Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520267184 ISBN 13: 9780520267183

Verlag: University of California Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Bringing nuance, complexity, and clarity to a subject often seen in black and white, Writing Immigration presents a unique interplay of leading scholars and journalists working on the contentious topic of immigration. In a series of powerful essays, the contributors reflect on how they struggle to write about one of the defining issues of our time—one that is at once local and global, familiar and uncanny, concrete and abstract. Highlighting and framing central questions surrounding immigration, their essays explore topics including illegal immigration, state and federal mechanisms for immigration regulation, enduring myths and fallacies regarding immigration, immigration and the economy, immigration and education, the adaptations of the second generation, and more. Together, these writings give a clear sense of the ways in which scholars and journalists enter, shape, and sometimes transform this essential yet unfinished national conversation.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, The Ross University Professor at New York University, is the author and editor of many books including Latinos: Remaking America (UC Press), co-edited by Mariela Páez. Vivian Louie is Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University and the author of Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans. Roberto Suro is Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at the University of Southern California and the author of Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America, among other books.

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"No one in the news media should write or talk about immigration without reading Writing Immigration.” --Lawrence O'Donnell, Host of MSNBC The Last word with Lawrence O'Donnell

“I cannot help but applaud the idea for this book, especially given the caliber of the editors. The communication between social scientists and journalists is often not smooth, and there is a strong rationale for attempting to bridge this divide on the issues surrounding immigration, which appear at times to divide the American public into opposing camps.” --Richard Alba, author of Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More Integrated America

"Bringing together academics and journalists--inviting them to talk with, not at, one another--is an enterprise as important as it is rare. When the participants in the conversation are as lively, provocative and insightful as the contributors to Writing Immigration, the result is a real treat. For anyone who wants to understand how immigration is molding the nation's future, this book is an indispensable read.” --David Kirp is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and former associate editor of the Sacramento Bee.

"A compelling book on an extremely timely topic, from writers with a great capacity to spin a story." –Professor Patricia Gándara, Co-Director of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA

"Academics and journalists share the weighty responsibility of helping the public see where our ship is headed. When it comes to immigration, we need a cure for myopia and this important, timely book is it: a map for thinking about immigration in the round. It will elevate the public conversation." --Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study

“Immigration in the United States is our past, our present, and very likely our future. The brilliance of this volume is that it looks both at it subject—immigration—through the very different lenses of journalism and academia, juxtaposing their styles and approaches to explore one of the central policy dilemmas of our day, the integration of immigrants –not all of them legal—and their children into American society and economy, while critiquing the role of media and scholarly observers who shape our understanding of immigration as well.” --Michael Jones-Correa, Professor of Government, Cornell University

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Writing Immigration

Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue

By Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Vivian Louie, Roberto Suro

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-26718-3

Contents

Preface Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Vivian Louie, and Roberto Suro, ix, 
Acknowledgments, xxv, 
Introduction Roberto Suro, 1, 
PART ONE. IMMIGRATION AND THE LAW, 19, 
1. The Making of an Outlaw Generation Nina Bernstein, 23, 
2. The Integrated Regime of Immigration Regulation Cristina M. Rodríguez, 44, 
3. What Part of "Illegal" Don't You Understand? Dianne Solís, 62, 
4. Some Observations about Immigration Journalism Peter H. Schuck, 73, 
Interlude I. Covering Immigration: From Stepchild Beat to Newsroom Mainstream Patrick J. McDonnell, 90, 
PART TWO. IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY, 103, 
5. Consensus, Debate, and Wishful Thinking: The Economic Impact of Immigration Edward Schumacher-Matos, 107, 
6. Ten Top Myths and Fallacies Regarding Immigration Barry R. Chiswick, 136, 
Interlude II. A Son of Immigrants on Covering Immigration George de Lama, 149, 
PART THREE. IMMIGRATION AND THE SECOND GENERATION, 155, 
7. The Education Transformation: Why the Media Missed One of the Biggest Stories in America Ginger Thompson, 159, 
8. Moving Stories: Academic Trajectories of Newcomer Immigrant Students Carola Suárez-Orozco, 171, 
9. Who Will Report the Next Chapter of America's Immigration Story? Tyche Hendricks, 204, 
10. Complicating the Story of Immigrant Integration Vivian Louie, 218, 
11. Debating Immigration: Are We Addressing the Right Issues? Mary C. Waters, 236, 
Afterword Roberto Suro, 251, 
Contributors, 255, 
Index, 257, 

