Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization - Hardcover

Peters, Margaret E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691174474 ISBN 13: 9780691174471

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Why have countries increasingly restricted immigration even when they have opened their markets to foreign competition through trade or allowed their firms to move jobs overseas? In Trading Barriers, Margaret Peters argues that the increased ability of firms to produce anywhere in the world combined with growing international competition due to lowered trade barriers has led to greater limits on immigration.

Peters explains that businesses relying on low-skill labor have been the major proponents of greater openness to immigrants. Immigration helps lower costs, making these businesses more competitive at home and abroad. However, increased international competition, due to lower trade barriers and greater economic development in the developing world, has led many businesses in wealthy countries to close or move overseas. Productivity increases have allowed those firms that have chosen to remain behind to do more with fewer workers. Together, these changes in the international economy have sapped the crucial business support necessary for more open immigration policies at home, empowered anti-immigrant groups, and spurred greater controls on migration.

Debunking the commonly held belief that domestic social concerns are the deciding factor in determining immigration policy, Trading Barriers demonstrates the important and influential role played by international trade and capital movements.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Margaret E. Peters is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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"Creative and well-researched, Trading Barriers brings together two phenomena that scholars often examine separately: migration and international trade. Peters shows that the liberalization of trade and foreign investment in our globalized world has undercut support for open immigration. In a time of seeming backlash against globalization, this book provides a historical and rigorous empirical explanation of the politics."--Helen Milner, Princeton University

"The politics of trade and immigration are typically looked at independently, even though their economic effects are similar. In Trading Barriers, Peters argues that we cannot understand the political economy of trade and the political economy of immigration in isolation from one another. This is a careful, original study of an increasingly important topic that will be of interest to all scholars of international politics and economics."--Jeffry Frieden, Harvard University

"Filling a gap in the broad literature on immigration, this masterful book explains why some countries are open to migration at certain times while at others they are closed. It argues that a country's immigration policy occurs not in isolation, but in the same space that trade and capital market policies are determined."--David Leblang, University of Virginia

"Using systematic data and thoughtful research design strategies, Peters offers a compelling analysis of immigration policy, arguing that policymakers face trade-offs in limiting immigration, firm mobility, and trade barriers. Her book will not only contribute to debates in political economy, but also to larger policy conversations."--William Bernhard, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Trading Barriers

Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization

By Margaret E. Peters

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2017 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-17447-1

Contents

List of Figures, ix, 
List of Tables, xi, 
Acknowledgments, xiii, 
A Note to the Reader on the Online Appendixes, xvii, 
1 Immigration and the Shape of Globalization, 1, 
2 Immigration, Trade, and Firm Mobility: A Political Dilemma, 15, 
3 Immigration Policy and Two Eras of Globalization, 41, 
4 Changing Industry Preferences in the United States, 69, 
5 Policymakers' Responses to Firms in the United States, 116, 
6 Immigration Policy in Small Countries: The Cases of Singapore and the Netherlands, 162, 
7 The Rise of Anti-Immigration Sentiment and Undocumented Immigration as Explanations for Immigration Policy, 206, 
8 Immigration in an Increasingly Globalized World, 222, 
Appendix A: Collection and Coding of the Immigration Policy Variable, 243, 
Bibliography, 295, 
Index, 313, 

CHAPTER 1

Immigration and the Shape of Globalization

MIGRATION WAS ONCE A WAY FOR THE POOR to escape crushing poverty and even an early death. In 1840s and 1850s, more than a million people died in the Great Famine in Ireland, but another million escaped that fate by emigrating to the United States. Thousands more escaped to Great Britain and the British dominions. These migrants also sent money to remaining family members (support known as remittances), saving them from starvation as well. Famine struck again in the mid-1980s, this time in Ethiopia and East Africa, killing about a million people. But there were no great waves of Ethiopian immigrants to the United States. Immigration from the whole of Africa to the United States for the entire decade was only about 140,000, or one-tenth what Irish migration had been. Comparatively, it had a much smaller impact as well: Irish immigration increased US population by about 5 percent whereas African migration increased it by less than one-tenth of 1 percent. Instead of getting a chance to escape famine and poverty, these famine victims got a pop song ("We Are the World").

The situation for those escaping conflict, persecution, and poverty has only worsened since the 1980s. In the West, countries have made it much more difficult to claim asylum, contributing to three refugee crises in the first half of the 2010s alone: the Central American child refugee crisis in the United States, the Rohingya refugee crisis in Southeast Asia and Australia, and the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. Instead of providing a safe haven for those fleeing conflict, persecution, and violence, in all three cases, wealthy countries — including the United States, Australia, and the European Union (EU) — have prevented entry to those seeking a better life. They have foisted the problem on developing countries, essentially paying developing countries (through development aid and other benefits) to host migrants and prevent their entry into developed states. These developing states, however, often have worse human rights records and give migrants fewer rights, leading to additional abuse of an already vulnerable population. Yet the West has not always been so ungenerous to those fleeing conflict. In the 1970s, Western countries resettled 2.5 million of the 3 million people fleeing the Viet Cong. The Syrian Civil War, which had produced almost 5 million refugees by spring 2016, has seen much lower rates of resettlement.

Immigration policy has become more restrictive not only for those fleeing conflict or natural disasters, but also for those seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Today, few developed states open their borders to immigrants, especially low-skill immigrants. Comprehensive immigration reform has stalled yet again in the US Congress over the issue of whether undocumented immigrants, who are almost always low-skill, should have the right to stay in the United States. Old EU member states like Great Britain and the Netherlands are seeking ways to stop low-skill immigration from the new member states — in the case of Great Britain going so far as to vote to leave the EU (what is known as the Brexit) — as well as from outside the EU, while pressuring these same new member states into taking more refugees, so they don't have to. Even states like those in the Persian Gulf or Singapore that had recently been relatively open to immigration are seeking to slow the flow of low-skill immigrants.

It was not always this way. The nineteenth century did not have migration crises like those we have seen in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries — with refugees crowded into camps or migrants desperately running across borders hoping not to be caught — because migrants, regardless of their reasons for migrating, were allowed entry to most countries. Immigration to the New World and within Europe, Africa, and Asia was largely unrestricted. Instead of trying to outdo one another in their antiimmigration stance, statesmen argued that "to govern is to populate" and invited the world to send them "your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." In fact, King George III's unwillingness to allow immigration into the American colonies was the third complaint listed in the Declaration of Independence, far above taxation without representation. Migrants, especially those from Europe, but also from the Middle East and Asia, could legally move to almost any country they wished as long as they had the money. The demand for immigrant labor was so high that even those without the means to relocate often received subsidies from foreign governments or businesses to help them move. This brings us to the first puzzle that this book seeks to answer: Why is immigration, especially for those with fewer skills (what I term low-skill immigration), much more restricted today than it was in the nineteenth century or even, for that matter, in the immediate post–World War II period?

Restrictions on low-skill immigration are even more puzzling when we compare them to policies governing trade and foreign direct investment. The same wealthy countries that have put immigration restrictions in place have greatly lowered trade barriers, including on low-skill-labor-intensive goods such as clothing, toys, and electronics. They have also tolerated, and at times encouraged, businesses making these goods (what we refer to as firms) to move production to countries with cheap, low-skill labor (what I term firm mobility). As has been much decried even by pro–free trade politicians, this openness to trade and offshoring production has increased competition with foreign workers and led to the loss of "good middle-class" manufacturing jobs. This brings us to a second puzzle about the shape that globalization has taken: Why are politicians today willing to let their constituents compete with foreign labor overseas but not at home?

Low-Skill Immigration and the Political Dilemma Of Globalization

In this book, I argue that the two questions posed in the previous section are related through a political dilemma: wealthy states, those that are likely to receive low-skill immigrants, can either import the labor they need to produce low-skill-intensive goods or import those goods from countries that have low-skill labor in abundance. Similarly, firms can either bring low-skill labor to their factories or move their factories to countries with low-skill labor....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691174474
• ISBN 13: 9780691174471
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 321
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar