Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Politics of Immigration Policy

Item

Title

Politics of Immigration Policy

Author

Money, Jeannette

Research Area

Social Processes

Topic

Immigration

Abstract

In this essay, I first describe the foundational research that focuses on host or receiving states and the policies that determine states' openness to immigration and to immigrant integration. This research privileges domestic actors and institutions in the choice of immigration policy. In the following section, I outline the research that disaggregates both dimensions of immigration policy into component parts. For immigration control, these include skilled migration, unskilled migration, undocumented migration, and border control. For immigrant integration, this includes labor market integration, family reunification, and access to citizenship, among other policies. The focus on receiving states remains strong but is now complemented by research on sending states' policies toward emigrants. I also outline significant efforts by scholars to construct datasets that would allow researchers to evaluate the hypotheses generated by case studies. In the final section, I argue that, despite advances in the research agenda, there is a continuing paucity of quantitative data that would allow researchers to adjudicate among plausible hypotheses. Moreover, even where data are available, the data are generated by wealthy Western democracies about Western democracies. We have little systematic, cross‐national time series data on the rest of the world. I offer a generic concept, “politicians' incentives,” that provides one way of bridging the gap between our understanding of the politics of immigration policy in wealthy Western democracies and other states in the international system that are implicated in global migration patterns and policies.

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extracted text

Politics of Immigration Policy
JEANNETTE MONEY

Abstract
In this essay, I first describe the foundational research that focuses on host or
receiving states and the policies that determine states’ openness to immigration and
to immigrant integration. This research privileges domestic actors and institutions
in the choice of immigration policy. In the following section, I outline the research
that disaggregates both dimensions of immigration policy into component parts.
For immigration control, these include skilled migration, unskilled migration,
undocumented migration, and border control. For immigrant integration, this
includes labor market integration, family reunification, and access to citizenship,
among other policies. The focus on receiving states remains strong but is now
complemented by research on sending states’ policies toward emigrants. I also
outline significant efforts by scholars to construct datasets that would allow
researchers to evaluate the hypotheses generated by case studies. In the final section,
I argue that, despite advances in the research agenda, there is a continuing paucity
of quantitative data that would allow researchers to adjudicate among plausible
hypotheses. Moreover, even where data are available, the data are generated by
wealthy Western democracies about Western democracies. We have little systematic,
cross-national time series data on the rest of the world. I offer a generic concept,
“politicians’ incentives,” that provides one way of bridging the gap between our
understanding of the politics of immigration policy in wealthy Western democracies
and other states in the international system that are implicated in global migration
patterns and policies.

INTRODUCTION
The research on migration policy has exploded in the past decade. From an
initial focus on immigration control in host states, the field has expanded to
encompass different immigrant streams, different types of immigrant incorporation, and different societal and state responses to the immigrant presence. In addition, the large and increasing flow of remittances has generated a
significant literature on sending states’ emigration policies, the role of migration in development, as well as the prospects for international cooperation
on migration issues. However, the research remains hostage to a Eurocentric
bias that limits our understanding of the politics of immigration policy
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

globally. Migration is a highly salient political issue in wealthy Western
democracies but the salience of migration is certainly not limited to this part
of the world. More than half of the individuals living outside of their country
of birth live in the global south [United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), 2009].
In this essay, I first describe the foundational research on immigration control and immigrant integration policies that examine the policies of wealthy
Western democracies. I then turn to the more recent research that disaggregates both immigration control and immigrant integration into component
parts. Although there is no clear date that divides the “first wave” from the
“second wave” of research, most of the initial research was published in the
1990s, while most of the research on disaggregated flows and integration
policies was published in the 2000s. I note the research that connects migration and development, with an emphasis on the policies of sending states.
This, in turn, provides links to a literature that explores efforts of sending
and receiving states to cooperate on issues of mutual interest dealing with
international migration. This section ends with an overview of efforts to construct cross-national time series data sets that would allow us to adjudicate
more clearly among various hypotheses. In the final section, I critique the
current literature that continues to be hampered by a “Western” bias, and
offer a generic concept, “politicians’ incentives,” that provides one way of
bridging the gap between our understanding of the politics of immigration
policy in wealthy Western democracies and other states in the international
system that are implicated in global migration patterns and policies.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Until fairly recently, the politics of immigration policy has been ignored by
political scientists who study international political economy, in favor of a
focus on trade, foreign direct investment, and the structure of the international monetary system. Only researchers in the “traditional settler states,”
comprising the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, developed theories of both immigration control and immigrant integration. In one
of the earliest entries on immigration control, John Higham (1955) attributed
US immigration policy to the rise and fall of American “nativism.” This tradition is central to more contemporary social scientific research agendas on
immigration control that focus on the domestic politics of the recipient states
as the primary determinants of immigration policy.
The research expanded considerably in the 1970s, when immigration flows
into Europe generated growing controversy, particularly in the aftermath
of the oil shock of 1973. The focus shifted away from “traditional settler
states” to the “ethnic” states of Western Europe, states that recruited foreign

Politics of Immigration Policy

3

workers after World War II to help economic reconstruction and which
experienced rapid economic growth in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s
(Kindleberger, 1967). Case studies were followed by efforts to generalize
about the politics of immigration control, those policies that determined
the number and type of immigrants states permitted entry. Central to that
research agenda is Gary Freeman’s (1995) observation that immigration represented a policy arena that produced concentrated benefits (for employers
and the immigrants themselves) while spreading the costs to society more
broadly. Concentrated benefits permitted employers to overcome problems
of collective action to lobby for open immigration policies, while diffuse
costs undermined the ability of other societal actors to organize politically to
limit immigration. Therefore, immigration control policy could be described
as “interest group politics” in which pro-immigration interests were able to
sway policy toward large inflows.
This research agenda was embroidered upon by James Hollifield (1992),
who focused on the rights of immigrants in liberal democracies and the role
of the courts in expanding immigration intakes beyond what states might
otherwise adopt. Christian Joppke (2003a) coined the term “unwanted
immigration,” building upon both Freeman and Hollifield’s ideas, to explain
why “liberal” states continued to receive migrants, despite a backlash from
the host country population. In Joppke’s explanation, states “self-limited”
their sovereignty. Alternatively, the “gap hypothesis” was developed by
Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield (1994) and Cornelius, Tsuda, Martin, and
Hollifield (2004) to describe the inability of states to control their borders.
Both sides of this debate viewed states as “losing control” over immigration
flows. Other scholars pointed out that states, while imperfectly controlling
their borders, were in fact capable of significant control. After all, while
levels of trade were large and growing, migration remained relatively
stagnant at less than 3% of the global population. Anti-immigrant forces
might be playing a significant role after all.
To explain the role of anti-immigrant forces, Jeannette Money (1997, 1999)
argued that, because immigrants were geographically concentrated, both
pro- and anti-immigrant forces were able to overcome problems of collective
action. Local politics were then catapulted to the national level, when
restrictionist interests were important for construction of a national political
coalition.
Other explanations were proffered, incorporating Marxist and world
systems views that connected the structure of the capitalist global economy
to migration flows (Castells, 1975; Castles & Kosack, 1973; Petras, 1981;
Sassen, 1998). These research agendas also tended to be expansionary in
their view of immigration control, as forces of global capitalism drew ever
greater numbers of countries and peoples into the web of market exchange.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

A few have taken state interests as central to the policy agenda (Rudolph,
2003). The debate over the determinants of immigration control in wealthy
Western democracies is nicely summarized by Eytan Meyers (2000, 2004).
As this debate continued, migrant populations began to settle in European
societies, giving rise to a second strand of research: the politics of immigrant
integration. Although there is a long strand of this research in the United
States, now European researchers joined the debate. Hammar (1985) popularized the distinction between immigration control and immigrant integration and described the series of rights that had accrued to migrants in
European societies, labeling this status as denizenship. While sociologists
attempted to determine the level of immigrant integration, political scientists
developed a typology of integration regimes that were believed to structure
immigrants’ capacities to incorporate into the host state. These included the
following models: imperial, ethnic, republican, multicultural, and transnational (Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2013). A separate literature that incorporated the demographic characteristics of right wing party supporters along
with the impact of globalization developed to explain the rise of radical right,
anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
This initial wave of research on the politics of immigration policy has been
inconclusive. Much of the research relies on case studies that are very useful
for generating hypotheses but much less useful for sorting among competing (or complementary) hypotheses. Where quantitative evidence has been
brought to bear (Money, 1999; Rosenblum, 2003, Peters, 2014), it generated a
debate over the best way to quantify the concept of “immigration control.”
The quantitative research on right-wing political party support generated
a different concern: Although there is considerable cross-national variation
on electoral support for these parties, there is also considerable longitudinal
variation which is not captured in the analyses that focus primarily on the
recent past but fail to incorporate the earlier period when immigration levels were rising but failed to trigger electoral support for these radical right
parties.
Moreover, the focus has been on Europe or, more broadly, wealthy Western
democracies, without explicitly recognizing that more than half of those who
live outside their country of origin are located in the global south.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Research in the 1980s and 1990s focused primarily on broad concepts of
immigration control and secondarily on immigrant integration. In the 2000s,
the research has exploded by disaggregating those broad concepts into
component parts. Research on immigration control now includes separate
strands of literature addressing high-skilled immigration flows; family

