Description

Beyond Sovereignty: Immigration Policy Making Today

Saskia Sassen argues that the demands of globalization of capital have created changes in the state, relativizing its autonomy and regulatory capacities. Drawing on examples from around the globe (Western Europe and Japan as well as the U. S.), she lays bare the dynamics shaping immigration and refugee processes and the links between the policies of receiving countries, the needs of capital, and the state’s foreign policy objectives. Her analysis reveals how the state has attempted to single out the individual and the border as sites for regulation. However, she argues, the cross-border movements of people are embedded in larger global factors that constrain policymakers, even against their will. As a result of these processes as well, the state itself is less monolithic; policy becomes the terrain for competing political pressures, hence opening up spaces for new agendas on immigration.

immigration policy; state, role of the; sovereignty; economy, global; foreign students; asylum

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 23, No. 3 (1996): 9-20