. Krantz, Leonard Epstein, Norman Garmezy, Marcha Ory, Leonard Perlin, Judith Rodin, Marvin Stein, John F. Kihlstrom, Ellen Berscheid, John Darley, Reid Hastie, Harold Kelley, Sheldon Stryker, Edward E. Jones, Nancy M,. Henley, Rose Laub Cosner, Jane Flax, Naomi Quinn, Kathryn Rish Sklar, Sherry B. Ortner, Alfred Blumstein, Richard Berk, Philip Cook, David Farrington, Samuel Krislov, Albert J. Reiss Jr., Franklin Zimring, William Riker, James S. Coleman, Bernard Grofman, Michael Hechter, John Ledyard, Charles Plott, Kenneth Shepsle, John Ferejohn,  Mark Machina, Robin Hogarth, Kenneth MacCrimmon, John Roberts, Alvin Roth, Paul Slovic, Rihard Thaler, Oliver Williamson, Jerry Hausman, Paul Joskow, Roger Noll, Vernon Smith, David Wise, Stanley Reiter, Kenneth Arrow, Lance Davis, Paul Dimaggio, Mark Granovetter, Jerry Green, Theodore Groves, Michael Hannan, Andrew Postlewaite, Roy Radner, Karl Shell, Leonid Hurwicz, Frank Stafford, Jamoes Baron, Danier Hamermesh, Christopher Jencks, Ross Stolzenberg, Donald J. Treiman, Stanley Fischer, William Beeman, Rudiger Dornbusch, Thomas Sargent, Robert Schiller, Lawrence Summers, Glynn Isaac, Robert Blumenschine, Margaret Conkey, Terry Deacon, Irven Devore, Peter Ellison, Richard Milton, David Pilbeam, Richard Potts, Kathy Schick, Margaret Schoeninger, Andrew Sillen, John Speth, Nicholas Toth, Sherwood Washburn, Douglas C. North, Robert Bates, Robert Brenner, Elizabeth Colson, Kent Flannery, Vernon Smith, Neil Smelser, Samuel Preson, Ansley Coale, Kingsley Davis, Geoffrey McNicoll, Jane Menken, T. Paul Schultz, Daniel Vining, John Modell, Margaret Clark, William Goode, William Kessen, Robert Willis, John Quigley, Alex Anas, Geoffrey Hewings, Risa Palm, James Fernandez, Keith Basso, Karen Blu, Kenneth Boulding, Stepher Gudeman, Michael Kearney, Goerge Marcus, Dennis McGilvary, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, William Sewell, Daniel H. Levine, Leonard Binder, Thomas Bruneau, Jean Comaroff, Susan Harding, Charles Keyes, Robert Wuthnow, Dorothy Nelkin, Charles Rosenberg, Theda Skocpol, Martin Bulmer, Thomas Joster, Donald McCloskey, Arnold Thackeray, Carol Weiss, Peter Evans, Bruce Cumings, Albert Fishlow, Peter Gourevitch, John Meyer, Alejandro Portes, Barbara Stallings, Robert Jervis, Josh Lederberg, Robert North, Steven Rosen, Dina Zinnes, Warren Miller, Martin David, James Davis, Bruce Russett, Kimball Romney, Norman Bradburn, J. Douglas Carol. Roy D'Andrade, Jean Claude Falmagne, Paul Holland, Lawrence Hubert, Edward E. Leamer, John W. Pratt, Cliffors C. Clogg, Bert F. Green, Michael Hannan, Jerry A. Hausman, William H. Kruskal, Donald B. Rubin, I. Richard Savaga, John W. Turkey, Kenneth W. Wachter, Leo A. Goodman.

"How to inform the judicial mind," Justice Frankfurter remarked during the school desegregation cases, "is one of the most complicated problems." Social research is a potential source of such information. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, with activist courts at the forefront of social reform, the field of law and social science came of age. But for all the recent activity and scholarship in this area, few books have attempted to create an intellectual framework, a systematic introduction to applied social-legal research.

Social Research in the Judicial Process addresses this need for a broader picture. Designed for use by both law students and social science students, it constructs a conceptual bridge between social research (the realm of social facts) and judicial decision making (the realm of social values). Its unique casebook format weaves together judicial opinions, empirical studies, and original text. It is a process-oriented book that teaches skills and perspectives, cultivating an informed sensitivity to the use and misuse of psychology, social psychology, and sociology in apellate and trial adjudication. Among the social-legal topics explored are school desegregation, capital punishment, jury impartiality, and eyewitness identification.

