Immigrants, Welfare Reform, and the Poverty of Policy

(Hardback)

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In many respects, the United States remains a nation of immigrants. This is the first book length treatment of the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on a wide range of immigrant groups in North America. Contributors to the book draw on ethnographic fieldwork, government data, and original survey research to show how welfare reform has reinforced socio-economic hardships for working poor immigrants. As the essays reveal, reform laws have increased the social isolation of poor immigrant households and discouraged large numbers of qualified immigrants from applying for health and welfare services. All of the articles highlight the importance of examining federal policy guidelines in conjunction with local enforcement policies, labor market dynamics, and immigrant attitudes toward government agencies.

Reviews

.,."[A] compelling and grounded analysis of the critical policy nexus of immigration and welfare. Focusing on the sharp end of the welfare restructuring process in a range of local settings, and tracing out implications for a range of immigrant populations, this carefully selected collection of essays provides a sharp critique of the sorry status quo....It will be an invaluable resource for policy advocates and researchers in this contentious, yet important, policy field."-Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography and Sociology University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Workfare States
"Many Americans support the restrictions on welfare assistance for immigrants because they think this will discourage immigration. This view is profoundly mistaken, as the authors of this collection of articles show."-Frances Fox Piven, The Graduate School and University Center The City University of New York
"This book is a major contribution to our understanding of how the 1996 immigration and welfare reforms have affected immigrants in the United States. Based on research conducted in different states with diverse immigrant groups, the contributors to this volume provide insightful analyses of the politics, processes and outcomes of these policy measures. This volume should ignite a wide discussion about the declining status and rights of immigrants--including legal permanent residents--in the United States."-Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Department of Sociology University of Southern California
"This is community based research of the best kind: a genuinely close Collaboration among scholars, local residents, advocates, and policymakers, all striving to document from the ground up the understudied effects of the 1996 welfare reform act on immigrants. In so doing, they shift the focus away from individual failings and onto a larger institutional context which reveals the poverty of policy."-Saskia Sassen, author of Guests and Aliens

Author Bio

PHILIP KRETSEDEMAS is Director of Communications for the National Immigration Project. ANA APARICIO is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.