Review by Choice Review
An interdisciplinary research team at the University of California, San Diego, worked four years to produce this excellent overview of immigration and refugee affairs in the industrialized world. An introductory chapter is followed by chapters on nine industrialized democracies (the US merits two chapters). The editors stress similarities among the nine countries, all of which increasingly attempt to limit entry by immigrants. Persistent themes include the difficulty of making regulations work and the difficulty of restricting access while maintaining a commitment to human rights. The country studies are all informative. Britain is shown to have a racist immigration policy, elevating politics over economic considerations (e.g., the need for labor). Canada resembles Japan in having unique factors of geography or culture (among other matters) that affect its policies. France's policies prove difficult to interpret definitively. In Germany, liberal asylum laws are shown to change over time, and the guestworker program has some unintended consequences. Some recent developments are not covered--e.g., Canada has pioneered in granting special access under refugee law to persecuted women, pushing the US in the same direction. For the most part, this book is an overview that will help advanced students. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty.
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
