Ron Schmidt

This paper critically examines the role of racialization in the political campaign to exclude unauthorized immigrants from inclusion in the national political community of the United States. The paper finds that racialization is pervasive in this political campaign, stemming from the framing of U.S. immigration policy enforcement as a project aimed at controlling the U.S.-Mexican border. From the foundational conceptualization and practices of border control, a series of examples of racializing practices – both discursive and material – are examined that operate to shore up and maintain a racial hierarchy that systematically subordinates Latinos as an ethno-racial group in the United States. Abstract will be provided by author.

This paper launches a project seeking to discern and critically analyze the core public values at stake in relation to this important public policy subject. The aim of this preliminary paper is to discern and describe the value conflicts that lie at the heart of this on-going controversy. After summarizing the core narratives of exclusionists and inclusionists in this debate, I propose that the conflict over this policy realm can be understood best as a species of identity politics. Exclusionists, that is, begin from a frame of reference in which their core values are nation-state sovereignty and rule of law, leading them to identify undocumented immigrants as alien invaders who need to be punished and removed from the country’s territory in order for justice to be realized. Inclusionists, on the other hand, describe undocumented immigrants as hard-working family members who are already contributing members of our national community in important ways. The core values of the inclusionary narrative – communitarian inclusiveness and egalitarian universalism – lead it to argue that justice requires the formal inclusion of these de facto community members. Later work will seek to critically analyze and assess the value claims made by the partisans on each side of this important debate.

The concept of nation-state sovereignty stands as one of the chief obstacles to the enactment of a “pathway to citizenship” for unauthorized migrants living as residents in the United States. This is so because those representing unauthorized immigrants as “invading aliens” and “criminal foreigners” gain significant political traction from their claim that these migrants have violated the “territorial sovereignty” of the United States. And those supporting a “pathway to citizenship” for unauthorized migrants rarely challenge this bedrock assumption. This paper critically analyzes the nation-state sovereignty obstacle to political membership for unauthorized migrants, and finds that there are multiple grounds on which to challenge the political legitimacy of this obstacle. Nevertheless, on grounds of political prudence, the paper suggests that directly challenging U.S. sovereignty in order to win support for the political inclusion of unauthorized migrants is not likely to gain much political support. At the same time, the paper suggests that this critical analysis provides some degree of support for the legitimation of the “pathway to citizenship” by undermining the assumed moral superiority of the exclusionary argument, and by lending support to the principle that relatively long-term de facto membership in the political community creates legitimate grounds for the inclusion of unauthorized immigrants.

Ron Schmidt, Sr., is professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States (Temple University Press, 2000) and lead co-author of Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: ...

This study, based on the Interactive Acculturation Model, investigates the acculturation orientations of undergraduates attending a multicultural university in Los Angeles County. European Americans ( n = 178), African Americans ( n = 88), Asian immigrants ( n = 165), and Hispanic immigrants ( n = 109) participated in the questionnaire study. Results show that individualism and integrationism are the acculturation orientations preferred by European American, African American, and Asian immigrants. Hispanic immigrants also prefer individualism. Assimilationism, segregationism, and exclusionism are least endorsed by host community members. Immigrants moderately endorse separatism and weakly endorse assimilationism and marginalization. The social psychological profile of each acculturation orientation revealed that integrationism and individualism was associated with harmonious relational outcomes, whereas assimilationism, segregationism, separatism, and exclusionism were associated wi...

RON SCHMIDT, SR. nternational migration has become a worldwide phenomenon, and appears I to be increasing in size and significance for both sending and receiving countries and for the larger international system as well (Global Commission on International ...