In a world of increasingly heated political debates on migration, relentlessly caught up in questions of security, humanitarian crisis, and cultural “problems,” this book radically shifts the focus to address migration through the lens of inequality.
Taking an innovative approach, Mirna Safi offers a fresh perspective on how migration is embedded in the elementary mechanisms that shape the landscape of inequality. She sketches out three distinct channels which lead to unequal outcomes for different migrating and non-migrating groups: the global division of labor; the production of legal and administrative categories; and the reconfiguration of symbolic ethnoracial groups. Respectively, these channels categorize migrants as “type of workers,” “type of citizens,” and “type of humans.” Examining this intersection across the U.S. and Europe, she shows how studying international migration together with inequality can challenge nationally established paradigms of social justice.
This timely book will be essential reading for all students and researchers interested in the sociology and politics of migration, ethnic and racial studies, and social inequality and stratification.
Table of Contents
IntroductionChapter 1 From National to Migration Societies
Chapter 2 - Migration and Elementary Mechanisms of Social Inequality: a conceptual framework
Chapter 3 The Economic Channel: Migrant Workers in the Global Division of Labor
Chapter 4 The Legal Channel: Immigration Law, Administrative Management of Migrants and Civic stratification
Chapter 5 The Ethnoracial Channel: Migration, Group Boundary-Making and Ethnoracial Classification
Struggles
Conclusion: Migration, an Issue of Social Justice