This casebook is remarkable for its scope, its accessibility, and the intelligence of its conceptual integration. It provides the kind of interdisciplinary teaching framework that should eventually help lawyers to make knowledgeable use of social research, and social scientists to conduct useful research within a legally sophisticated context.

WALLACE D. LOH is professor of law and adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Washington.

How do people decide whether to sacrifice now for a future reward or to enjoy themselves in the present? Do the future gains of putting money in a pension fund outweigh going to Hawaii for New Year's Eve? Why does a person's self-discipline one day often give way to impulsive behavior the next? Time and Decision takes up these questions with a comprehensive collection of new research on intertemporal choice, examining how people face the problem of deciding over time.

Economists approach intertemporal choice by means of a model in which people discount the value of future events at a constant rate. A vacation two years from now is worth less to most people than a vacation next week. Psychologists, on the other hand, have focused on the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of intertemporal choice. Time and Decision draws from both disciplinary approaches to provide a comprehensive picture of the various layers of choice involved.

Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue introduce the volume with an overview of the research on time discounting and focus on how people actually discount the future compared to the standard economic model. Alex Kacelnik discusses the crucial role that the ability to delay gratification must have played in evolution. Walter Mischel and colleagues review classic research showing that four year olds who are able to delay gratification subsequently grow up to perform better in college than their counterparts who chose instant gratification. The book also delves into the neurobiology of patience, examining the brain structures involved in the ability to withstand an impulse.

Turning to the issue of self-control, Klaus Wertenbroch examines the relationship between consumption and available resources, showing, for example, how a high credit limit can lead people to overspend. Ted O'Donoghue and Matthew Rabin show how people's awareness of their self-control problems affects their decision-making. The final section of the book examines intertemporal choice with regard to health, drug addiction, dieting, marketing, savings, and public policy.

All of us make important decisions every day-many of which profoundly affect the quality of our lives. Time and Decision provides a fascinating look at the complex factors involved in how and why we make our choices, so many of them short-sighted, and helps us understand more precisely this crucial human frailty.

GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN is professor of economics and psychology, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

DANIEL READ is reader in operational research, London School of Economics and Political Science.

ROY F. BAUMEISTER is the Eppes Professor of Psychology, Florida State University.

Many of our most urgent national problems suggest a widespread lack of concern for the future. Alarming economic conditions, such as low national savings rates, declining corporate investment in long-term capital projects, and ballooning private and public debt are matched by such social ills as diminished educational achievement, environmental degradation, and high rates of infant mortality, crime, and teenage pregnancy. At the heart of all these troubles lies an important behavioral phenomenon: in the role of consumer, manager, voter, student, or parent, many Americans choose inferior but immediate rewards over greater long-term benefits.

Choice Over Time offers a rich sampling of original research on intertemporal choice—how and why people decide between immediate and delayed consequences—from a broad range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics. George Loewenstein, Jon Elster, and their distinguished colleagues review existing theories and forge new approaches to understanding significant questions: Why do people seem to "discount" future benefits? Do individuals use the same decision-making strategy in all aspects of their lives? What part is played by situational factors such as the certainty of delayed consequences? How are decisions affected by personal factors such as willpower and taste?

In addressing these issues, the contributors to Choice Over Time address many social, economic, psychological, and personal time problems. Their work demonstrates the predictive power of short-term preferences in behavior as varied as addiction and phobia, the effect of prices on consumption, and the dramatic rise in debt and decline in savings. Choice Over Time provides an essential source for the most recent research and theory on intertemporal choice, offering new models for time preference patterns—and their aberrations—and presenting a diversity of potential solutions to the problem of "temporal myopia."

GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN is professor of economics and psychology, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

JON ELSTER is Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: George Ainslie, Gary S. Becker, Robert H. Frank, Michael Grossman, Nick Haslam, Richard J. Herrnstein, Walter Mishel, Kevin M. Murphy, Drazen Prelec, Howard Rachlin, Andres Raineri, Monica L. Rodriquez, Thomas Schelling, Hersh M. Shefrin, Yuichi Shoda, Richard H. Thaler.