CHAPTER 1

The Making of an Outlaw Generation

NINA BERNSTEIN

In the fall of 2004, my first year covering immigration for the New York Times, I met an eight-year-old girl named Virginia Feliz. Her last name means "happy" in Spanish, but she hated her name, she told me. She threw herself down on a couch in her family's apartment in the Bronx, beside her father, Carlos Feliz, a U.S. citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic. She declared: "I'm not happy, I'm sad. Because it's not fair that everybody else has their mom except me." In an article on the front page of the Times—one of the first, I believe, to highlight the breadth of this phenomenon—I wrote: "Virginia is part of the growing tribe of American children who have lost a parent to deportation." Virginia's forty-seven-year-old mother, Berly Feliz, had gone to the federal immigration headquarters in Manhattan on a supposedly routine visit to renew her work authorization. But an old deportation order had resurfaced, and Mrs. Feliz, who had lived in the United States for a decade after migrating illegally from Honduras, was quickly handcuffed and placed on a plane, with no chance to say goodbye.

By all reports Virginia Feliz had been a happy child before her mother's expulsion. Two months later, doctors said Virginia had a major depressive disorder marked by hyperactivity, nightmares, bed-wetting, frequent crying, and fights at school. In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Victor Sierra, the director of the Child and Adolescent clinic where Virginia was treated, made no bones about the underlying problem: "Absent mother, secondary to deportation." Virginia's case, on its own, might have made a compelling local feature story for the Metro desk, to which I was assigned. But at the time (and until mid-2006) I was the only reporter at the New York Times covering immigration. That fact itself may be evidence of what Roberto Suro, professor of journalism and public policy, criticizes as the episodic nature of immigration coverage. But it was also one reason I had lobbied for the beat on my return from a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. I knew I could use New York–based reporting as a framework for articles with national, even international, scope. My task was to put Virginia's case in a larger context.

I learned that 186,000 people were being deported from the United States in that year (2004), and 887,000 others had been required to make a "voluntary departure." In the 2010 fiscal year the annual "removals" figure reached a record 392,862. Yet no one kept track of exactly how many American children were being left behind. After consulting with demographers at the Pew Hispanic Center and the Urban Institute, however, I could confidently write that the number was in the tens of thousands. A spokesman for federal immigration services, William Strassberger, acknowledged the human fallout in a way that made Virginia's case resonate in the broader immigration debate and beyond. "There are millions of people who are illegally in the United States, and it's unfortunate, when they're caught, seeing a family split up," he said. "But the person has to be answerable for their actions." Parents had to decide whether to leave their American-born children with relatives or friends, or take them along when they were expelled from the country, he added, going so far as to evoke an image from the Nazi concentration camps: "People refer to that as a Sophie's choice situation," he told me.

Perhaps because I was steeped in the history of child welfare after writing The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care, I was struck not only by the scale of this largely unrecorded phenomenon of family disruption but also by the lack of any official nod to "the best interest of the child"—a concept enshrined in family law, if not in child welfare practice. There is a rich clinical literature on the psychological damage suffered by children who lose an attachment figure. More recent longitudinal studies of immigrant students offer nuanced discussions of the ways family separations caused by migration affect children who are belatedly reunited with their parents in the United States. But in journalistic terms what the Virginia Feliz article really demanded was an academic study specifically tracking the impact of parental deportation on children left behind in the United States. My hurried search turned up nothing on point.

This is the classic catch-22 facing a reporter ahead of the curve: the fresher the story, the more editors want corroboration from authoritative voices and scholarly evidence—and the less likely readily available scholarship fits the bill. What served me best in this instance was research on transnational migration that focused on children left on the southern side of the border, whose distress certainly echoed that of children like Virginia. Through a lucky break, I reached Leah Schmalzbauer, a social anthropologist who had conducted a two-year research project on families split between Honduras and the United States. She helped me broaden my context further: The numbers were expected to swell, Schmalzbauer noted, because families in poor countries like Honduras could no longer manage without remittances from the United States, and women were beginning to replace men as the primary migrants, filling growing demands in the United States for low-cost elder care, domestic work, and other service jobs. In an article framed by an individual narrative, this observation served to point to the larger economic forces at work. At the same time, Schmalzbauer gave me the strong quote. I needed to connect the dots to Virginia's mother, who had...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520267184
• ISBN 13: 9780520267183
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 292
• Herausgeber: Suarez-Orozco Marcelo, Louie Vivian, Suro Roberto
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland