Sociologist Kitty Calavita, long a leader in the law and society movement, dug deep into the INS and other entrenched bureaucracies to uncover the real reasons why a program of temporary farm workers to Southwestern states in the 1940s-1960s, as opposed to complete immigration, failed among scandals and abuse. The answer says a lot about America's ambivalence toward immigration and labor, but also about how government really works, from the inside. Previous notions of political “capture” and economic motivations simply did not explain the whole story, and so the book takes the reader past usual political theory and public relations materials into the revealed truth about how a program worked and failed, accounting not just for agencies in the abstract, but also their human actors.
First published by Routledge in 1992, this book has substantive and methodological value to students of sociology, law, immigration policy, and the politics of governmental agencies and powerful business interests. Moreover, that value continues today. As Professor Calavita observes in her new Foreword, sincere concerns about immigration and labor persist, as does the notorious dysfunction of the present form of the INS. The latter reputation cannot just be a one-off phenomenon or a product of the program’s era, the sociologist in her concludes: “When the gap between the stated purpose of law and its outcomes persists across time and place, as it does in the case of immigration, we can reasonably infer that something systemic, or structurally patterned, is going on.” The bureaucracy formerly known as INS is not just an accidental tourist to all this, either: “the agency is not simply chronically inept or mismanaged. Instead, it has the misfortune of sitting at the fault line of a structural contradiction between the economic demand for cheap immigrant labor and political demands for border control.” And such immigration/labor tensions persist in other developed countries.
Further, the book is written in a compelling and clear style that is accessible and interesting to a wide audience: though certainly used by scholars, students, and immigrations rights activists over the years, the book has been popular with history buffs, journalists, and those interested in politics and current affairs.
With a 2010 Foreword and its active Contents and footnotes -- even the Index is linked and active -- this acknowledged classic of law and society is available for classroom adoptions in a quality digital format, and in a new paperback as well.
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: As noted, this book is also available as a modern 2010 edition paperback. Previously the book, in its earlier edition, was only available as a rare book. The new paperback embeds the pagination of the earlier edition for continuity and referencing purposes. This retailer's site may incorrectly list it as a 'hardback' and in some places states that no NookBook is available for this work. Instead, it is indeed a paperback and this is the new Nook version of it. Thank you.
