Undesirable Immigrants

Description

How the racist legacy of colonialism shapes global migrationThe Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 officially ended the explicit prejudice in American immigration policy that began with the 1790 restriction on naturalization to free White persons of “good character.” By the 1980s, the rest of the Anglo-European world had followed suit, purging discriminatory language from their immigration laws and achieving what many believe to be a colorblind international system. Undesirable Immigrants challenges this notion, revealing how racial inequality persists in global migration despite the end of formally racist laws.
In this eye-opening book, Andrew Rosenberg argues that while today’s leaders claim that their policies are objective and seek only to restrict obviously dangerous migrants, these policies are still correlated with race. He traces how colonialism and White supremacy catalyzed violence and sabotaged institutions around the world, and how this historical legacy has produced migrants that the former imperial powers and their allies now deem unfit to enter. Rosenberg shows how postcolonial states remain embedded in a Western culture that requires them to continuously perform their statehood, and how the closing and policing of international borders has become an important symbol of sovereignty, one that imposes harsher restrictions on non-White migrants.
Drawing on a wealth of original quantitative evidence, Undesirable Immigrants demonstrates that we cannot address the challenges of international migration without coming to terms with the brutal history of colonialism.

US Andrew S. Rosenberg is assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida. “Undesirable Immigrants reveals how racially neutral migration policies yield racially biased policy outcomes and traces the roots of the problem to legacies of colonization and imperialism. Rosenberg is clear-eyed in exhorting the international community to look beneath the veneer of legal colorblindness.”—Nazli Avdan, author of Visas and Walls: Border Security in the Age of Terrorism“Rosenberg’s historical analysis pierces the illusion that state sovereignty is predicated on immigration control. A novel statistical method then shows that the effects of these controls around the world is to discriminate by race, regardless of the intent of individual policymakers. These tightly argued provocations are certain to stir debate.”—David Scott FitzGerald, coauthor of Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas“Timely and provocative.”—Errol A. Henderson, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized: Cultural Revolution in the Black Power Era“Rosenberg’s pathbreaking and compelling book demonstrates the unassailable fact of inequality in the migration policies of states.”—Robert Vitalis, author of Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy