The Role of Immigration in the Designing of the American Nation

In this comprehensive history of US immigration policy, Aristide Zolberg demonstrates how American political leaders have long devised immigration laws for the purpose of nation-building. Conceiving of inmigration as a social process by which they could fashion the future composition of the populace, policy elites battled over competing notions of what kind of immigration was desirable for economic growth and the attainment of political goals. In Zolberg’s account, political economic interests and identity politics shaped the policy stances of these actors, but the weight of national traditions and the conservative bias of political institutions continually constrained the forces pressing for policy change. Zolberg sets out to disentangle these many and varied factors affecting policy decisions and effects, with the aim of constructing a coherent account of how immigration policy and nation-building were intertwined

Development economics · Economics · Immigration · Immigration policy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Race, History, and American Society