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5

reunification; asylum seekers; low-skilled immigration, undocumented
migration and border security; and third-party providers of immigration
control, survival migration, and the securitization of immigration. Table 1
provides a list of the various research issues and some central citations in
each area. The breadth of the literature is now so large that it is impossible
to summarize the various strands briefly.
The politics of immigrant integration has been disaggregated as well.
Andrew Geddes and Jan Nielsen (2005) were instrumental in developing a
set of five integration indicators and organizing a panel of experts to classify
European countries on these five indicators: labor market integration,
security of residence, access to nationality, access to social welfare, and
family reunification. This task has been taken up and extended by the British
Council and the Migration Policy Group, which now provide data on 148
integration indicators for 34 Western democracies. The broad categories of
immigrant integration include the five indicators listed along with indicators for access to education, political participation, and antidiscrimination
[Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), 2014]. Gary Freeman (2004)
suggests that each dimension of incorporation may be dictated by different
policy coalitions. If so, the integration typologies developed in the 1990s
may turn out to have little value.
Finally, interest has turned to sending states. The primary emphasis
has been on migrant remittances and their impact on development but
the research agenda has expanded to include questions about the role of
migration in development more broadly (UNDP, 2009). There is considerable
enthusiasm and optimism in much of the research but some cautionary
research that suggests a dark side of migration and development is also
surfacing (Castles et al., 2013; Czaika & de Haas, 2013; De Haas & Vezzoli,
2013). Emigration, this research suggests, drains a country of its most
talented and energetic populations and reduces political pressures for
reform. Migrants, they argue, will contribute to development only after poor
country governments institute domestic political and economic reforms
that generate incentives for migrants to participate in the home economy
(Castles et al., 2013).
The research has also expanded to include an interest in migrant rights and
the potential for international cooperation between sending and receiving
states. Ruhs and Chang (2004) point out that, unlike other international economic flows, migrants receive a bundle of rights when they enter the host
state, although that bundle varies across countries and even within countries
based on migration status. Justin Gest et al. (2013) generate a framework for
analyzing the determinants of that migrant rights structure. The protection
of migrant rights is one issue that might form the basis for international cooperation but there is little consensus on the prospects for cooperation among

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Table 1
Immigration Policy Research Disaggregated by Issue Area
High-skilled
immigration flows

Cerna, L. (2014). Attracting high-skilled immigrants: Policies
in comparative perspective. International Migration, 52(4)
(forthcoming).
Cerna, L., & Boucher, A. (2014). Current policy trends in
skilled immigration policy. International Migration, 52(4)
(forthcoming).

Family reunification

Lahav, G. (1997). International versus national constraints in
family-reunification migration policy. Global Governance,
3(3), 349–372.

Asylum seekers

Thielemann, E. R., & Dewan, T. (2006). The myth of
free-riding: Refugee protection and implicit
burden-sharing. West European Politics, 29(2), 351–369.

Undocumented
migration and border
security

Andreas, P. (2003). Redrawing the line: Borders and security
in the 21st century. International Security, 28(2), 78–111.
Koslowski, R. (2010). Towards an international regime for
mobility and security? In K. Tamas & J. Palme (Eds.)
Globalizing migration regimes: New challenges to
transnational cooperation. Burlinton, VT: Ashgate.

Third-party providers of
immigration control

Lahav, G., & Guiraudon, V. (2006). Actors and venues in
immigration control: Closing the gap between political
demands and policy outcomes. West European Politics,
29(2), 201–223.

Survival migration

Betts, A. (2013). Survival migration. Failed governance and
the crisis of displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.

Securitization of
migration

Adamson, F. (2006). Crossing borders: International
migration and national security. International Security,
31(1), 165–199.
Andreas, P. (2003). Redrawing the line: Borders and security
in the 21st century. International Security, 28(2), 78–111.
Chebel d’Appollonia, A., & Reich, S. (2008). Immigration,
integration, and security. America and Europe in
comparative perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Weiner, M. (1995). The global migration crisis. Challenge to
states and to human rights. New York, NY: Harper Collins
Publishers.

Politics of Immigration Policy

7

states in the international system (Betts 2011; Gamlen & Marsh, 2011; Hansen,
Koehler, & Money, 2011; Koslowski, 2011; Kunz, Lavenex, & Panizzon, 2011).
Given the structure of migration flows and the distribution of power in the
international system, bilateral cooperation is more likely in the issue area,
rather than regional or multilateral cooperation (Money & Lockhart, 2012).
Efforts to understand the politics of immigration policy have taken a
behavioral turn, with a focus on public attitudes toward immigration
(Goldstein & Peters, 2014; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007, 2010). Are citizens’
economic interests central to their attitudes toward migrants? Research is not
entirely consistent but suggests that although individual economic interests
track immigration attitudes, nationalism and national identity are central
components of individual attitudes toward immigration and immigrants.
However, there is considerable work to do to tie citizen attitudes to actual
policy outcomes, whether it is support for radical right anti-immigrant
parties or for actual migration policies.
The research has also become more scientific in the sense that researchers
are investing considerable energy in constructing datasets that would allow
for a quantitative evaluation of the various hypotheses (see, e.g., Ruhs,
2013). The European Union finances some of this research, such as the
Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) and the Citizenship Observatory
at the European University Institute. Other efforts are still under way, such
as the IMPALA project (International Migration Policy and Law Analysis
database), directed by Michael Hiscox (Beine et al., 2014) and we can hope to
see the fruits of this labor in the near future.
One example of research that has advanced from case studies in Europe to
global quantitative analysis is nationality policy. Nationality or citizenship
policy is defined by state laws governing access to citizenship through birth
and/or naturalization. Tremendous variation exists among states and over
time. The initial case study work by Brubaker (1990) and Joppke (2003b)
focused on Europe and the European experience. Brubaker argued that the
challenges of nation building in France and Germany shaped “national
self-understandings” that were then transformed into “ethnic” and “civic”
patterns of citizenship law. Ethnic citizenship laws are based on jus sanguinis
policies that attribute citizenship to children based on the citizenship of the
parents, whereas civic citizenship laws permit birth on the territory to play
an important role in citizenship status (jus soli). Joppke emphasized that
citizenship laws are not static and attributed the direction of the change,
more or less restrictive, to the political coalition in power, right or left.
Howard (2009) took up the challenge and developed a Citizenship Policy
Index that incorporates three dimensions of citizenship laws and coded them
for 15 European states at two time points. He used these data points to illuminate more systematically the origins of citizenship policy (colonial experience

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and early democracy) and the determinants of change in citizenship policy
(issue salience and the political coalition in power). Seely (2007), Bertocchi
and Strozzi (2010), and Money and Western (2014) have generated regional
and global indicators of citizenship policy and have employed these indicators to develop and evaluate theories of citizenship policy that are global,
rather than theories that rely on the experience of European democracies.
Although the research has not achieved consensus, the trajectory is positive.
These new waves of research are richer than the first wave of research,
generating more nuanced hypotheses that are better evaluated empirically.
However, because the broad topics of immigration control and immigrant
integration have been disaggregated, the research is also more scattered,
making it difficult to reaggregate our understanding of the politics of immigration policy at the level of the nation-state, which remains the primary
actor in this policy arena (although see Rosenblum, 2000). Moreover, there
is a continued focus on wealthy Western democracies, in part because data
on these issues are actually available and can be incorporated into datasets
for analysis.
Finally, there is a tendency to chase after events rather than to understand
the underlying dynamics that connect global markets, states, domestic
politics, and migration flows. The research on high-skilled migration, for
example, followed the implementation of state policies to attract high-skilled
migrants, rather than predicting the competition for highly skilled immigrants; that is, researchers observed that states were modifying their policies
and only then sought to explain these changes. Another example is the focus
on family reunion policy. This avenue of continuing migration into Europe
after the “immigration stop” of the early 1970s was observed before analysts
began to try and explain this flow. Good theory should both explain and
predict. We still do not have a good picture of how all the parts fit together
and what we can anticipate and predict.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research has the opportunity to build on the advances made in the
past 10 to 15 years. It must do so in two important ways. First, the research
needs to expand the coverage to migration policy globally. Migration is a
highly salient political issue in wealthy Western democracies but the salience
of migration is certainly not limited to this part of the world. More than half
of the individuals living outside of their country of birth live in the global
south (UNDP, 2009). Policies in both host and home state play a large role
in determining the quality of life for migrants and migrants affect both host
countries and countries of origin. Therefore, our efforts to generate datasets
must include all countries of the globe even though it may be more difficult to

Politics of Immigration Policy

9

generate data from some countries of the global south. The same efforts that
go into collecting and coding laws in the West should be extended globally,
incorporating scholars from developing countries into the research agenda.
We need both cross-national and longitudinal data to evaluate the origins of
and change in immigration policy in all countries. Case studies are extraordinarily useful for process tracing and for understanding the mechanisms that
connect the explanatory variables with the explanandum—the immigration
policy we are trying to explain. But we need to sort among generic political
processes and those that are unique to specific countries.
Second, we need to construct theory to take into account different political
processes in countries around the globe. Country experts in the global
south are beginning to generate theory via case studies (see, in particular,
many articles published in International Migration Review and International
Migration). These case studies should inform theory development so that
we better understand political processes in countries other than established
democracies. These can include democracies that do not adopt the same
left–right political dimension visible in the wealthy Western democracies.
New democracies and various types of autocracies have different political
actors with different policy preferences. And we have little knowledge of
the sense of “nationality” and “identity” in the developing world that plays
a large role in understanding attitudes toward migrants in Western democracies. For example, what are attitudes toward immigrants in sub-Saharan
African states? Do Africans develop national identities similar to Europeans
even though their state boundaries were arbitrarily drawn by colonial
powers without regard to the ethnic groups contained therein?
One way of proceeding is to think more generically in terms of politicians’
incentives to permit migration and to incorporate immigrants. Societal actors
have preferences for the level of immigration and the degree of immigrant
integration. Domestic political institutions structure the power of the various societal actors. These can then be understood in terms of the costs and
benefits various policy choices generate for politicians. Bertocchi and Strozzi
(2010) provide one example of the set of incentives politicians face in light of
societal preferences on nationality policy (also see Money & Western, 2014).
This concept could bridge the research on societal attitudes on immigration
to the policy choices of states. And it also provides a generic framework that
travels across the range of domestic political regimes. Politicians’ incentives
may well be the fundamental building blocks of the politics of immigration
policy, writ globally.
The research agenda on the politics of immigration policy has expanded
in several fruitful directions in the past 15 years. Yet we have a long way to
travel. Theory development needs to move past the experiences of wealthy
Western democracies to other regions of the globe and other types of political

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

institutions. Politicians’ incentives may be a fruitful way of drawing together
our theoretical understanding of these political processes. Finally, we must
generate global cross-national and time series datasets to evaluate theory and
separate the wheat from the chaff.
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Ithaca, NY: University Press.
Money, J. (2010). Comparative immigration policy. In R. A. Denemark (Ed.), The
international studies encyclopedia. Blackwell Reference Online, http://www.
isacompendium.com/public/book.html?id=g9781444336597_9781444336597
(accessed 24 April 2014).
Money, J. and Lockhart, S. (2012). The architecture of cooperation on international
migration. Presented at the International Studies Association Meetings, San Diego.

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Money, J. and Western, S. (2014). The origins of citizenship policy: Sub-Saharan
African in comparative perspective. Paper presented at the International Studies
Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, CA.
Peters, M. (2014). Open trade, closed borders: Immigration policy in the era of globalization. World Politics (forthcoming).
Petras, E. M. (1981). The global labor market in the modern world economy. In M.
Kritz et al. (Eds.), Global trends in migration. New York, NY: Center for Migration
Studies.
Reitz, J. G. (2002). Host societies and the reception of immigrants: Research themes,
emerging theories and methodological issues. International Migration Review, 36(4),
1005–1019.
Rosenblum, M. (2000). At home and abroad: The foreign and domestic sources of U.S. immigration policy. San Diego, CA: University of California PhD Dissertation.
Rosenblum, M. (2003). The political determinants of migration control: A quantitative analysis. Migraciones Internationacionales, 2(1), 161–170.
Rudolph, C. (2003). Security and the political economy of international migration.
American Political Science Review, 97(4), 603–620.
Ruhs, M. (2013). The price of rights: Regulating international labor migration. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ruhs, M., & Chang, H.-J. (2004). The ethics of labor immigration policy. International
Organization, 58(1), 69–102.
Sassen, S. (1998). Globalization and its discontents. New York, NY: New Press.
Seely, J. (2007). Limiting access to citizenship in Africa: A cross-national comparison. Paper presented at the International Studies Association Annual Meeting,
Chicago.
United Nations Development Programme (2009). Human Development Report 2009.
Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development. New York, NY: UNDP.

FURTHER READING
There are several review essays that are well worthwhile in obtaining a variety of lenses on the state of the research. Castles, de Haas, and Miller (2013)
provide a broad look at both theory and empirics of the migration process,
concentrating on the post World War II period. Eytan Meyer’s (2000) contribution in International Migration Review provides a clear summary and evaluation of the theoretical approaches to immigration control. Erik Bleich’s
(2008) World Politics article outlines different types of intellectual contributions provided by researchers and points to the potential for broader contributions by political scientists. Gary Freeman’s (2004) article provides a thorough overview of the theoretical literature on immigrant integration; Terri
Givens’ (2007) article focuses on empirical research on that topic; Jeffrey Reitz
(2002) discusses the research agenda and methodological issues. Jeannette
Money (2010) provides an overview of comparative immigration policy that
addresses primarily the foundational research.

Politics of Immigration Policy

13

JEANNETTE MONEY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jeannette Money is Associate Professor in the Department of Political
Science, University of California, Davis. Her research agenda focuses on
various aspects of immigration policy. She has published a book, The political
geography of immigration control (Cornell University Press 1999), that explores
the political consequences of immigrants’ geographic concentration. Her
research also examines the prospects for international cooperation on issues
of immigration; a coedited volume, Migration, nation states, and international
cooperation (Routledge 2011), examines regional cooperation on migration
and provides an empirical overview of the types of cooperation and coordination that exist on a regional level. This edited volume is complemented by
a second book-length project that describes, classifies, and explains the types
of international cooperation that exist on issues of international migration.
Dr. Money is currently working on issues of citizenship and naturalization;
this research provides an empirical overview of nationality laws globally
and evaluates the origins and the determinants of changes in those laws. She
is also interested in migrant participation in the host polity and has written
some articles on the influence of migrants on the host country’s foreign
policy toward the migrants’ home country.
http://ps.ucdavis.edu/people/fzmoney
http://migrationcluster.ucdavis.edu/people/affiliate_faculty/index.html
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D’Amico
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Jennifer Lee

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Attitude: Construction versus Disposition (Psychology), Charles G. Lord
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Wampler
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The Future of Class Analyses in American Politics (Political Science), Jeffrey
M. Stonecash
Assimilation and its Discontents (Sociology), Min Zhou



Politics of Immigration Policy
JEANNETTE MONEY

Abstract
In this essay, I first describe the foundational research that focuses on host or
receiving states and the policies that determine states’ openness to immigration and
to immigrant integration. This research privileges domestic actors and institutions
in the choice of immigration policy. In the following section, I outline the research
that disaggregates both dimensions of immigration policy into component parts.
For immigration control, these include skilled migration, unskilled migration,
undocumented migration, and border control. For immigrant integration, this
includes labor market integration, family reunification, and access to citizenship,
among other policies. The focus on receiving states remains strong but is now
complemented by research on sending states’ policies toward emigrants. I also
outline significant efforts by scholars to construct datasets that would allow
researchers to evaluate the hypotheses generated by case studies. In the final section,
I argue that, despite advances in the research agenda, there is a continuing paucity
of quantitative data that would allow researchers to adjudicate among plausible
hypotheses. Moreover, even where data are available, the data are generated by
wealthy Western democracies about Western democracies. We have little systematic,
cross-national time series data on the rest of the world. I offer a generic concept,
“politicians’ incentives,” that provides one way of bridging the gap between our
understanding of the politics of immigration policy in wealthy Western democracies
and other states in the international system that are implicated in global migration
patterns and policies.

INTRODUCTION
The research on migration policy has exploded in the past decade. From an
initial focus on immigration control in host states, the field has expanded to
encompass different immigrant streams, different types of immigrant incorporation, and different societal and state responses to the immigrant presence. In addition, the large and increasing flow of remittances has generated a
significant literature on sending states’ emigration policies, the role of migration in development, as well as the prospects for international cooperation
on migration issues. However, the research remains hostage to a Eurocentric
bias that limits our understanding of the politics of immigration policy
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

globally. Migration is a highly salient political issue in wealthy Western
democracies but the salience of migration is certainly not limited to this part
of the world. More than half of the individuals living outside of their country
of birth live in the global south [United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), 2009].
In this essay, I first describe the foundational research on immigration control and immigrant integration policies that examine the policies of wealthy
Western democracies. I then turn to the more recent research that disaggregates both immigration control and immigrant integration into component
parts. Although there is no clear date that divides the “first wave” from the
“second wave” of research, most of the initial research was published in the
1990s, while most of the research on disaggregated flows and integration
policies was published in the 2000s. I note the research that connects migration and development, with an emphasis on the policies of sending states.
This, in turn, provides links to a literature that explores efforts of sending
and receiving states to cooperate on issues of mutual interest dealing with
international migration. This section ends with an overview of efforts to construct cross-national time series data sets that would allow us to adjudicate
more clearly among various hypotheses. In the final section, I critique the
current literature that continues to be hampered by a “Western” bias, and
offer a generic concept, “politicians’ incentives,” that provides one way of
bridging the gap between our understanding of the politics of immigration
policy in wealthy Western democracies and other states in the international
system that are implicated in global migration patterns and policies.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Until fairly recently, the politics of immigration policy has been ignored by
political scientists who study international political economy, in favor of a
focus on trade, foreign direct investment, and the structure of the international monetary system. Only researchers in the “traditional settler states,”
comprising the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, developed theories of both immigration control and immigrant integration. In one
of the earliest entries on immigration control, John Higham (1955) attributed
US immigration policy to the rise and fall of American “nativism.” This tradition is central to more contemporary social scientific research agendas on
immigration control that focus on the domestic politics of the recipient states
as the primary determinants of immigration policy.
The research expanded considerably in the 1970s, when immigration flows
into Europe generated growing controversy, particularly in the aftermath
of the oil shock of 1973. The focus shifted away from “traditional settler
states” to the “ethnic” states of Western Europe, states that recruited foreign

Politics of Immigration Policy

3

workers after World War II to help economic reconstruction and which
experienced rapid economic growth in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s
(Kindleberger, 1967). Case studies were followed by efforts to generalize
about the politics of immigration control, those policies that determined
the number and type of immigrants states permitted entry. Central to that
research agenda is Gary Freeman’s (1995) observation that immigration represented a policy arena that produced concentrated benefits (for employers
and the immigrants themselves) while spreading the costs to society more
broadly. Concentrated benefits permitted employers to overcome problems
of collective action to lobby for open immigration policies, while diffuse
costs undermined the ability of other societal actors to organize politically to
limit immigration. Therefore, immigration control policy could be described
as “interest group politics” in which pro-immigration interests were able to
sway policy toward large inflows.
This research agenda was embroidered upon by James Hollifield (1992),
who focused on the rights of immigrants in liberal democracies and the role
of the courts in expanding immigration intakes beyond what states might
otherwise adopt. Christian Joppke (2003a) coined the term “unwanted
immigration,” building upon both Freeman and Hollifield’s ideas, to explain
why “liberal” states continued to receive migrants, despite a backlash from
the host country population. In Joppke’s explanation, states “self-limited”
their sovereignty. Alternatively, the “gap hypothesis” was developed by
Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield (1994) and Cornelius, Tsuda, Martin, and
Hollifield (2004) to describe the inability of states to control their borders.
Both sides of this debate viewed states as “losing control” over immigration
flows. Other scholars pointed out that states, while imperfectly controlling
their borders, were in fact capable of significant control. After all, while
levels of trade were large and growing, migration remained relatively
stagnant at less than 3% of the global population. Anti-immigrant forces
might be playing a significant role after all.
To explain the role of anti-immigrant forces, Jeannette Money (1997, 1999)
argued that, because immigrants were geographically concentrated, both
pro- and anti-immigrant forces were able to overcome problems of collective
action. Local politics were then catapulted to the national level, when
restrictionist interests were important for construction of a national political
coalition.
Other explanations were proffered, incorporating Marxist and world
systems views that connected the structure of the capitalist global economy
to migration flows (Castells, 1975; Castles & Kosack, 1973; Petras, 1981;
Sassen, 1998). These research agendas also tended to be expansionary in
their view of immigration control, as forces of global capitalism drew ever
greater numbers of countries and peoples into the web of market exchange.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

A few have taken state interests as central to the policy agenda (Rudolph,
2003). The debate over the determinants of immigration control in wealthy
Western democracies is nicely summarized by Eytan Meyers (2000, 2004).
As this debate continued, migrant populations began to settle in European
societies, giving rise to a second strand of research: the politics of immigrant
integration. Although there is a long strand of this research in the United
States, now European researchers joined the debate. Hammar (1985) popularized the distinction between immigration control and immigrant integration and described the series of rights that had accrued to migrants in
European societies, labeling this status as denizenship. While sociologists
attempted to determine the level of immigrant integration, political scientists
developed a typology of integration regimes that were believed to structure
immigrants’ capacities to incorporate into the host state. These included the
following models: imperial, ethnic, republican, multicultural, and transnational (Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2013). A separate literature that incorporated the demographic characteristics of right wing party supporters along
with the impact of globalization developed to explain the rise of radical right,
anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
This initial wave of research on the politics of immigration policy has been
inconclusive. Much of the research relies on case studies that are very useful
for generating hypotheses but much less useful for sorting among competing (or complementary) hypotheses. Where quantitative evidence has been
brought to bear (Money, 1999; Rosenblum, 2003, Peters, 2014), it generated a
debate over the best way to quantify the concept of “immigration control.”
The quantitative research on right-wing political party support generated
a different concern: Although there is considerable cross-national variation
on electoral support for these parties, there is also considerable longitudinal
variation which is not captured in the analyses that focus primarily on the
recent past but fail to incorporate the earlier period when immigration levels were rising but failed to trigger electoral support for these radical right
parties.
Moreover, the focus has been on Europe or, more broadly, wealthy Western
democracies, without explicitly recognizing that more than half of those who
live outside their country of origin are located in the global south.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Research in the 1980s and 1990s focused primarily on broad concepts of
immigration control and secondarily on immigrant integration. In the 2000s,
the research has exploded by disaggregating those broad concepts into
component parts. Research on immigration control now includes separate
strands of literature addressing high-skilled immigration flows; family

Politics of Immigration Policy

5

reunification; asylum seekers; low-skilled immigration, undocumented
migration and border security; and third-party providers of immigration
control, survival migration, and the securitization of immigration. Table 1
provides a list of the various research issues and some central citations in
each area. The breadth of the literature is now so large that it is impossible
to summarize the various strands briefly.
The politics of immigrant integration has been disaggregated as well.
Andrew Geddes and Jan Nielsen (2005) were instrumental in developing a
set of five integration indicators and organizing a panel of experts to classify
European countries on these five indicators: labor market integration,
security of residence, access to nationality, access to social welfare, and
family reunification. This task has been taken up and extended by the British
Council and the Migration Policy Group, which now provide data on 148
integration indicators for 34 Western democracies. The broad categories of
immigrant integration include the five indicators listed along with indicators for access to education, political participation, and antidiscrimination
[Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), 2014]. Gary Freeman (2004)
suggests that each dimension of incorporation may be dictated by different
policy coalitions. If so, the integration typologies developed in the 1990s
may turn out to have little value.
Finally, interest has turned to sending states. The primary emphasis
has been on migrant remittances and their impact on development but
the research agenda has expanded to include questions about the role of
migration in development more broadly (UNDP, 2009). There is considerable
enthusiasm and optimism in much of the research but some cautionary
research that suggests a dark side of migration and development is also
surfacing (Castles et al., 2013; Czaika & de Haas, 2013; De Haas & Vezzoli,
2013). Emigration, this research suggests, drains a country of its most
talented and energetic populations and reduces political pressures for
reform. Migrants, they argue, will contribute to development only after poor
country governments institute domestic political and economic reforms
that generate incentives for migrants to participate in the home economy
(Castles et al., 2013).
The research has also expanded to include an interest in migrant rights and
the potential for international cooperation between sending and receiving
states. Ruhs and Chang (2004) point out that, unlike other international economic flows, migrants receive a bundle of rights when they enter the host
state, although that bundle varies across countries and even within countries
based on migration status. Justin Gest et al. (2013) generate a framework for
analyzing the determinants of that migrant rights structure. The protection
of migrant rights is one issue that might form the basis for international cooperation but there is little consensus on the prospects for cooperation among

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Table 1
Immigration Policy Research Disaggregated by Issue Area
High-skilled
immigration flows

Cerna, L. (2014). Attracting high-skilled immigrants: Policies
in comparative perspective. International Migration, 52(4)
(forthcoming).
Cerna, L., & Boucher, A. (2014). Current policy trends in
skilled immigration policy. International Migration, 52(4)
(forthcoming).

Family reunification

Lahav, G. (1997). International versus national constraints in
family-reunification migration policy. Global Governance,
3(3), 349–372.

Asylum seekers

Thielemann, E. R., & Dewan, T. (2006). The myth of
free-riding: Refugee protection and implicit
burden-sharing. West European Politics, 29(2), 351–369.

Undocumented
migration and border
security

Andreas, P. (2003). Redrawing the line: Borders and security
in the 21st century. International Security, 28(2), 78–111.
Koslowski, R. (2010). Towards an international regime for
mobility and security? In K. Tamas & J. Palme (Eds.)
Globalizing migration regimes: New challenges to
transnational cooperation. Burlinton, VT: Ashgate.

Third-party providers of
immigration control

Lahav, G., & Guiraudon, V. (2006). Actors and venues in
immigration control: Closing the gap between political
demands and policy outcomes. West European Politics,
29(2), 201–223.

Survival migration

Betts, A. (2013). Survival migration. Failed governance and
the crisis of displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.

Securitization of
migration

Adamson, F. (2006). Crossing borders: International
migration and national security. International Security,
31(1), 165–199.
Andreas, P. (2003). Redrawing the line: Borders and security
in the 21st century. International Security, 28(2), 78–111.
Chebel d’Appollonia, A., & Reich, S. (2008). Immigration,
integration, and security. America and Europe in
comparative perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Weiner, M. (1995). The global migration crisis. Challenge to
states and to human rights. New York, NY: Harper Collins
Publishers.

Politics of Immigration Policy

7

states in the international system (Betts 2011; Gamlen & Marsh, 2011; Hansen,
Koehler, & Money, 2011; Koslowski, 2011; Kunz, Lavenex, & Panizzon, 2011).
Given the structure of migration flows and the distribution of power in the
international system, bilateral cooperation is more likely in the issue area,
rather than regional or multilateral cooperation (Money & Lockhart, 2012).
Efforts to understand the politics of immigration policy have taken a
behavioral turn, with a focus on public attitudes toward immigration
(Goldstein & Peters, 2014; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007, 2010). Are citizens’
economic interests central to their attitudes toward migrants? Research is not
entirely consistent but suggests that although individual economic interests
track immigration attitudes, nationalism and national identity are central
components of individual attitudes toward immigration and immigrants.
However, there is considerable work to do to tie citizen attitudes to actual
policy outcomes, whether it is support for radical right anti-immigrant
parties or for actual migration policies.
The research has also become more scientific in the sense that researchers
are investing considerable energy in constructing datasets that would allow
for a quantitative evaluation of the various hypotheses (see, e.g., Ruhs,
2013). The European Union finances some of this research, such as the
Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) and the Citizenship Observatory
at the European University Institute. Other efforts are still under way, such
as the IMPALA project (International Migration Policy and Law Analysis
database), directed by Michael Hiscox (Beine et al., 2014) and we can hope to
see the fruits of this labor in the near future.
One example of research that has advanced from case studies in Europe to
global quantitative analysis is nationality policy. Nationality or citizenship
policy is defined by state laws governing access to citizenship through birth
and/or naturalization. Tremendous variation exists among states and over
time. The initial case study work by Brubaker (1990) and Joppke (2003b)
focused on Europe and the European experience. Brubaker argued that the
challenges of nation building in France and Germany shaped “national
self-understandings” that were then transformed into “ethnic” and “civic”
patterns of citizenship law. Ethnic citizenship laws are based on jus sanguinis
policies that attribute citizenship to children based on the citizenship of the
parents, whereas civic citizenship laws permit birth on the territory to play
an important role in citizenship status (jus soli). Joppke emphasized that
citizenship laws are not static and attributed the direction of the change,
more or less restrictive, to the political coalition in power, right or left.
Howard (2009) took up the challenge and developed a Citizenship Policy
Index that incorporates three dimensions of citizenship laws and coded them
for 15 European states at two time points. He used these data points to illuminate more systematically the origins of citizenship policy (colonial experience

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and early democracy) and the determinants of change in citizenship policy
(issue salience and the political coalition in power). Seely (2007), Bertocchi
and Strozzi (2010), and Money and Western (2014) have generated regional
and global indicators of citizenship policy and have employed these indicators to develop and evaluate theories of citizenship policy that are global,
rather than theories that rely on the experience of European democracies.
Although the research has not achieved consensus, the trajectory is positive.
These new waves of research are richer than the first wave of research,
generating more nuanced hypotheses that are better evaluated empirically.
However, because the broad topics of immigration control and immigrant
integration have been disaggregated, the research is also more scattered,
making it difficult to reaggregate our understanding of the politics of immigration policy at the level of the nation-state, which remains the primary
actor in this policy arena (although see Rosenblum, 2000). Moreover, there
is a continued focus on wealthy Western democracies, in part because data
on these issues are actually available and can be incorporated into datasets
for analysis.
Finally, there is a tendency to chase after events rather than to understand
the underlying dynamics that connect global markets, states, domestic
politics, and migration flows. The research on high-skilled migration, for
example, followed the implementation of state policies to attract high-skilled
migrants, rather than predicting the competition for highly skilled immigrants; that is, researchers observed that states were modifying their policies
and only then sought to explain these changes. Another example is the focus
on family reunion policy. This avenue of continuing migration into Europe
after the “immigration stop” of the early 1970s was observed before analysts
began to try and explain this flow. Good theory should both explain and
predict. We still do not have a good picture of how all the parts fit together
and what we can anticipate and predict.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research has the opportunity to build on the advances made in the
past 10 to 15 years. It must do so in two important ways. First, the research
needs to expand the coverage to migration policy globally. Migration is a
highly salient political issue in wealthy Western democracies but the salience
of migration is certainly not limited to this part of the world. More than half
of the individuals living outside of their country of birth live in the global
south (UNDP, 2009). Policies in both host and home state play a large role
in determining the quality of life for migrants and migrants affect both host
countries and countries of origin. Therefore, our efforts to generate datasets
must include all countries of the globe even though it may be more difficult to

Politics of Immigration Policy

9

generate data from some countries of the global south. The same efforts that
go into collecting and coding laws in the West should be extended globally,
incorporating scholars from developing countries into the research agenda.
We need both cross-national and longitudinal data to evaluate the origins of
and change in immigration policy in all countries. Case studies are extraordinarily useful for process tracing and for understanding the mechanisms that
connect the explanatory variables with the explanandum—the immigration
policy we are trying to explain. But we need to sort among generic political
processes and those that are unique to specific countries.
Second, we need to construct theory to take into account different political
processes in countries around the globe. Country experts in the global
south are beginning to generate theory via case studies (see, in particular,
many articles published in International Migration Review and International
Migration). These case studies should inform theory development so that
we better understand political processes in countries other than established
democracies. These can include democracies that do not adopt the same
left–right political dimension visible in the wealthy Western democracies.
New democracies and various types of autocracies have different political
actors with different policy preferences. And we have little knowledge of
the sense of “nationality” and “identity” in the developing world that plays
a large role in understanding attitudes toward migrants in Western democracies. For example, what are attitudes toward immigrants in sub-Saharan
African states? Do Africans develop national identities similar to Europeans
even though their state boundaries were arbitrarily drawn by colonial
powers without regard to the ethnic groups contained therein?
One way of proceeding is to think more generically in terms of politicians’
incentives to permit migration and to incorporate immigrants. Societal actors
have preferences for the level of immigration and the degree of immigrant
integration. Domestic political institutions structure the power of the various societal actors. These can then be understood in terms of the costs and
benefits various policy choices generate for politicians. Bertocchi and Strozzi
(2010) provide one example of the set of incentives politicians face in light of
societal preferences on nationality policy (also see Money & Western, 2014).
This concept could bridge the research on societal attitudes on immigration
to the policy choices of states. And it also provides a generic framework that
travels across the range of domestic political regimes. Politicians’ incentives
may well be the fundamental building blocks of the politics of immigration
policy, writ globally.
The research agenda on the politics of immigration policy has expanded
in several fruitful directions in the past 15 years. Yet we have a long way to
travel. Theory development needs to move past the experiences of wealthy
Western democracies to other regions of the globe and other types of political

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

institutions. Politicians’ incentives may be a fruitful way of drawing together
our theoretical understanding of these political processes. Finally, we must
generate global cross-national and time series datasets to evaluate theory and
separate the wheat from the chaff.
REFERENCES
Beine, M., Burgoon, B., Boucher, A., Crock, M., Gest, J., Helbling, M., … Thielemann,
E. (2014). Comparing immigration policies: The IMPALA database project. Retrieved
from www.people.fas.harvard.edu/∼hiscox/IMPALA.html.
Bertocchi, G., & Strozzi, C. (2010). The evolution of citizenship: Economic and institutional determinants. Journal of Law and Economics, 53(1), 95–136.
Betts, A. (Ed.) (2011). Global migration governance. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Bleich, E. (2008). Immigration and integration studies in Western Europe and the
United States. The road less traveled and a path ahead. World Politics, 60, 509–38.
Brubaker, R. (1990). Immigration, citizenship, and the nation-state in France and Germany: A comparative historical analysis. International Sociology, 5(4), 379–407.
Castells, M. (1975). Immigrant workers and class struggles in advanced capitalism.
Politics and Society, 5(1), 33–66.
Castles, S., de Haas, H., & Miller, M. J. (2013). The age of migration. International population movements in the Modern World (5th ed.). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Castles, S., & Kosack, G. (1973). Immigrant workers and class structure in Western Europe.
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Cornelius, W. A., Martin, P. L., & Hollifield, J. F. (Eds.) (1994). Controlling immigration:
A global perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Cornelius, W. A., Tsuda, T., Martin, P. L., & Hollifield, J. F. (Eds.) (2004). Controlling
immigration: A global perspective (2nd ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Czaika, M., & de Haas, H. (2013). The effectiveness of immigration policies. Population and Development Review, 39(3), 487–508.
De Haas, H., & Vezzoli, S. (2013). Migration and development on the south–north
frontier: A comparison of the Mexico-US and Morocco-EU cases. Journal of Ethnic
and Migration Studies, 39(7), 1041–1065.
Freeman, G. P. (1995). Modes of immigration politics in liberal democratic states.
International Migration Review, 29(4), 881–902.
Freeman, G. P. (2004). Immigrant incorporation in western democracies. International
Migration Review, 38(3), 945–969.
Gamlen, A., & Marsh, K. (Eds.) (2011). Migration and global governance. Glox, UK:
Edward Elgar Publishers, Ltd.
Geddes, A. and Niessen, J. (2005). European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion
Index. Retrieved from http://www.britishcouncil.org/brussels-european-civiccitizenship-and-inclusion-index.pdf.
Gest, J., Armstrong, C., Carolyn, E., Fox, E., Holzer, V., … Talib, M. (2013) Mapping the process of international norm emergence: Migrants and minority rights
agendas. Global Governance 19(2), 153–186.

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11

Givens, T. E. (2007). Immigrant integration in Europe: Empirical research. Annual
Review of Political Science, 10, 67–83.
Goldstein, J. L., & Peters, M. (2014). Nativism or economic threat: Attitudes toward
immigrants during the Great Recession. International Interactions, 40(3), 376–401.
Hainmueller, J., & Hiscox, M. J. (2007). Educated preferences: Explaining attitudes
toward immigration in Europe. International Organization, 61(2), 399–442.
Hainmueller, J., & Hiscox, M. J. (2010). Attitudes towards highly skilled and low
skilled immigration: Evidence from a survey experiment. American Political Science
Review, 101(4), 61–84.
Hammar, T. (Ed.) (1985). European immigration policy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Hansen, R., Koehler, J., & Money, J. (Eds.) (2011). Migration, nation states and international cooperation. New York, NY: Routledge.
Higham, J. (1955). Strangers in the land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1924. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Press.
Hollifield, J. F. (1992). Immigrants, markets and states: The political economy of postwar
Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Howard, M. M. (2009). The politics of citizenship in Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Joppke, C. (2003a). Why liberal states accept unwanted immigration. World Politics,
50(2), 266–293.
Joppke, C. (2003b). Citizenship between de- and re-ethnicization. European Journal of
Sociology, 44(3), 429–58.
Kindleberger, C. P. (1967). Europe’s postwar growth: The role of labor supply. Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press.
Koslowski, R. (Ed.) (2011). Global mobility regimes. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
Kunz, R., Lavenex, S., & Panizzon, M. (Eds.) (2011). Multilayered migration governance.
The promise of partnership. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Meyers, E. (2000). Theories of international immigration policy: A comparative analysis. International Migration Review, 34(4), 1245–1282.
Meyers, E. (2004). International immigration policy: A theoretical and comparative analysis. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). (2014). Retrieved from www.mipex.eu.
Money, J. (1997). No vacancy: The political geography of immigration control in
advanced industrial countries. International Organization, 51(4), 685–720.
Money, J. (1999). Fences and neighbors: The political geography of immigration control.
Ithaca, NY: University Press.
Money, J. (2010). Comparative immigration policy. In R. A. Denemark (Ed.), The
international studies encyclopedia. Blackwell Reference Online, http://www.
isacompendium.com/public/book.html?id=g9781444336597_9781444336597
(accessed 24 April 2014).
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migration. Presented at the International Studies Association Meetings, San Diego.

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Money, J. and Western, S. (2014). The origins of citizenship policy: Sub-Saharan
African in comparative perspective. Paper presented at the International Studies
Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, CA.
Peters, M. (2014). Open trade, closed borders: Immigration policy in the era of globalization. World Politics (forthcoming).
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Kritz et al. (Eds.), Global trends in migration. New York, NY: Center for Migration
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Reitz, J. G. (2002). Host societies and the reception of immigrants: Research themes,
emerging theories and methodological issues. International Migration Review, 36(4),
1005–1019.
Rosenblum, M. (2000). At home and abroad: The foreign and domestic sources of U.S. immigration policy. San Diego, CA: University of California PhD Dissertation.
Rosenblum, M. (2003). The political determinants of migration control: A quantitative analysis. Migraciones Internationacionales, 2(1), 161–170.
Rudolph, C. (2003). Security and the political economy of international migration.
American Political Science Review, 97(4), 603–620.
Ruhs, M. (2013). The price of rights: Regulating international labor migration. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ruhs, M., & Chang, H.-J. (2004). The ethics of labor immigration policy. International
Organization, 58(1), 69–102.
Sassen, S. (1998). Globalization and its discontents. New York, NY: New Press.
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Chicago.
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Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development. New York, NY: UNDP.

FURTHER READING
There are several review essays that are well worthwhile in obtaining a variety of lenses on the state of the research. Castles, de Haas, and Miller (2013)
provide a broad look at both theory and empirics of the migration process,
concentrating on the post World War II period. Eytan Meyer’s (2000) contribution in International Migration Review provides a clear summary and evaluation of the theoretical approaches to immigration control. Erik Bleich’s
(2008) World Politics article outlines different types of intellectual contributions provided by researchers and points to the potential for broader contributions by political scientists. Gary Freeman’s (2004) article provides a thorough overview of the theoretical literature on immigrant integration; Terri
Givens’ (2007) article focuses on empirical research on that topic; Jeffrey Reitz
(2002) discusses the research agenda and methodological issues. Jeannette
Money (2010) provides an overview of comparative immigration policy that
addresses primarily the foundational research.

Politics of Immigration Policy

13

JEANNETTE MONEY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jeannette Money is Associate Professor in the Department of Political
Science, University of California, Davis. Her research agenda focuses on
various aspects of immigration policy. She has published a book, The political
geography of immigration control (Cornell University Press 1999), that explores
the political consequences of immigrants’ geographic concentration. Her
research also examines the prospects for international cooperation on issues
of immigration; a coedited volume, Migration, nation states, and international
cooperation (Routledge 2011), examines regional cooperation on migration
and provides an empirical overview of the types of cooperation and coordination that exist on a regional level. This edited volume is complemented by
a second book-length project that describes, classifies, and explains the types
of international cooperation that exist on issues of international migration.
Dr. Money is currently working on issues of citizenship and naturalization;
this research provides an empirical overview of nationality laws globally
and evaluates the origins and the determinants of changes in those laws. She
is also interested in migrant participation in the host polity and has written
some articles on the influence of migrants on the host country’s foreign
policy toward the migrants’ home country.
http://ps.ucdavis.edu/people/fzmoney
http://migrationcluster.ucdavis.edu/people/affiliate_faculty/index.html
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Jennifer Lee

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Attitude: Construction versus Disposition (Psychology), Charles G. Lord
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M. Stonecash
Assimilation and its Discontents (Sociology), Min Zhou


Politics of Immigration Policy
JEANNETTE MONEY

Abstract
In this essay, I first describe the foundational research that focuses on host or
receiving states and the policies that determine states’ openness to immigration and
to immigrant integration. This research privileges domestic actors and institutions
in the choice of immigration policy. In the following section, I outline the research
that disaggregates both dimensions of immigration policy into component parts.
For immigration control, these include skilled migration, unskilled migration,
undocumented migration, and border control. For immigrant integration, this
includes labor market integration, family reunification, and access to citizenship,
among other policies. The focus on receiving states remains strong but is now
complemented by research on sending states’ policies toward emigrants. I also
outline significant efforts by scholars to construct datasets that would allow
researchers to evaluate the hypotheses generated by case studies. In the final section,
I argue that, despite advances in the research agenda, there is a continuing paucity
of quantitative data that would allow researchers to adjudicate among plausible
hypotheses. Moreover, even where data are available, the data are generated by
wealthy Western democracies about Western democracies. We have little systematic,
cross-national time series data on the rest of the world. I offer a generic concept,
“politicians’ incentives,” that provides one way of bridging the gap between our
understanding of the politics of immigration policy in wealthy Western democracies
and other states in the international system that are implicated in global migration
patterns and policies.

INTRODUCTION
The research on migration policy has exploded in the past decade. From an
initial focus on immigration control in host states, the field has expanded to
encompass different immigrant streams, different types of immigrant incorporation, and different societal and state responses to the immigrant presence. In addition, the large and increasing flow of remittances has generated a
significant literature on sending states’ emigration policies, the role of migration in development, as well as the prospects for international cooperation
on migration issues. However, the research remains hostage to a Eurocentric
bias that limits our understanding of the politics of immigration policy
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

globally. Migration is a highly salient political issue in wealthy Western
democracies but the salience of migration is certainly not limited to this part
of the world. More than half of the individuals living outside of their country
of birth live in the global south [United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), 2009].
In this essay, I first describe the foundational research on immigration control and immigrant integration policies that examine the policies of wealthy
Western democracies. I then turn to the more recent research that disaggregates both immigration control and immigrant integration into component
parts. Although there is no clear date that divides the “first wave” from the
“second wave” of research, most of the initial research was published in the
1990s, while most of the research on disaggregated flows and integration
policies was published in the 2000s. I note the research that connects migration and development, with an emphasis on the policies of sending states.
This, in turn, provides links to a literature that explores efforts of sending
and receiving states to cooperate on issues of mutual interest dealing with
international migration. This section ends with an overview of efforts to construct cross-national time series data sets that would allow us to adjudicate
more clearly among various hypotheses. In the final section, I critique the
current literature that continues to be hampered by a “Western” bias, and
offer a generic concept, “politicians’ incentives,” that provides one way of
bridging the gap between our understanding of the politics of immigration
policy in wealthy Western democracies and other states in the international
system that are implicated in global migration patterns and policies.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Until fairly recently, the politics of immigration policy has been ignored by
political scientists who study international political economy, in favor of a
focus on trade, foreign direct investment, and the structure of the international monetary system. Only researchers in the “traditional settler states,”
comprising the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, developed theories of both immigration control and immigrant integration. In one
of the earliest entries on immigration control, John Higham (1955) attributed
US immigration policy to the rise and fall of American “nativism.” This tradition is central to more contemporary social scientific research agendas on
immigration control that focus on the domestic politics of the recipient states
as the primary determinants of immigration policy.
The research expanded considerably in the 1970s, when immigration flows
into Europe generated growing controversy, particularly in the aftermath
of the oil shock of 1973. The focus shifted away from “traditional settler
states” to the “ethnic” states of Western Europe, states that recruited foreign

Politics of Immigration Policy

3

workers after World War II to help economic reconstruction and which
experienced rapid economic growth in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s
(Kindleberger, 1967). Case studies were followed by efforts to generalize
about the politics of immigration control, those policies that determined
the number and type of immigrants states permitted entry. Central to that
research agenda is Gary Freeman’s (1995) observation that immigration represented a policy arena that produced concentrated benefits (for employers
and the immigrants themselves) while spreading the costs to society more
broadly. Concentrated benefits permitted employers to overcome problems
of collective action to lobby for open immigration policies, while diffuse
costs undermined the ability of other societal actors to organize politically to
limit immigration. Therefore, immigration control policy could be described
as “interest group politics” in which pro-immigration interests were able to
sway policy toward large inflows.
This research agenda was embroidered upon by James Hollifield (1992),
who focused on the rights of immigrants in liberal democracies and the role
of the courts in expanding immigration intakes beyond what states might
otherwise adopt. Christian Joppke (2003a) coined the term “unwanted
immigration,” building upon both Freeman and Hollifield’s ideas, to explain
why “liberal” states continued to receive migrants, despite a backlash from
the host country population. In Joppke’s explanation, states “self-limited”
their sovereignty. Alternatively, the “gap hypothesis” was developed by
Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield (1994) and Cornelius, Tsuda, Martin, and
Hollifield (2004) to describe the inability of states to control their borders.
Both sides of this debate viewed states as “losing control” over immigration
flows. Other scholars pointed out that states, while imperfectly controlling
their borders, were in fact capable of significant control. After all, while
levels of trade were large and growing, migration remained relatively
stagnant at less than 3% of the global population. Anti-immigrant forces
might be playing a significant role after all.
To explain the role of anti-immigrant forces, Jeannette Money (1997, 1999)
argued that, because immigrants were geographically concentrated, both
pro- and anti-immigrant forces were able to overcome problems of collective
action. Local politics were then catapulted to the national level, when
restrictionist interests were important for construction of a national political
coalition.
Other explanations were proffered, incorporating Marxist and world
systems views that connected the structure of the capitalist global economy
to migration flows (Castells, 1975; Castles & Kosack, 1973; Petras, 1981;
Sassen, 1998). These research agendas also tended to be expansionary in
their view of immigration control, as forces of global capitalism drew ever
greater numbers of countries and peoples into the web of market exchange.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

A few have taken state interests as central to the policy agenda (Rudolph,
2003). The debate over the determinants of immigration control in wealthy
Western democracies is nicely summarized by Eytan Meyers (2000, 2004).
As this debate continued, migrant populations began to settle in European
societies, giving rise to a second strand of research: the politics of immigrant
integration. Although there is a long strand of this research in the United
States, now European researchers joined the debate. Hammar (1985) popularized the distinction between immigration control and immigrant integration and described the series of rights that had accrued to migrants in
European societies, labeling this status as denizenship. While sociologists
attempted to determine the level of immigrant integration, political scientists
developed a typology of integration regimes that were believed to structure
immigrants’ capacities to incorporate into the host state. These included the
following models: imperial, ethnic, republican, multicultural, and transnational (Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2013). A separate literature that incorporated the demographic characteristics of right wing party supporters along
with the impact of globalization developed to explain the rise of radical right,
anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
This initial wave of research on the politics of immigration policy has been
inconclusive. Much of the research relies on case studies that are very useful
for generating hypotheses but much less useful for sorting among competing (or complementary) hypotheses. Where quantitative evidence has been
brought to bear (Money, 1999; Rosenblum, 2003, Peters, 2014), it generated a
debate over the best way to quantify the concept of “immigration control.”
The quantitative research on right-wing political party support generated
a different concern: Although there is considerable cross-national variation
on electoral support for these parties, there is also considerable longitudinal
variation which is not captured in the analyses that focus primarily on the
recent past but fail to incorporate the earlier period when immigration levels were rising but failed to trigger electoral support for these radical right
parties.
Moreover, the focus has been on Europe or, more broadly, wealthy Western
democracies, without explicitly recognizing that more than half of those who
live outside their country of origin are located in the global south.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Research in the 1980s and 1990s focused primarily on broad concepts of
immigration control and secondarily on immigrant integration. In the 2000s,
the research has exploded by disaggregating those broad concepts into
component parts. Research on immigration control now includes separate
strands of literature addressing high-skilled immigration flows; family

Politics of Immigration Policy

5

reunification; asylum seekers; low-skilled immigration, undocumented
migration and border security; and third-party providers of immigration
control, survival migration, and the securitization of immigration. Table 1
provides a list of the various research issues and some central citations in
each area. The breadth of the literature is now so large that it is impossible
to summarize the various strands briefly.
The politics of immigrant integration has been disaggregated as well.
Andrew Geddes and Jan Nielsen (2005) were instrumental in developing a
set of five integration indicators and organizing a panel of experts to classify
European countries on these five indicators: labor market integration,
security of residence, access to nationality, access to social welfare, and
family reunification. This task has been taken up and extended by the British
Council and the Migration Policy Group, which now provide data on 148
integration indicators for 34 Western democracies. The broad categories of
immigrant integration include the five indicators listed along with indicators for access to education, political participation, and antidiscrimination
[Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), 2014]. Gary Freeman (2004)
suggests that each dimension of incorporation may be dictated by different
policy coalitions. If so, the integration typologies developed in the 1990s
may turn out to have little value.
Finally, interest has turned to sending states. The primary emphasis
has been on migrant remittances and their impact on development but
the research agenda has expanded to include questions about the role of
migration in development more broadly (UNDP, 2009). There is considerable
enthusiasm and optimism in much of the research but some cautionary
research that suggests a dark side of migration and development is also
surfacing (Castles et al., 2013; Czaika & de Haas, 2013; De Haas & Vezzoli,
2013). Emigration, this research suggests, drains a country of its most
talented and energetic populations and reduces political pressures for
reform. Migrants, they argue, will contribute to development only after poor
country governments institute domestic political and economic reforms
that generate incentives for migrants to participate in the home economy
(Castles et al., 2013).
The research has also expanded to include an interest in migrant rights and
the potential for international cooperation between sending and receiving
states. Ruhs and Chang (2004) point out that, unlike other international economic flows, migrants receive a bundle of rights when they enter the host
state, although that bundle varies across countries and even within countries
based on migration status. Justin Gest et al. (2013) generate a framework for
analyzing the determinants of that migrant rights structure. The protection
of migrant rights is one issue that might form the basis for international cooperation but there is little consensus on the prospects for cooperation among

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Table 1
Immigration Policy Research Disaggregated by Issue Area
High-skilled
immigration flows

Cerna, L. (2014). Attracting high-skilled immigrants: Policies
in comparative perspective. International Migration, 52(4)
(forthcoming).
Cerna, L., & Boucher, A. (2014). Current policy trends in
skilled immigration policy. International Migration, 52(4)
(forthcoming).

Family reunification

Lahav, G. (1997). International versus national constraints in
family-reunification migration policy. Global Governance,
3(3), 349–372.

Asylum seekers

Thielemann, E. R., & Dewan, T. (2006). The myth of
free-riding: Refugee protection and implicit
burden-sharing. West European Politics, 29(2), 351–369.

Undocumented
migration and border
security

Andreas, P. (2003). Redrawing the line: Borders and security
in the 21st century. International Security, 28(2), 78–111.
Koslowski, R. (2010). Towards an international regime for
mobility and security? In K. Tamas & J. Palme (Eds.)
Globalizing migration regimes: New challenges to
transnational cooperation. Burlinton, VT: Ashgate.

Third-party providers of
immigration control

Lahav, G., & Guiraudon, V. (2006). Actors and venues in
immigration control: Closing the gap between political
demands and policy outcomes. West European Politics,
29(2), 201–223.

Survival migration

Betts, A. (2013). Survival migration. Failed governance and
the crisis of displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.

Securitization of
migration

Adamson, F. (2006). Crossing borders: International
migration and national security. International Security,
31(1), 165–199.
Andreas, P. (2003). Redrawing the line: Borders and security
in the 21st century. International Security, 28(2), 78–111.
Chebel d’Appollonia, A., & Reich, S. (2008). Immigration,
integration, and security. America and Europe in
comparative perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Weiner, M. (1995). The global migration crisis. Challenge to
states and to human rights. New York, NY: Harper Collins
Publishers.

Politics of Immigration Policy

7

states in the international system (Betts 2011; Gamlen & Marsh, 2011; Hansen,
Koehler, & Money, 2011; Koslowski, 2011; Kunz, Lavenex, & Panizzon, 2011).
Given the structure of migration flows and the distribution of power in the
international system, bilateral cooperation is more likely in the issue area,
rather than regional or multilateral cooperation (Money & Lockhart, 2012).
Efforts to understand the politics of immigration policy have taken a
behavioral turn, with a focus on public attitudes toward immigration
(Goldstein & Peters, 2014; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007, 2010). Are citizens’
economic interests central to their attitudes toward migrants? Research is not
entirely consistent but suggests that although individual economic interests
track immigration attitudes, nationalism and national identity are central
components of individual attitudes toward immigration and immigrants.
However, there is considerable work to do to tie citizen attitudes to actual
policy outcomes, whether it is support for radical right anti-immigrant
parties or for actual migration policies.
The research has also become more scientific in the sense that researchers
are investing considerable energy in constructing datasets that would allow
for a quantitative evaluation of the various hypotheses (see, e.g., Ruhs,
2013). The European Union finances some of this research, such as the
Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) and the Citizenship Observatory
at the European University Institute. Other efforts are still under way, such
as the IMPALA project (International Migration Policy and Law Analysis
database), directed by Michael Hiscox (Beine et al., 2014) and we can hope to
see the fruits of this labor in the near future.
One example of research that has advanced from case studies in Europe to
global quantitative analysis is nationality policy. Nationality or citizenship
policy is defined by state laws governing access to citizenship through birth
and/or naturalization. Tremendous variation exists among states and over
time. The initial case study work by Brubaker (1990) and Joppke (2003b)
focused on Europe and the European experience. Brubaker argued that the
challenges of nation building in France and Germany shaped “national
self-understandings” that were then transformed into “ethnic” and “civic”
patterns of citizenship law. Ethnic citizenship laws are based on jus sanguinis
policies that attribute citizenship to children based on the citizenship of the
parents, whereas civic citizenship laws permit birth on the territory to play
an important role in citizenship status (jus soli). Joppke emphasized that
citizenship laws are not static and attributed the direction of the change,
more or less restrictive, to the political coalition in power, right or left.
Howard (2009) took up the challenge and developed a Citizenship Policy
Index that incorporates three dimensions of citizenship laws and coded them
for 15 European states at two time points. He used these data points to illuminate more systematically the origins of citizenship policy (colonial experience

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and early democracy) and the determinants of change in citizenship policy
(issue salience and the political coalition in power). Seely (2007), Bertocchi
and Strozzi (2010), and Money and Western (2014) have generated regional
and global indicators of citizenship policy and have employed these indicators to develop and evaluate theories of citizenship policy that are global,
rather than theories that rely on the experience of European democracies.
Although the research has not achieved consensus, the trajectory is positive.
These new waves of research are richer than the first wave of research,
generating more nuanced hypotheses that are better evaluated empirically.
However, because the broad topics of immigration control and immigrant
integration have been disaggregated, the research is also more scattered,
making it difficult to reaggregate our understanding of the politics of immigration policy at the level of the nation-state, which remains the primary
actor in this policy arena (although see Rosenblum, 2000). Moreover, there
is a continued focus on wealthy Western democracies, in part because data
on these issues are actually available and can be incorporated into datasets
for analysis.
Finally, there is a tendency to chase after events rather than to understand
the underlying dynamics that connect global markets, states, domestic
politics, and migration flows. The research on high-skilled migration, for
example, followed the implementation of state policies to attract high-skilled
migrants, rather than predicting the competition for highly skilled immigrants; that is, researchers observed that states were modifying their policies
and only then sought to explain these changes. Another example is the focus
on family reunion policy. This avenue of continuing migration into Europe
after the “immigration stop” of the early 1970s was observed before analysts
began to try and explain this flow. Good theory should both explain and
predict. We still do not have a good picture of how all the parts fit together
and what we can anticipate and predict.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research has the opportunity to build on the advances made in the
past 10 to 15 years. It must do so in two important ways. First, the research
needs to expand the coverage to migration policy globally. Migration is a
highly salient political issue in wealthy Western democracies but the salience
of migration is certainly not limited to this part of the world. More than half
of the individuals living outside of their country of birth live in the global
south (UNDP, 2009). Policies in both host and home state play a large role
in determining the quality of life for migrants and migrants affect both host
countries and countries of origin. Therefore, our efforts to generate datasets
must include all countries of the globe even though it may be more difficult to

Politics of Immigration Policy

9

generate data from some countries of the global south. The same efforts that
go into collecting and coding laws in the West should be extended globally,
incorporating scholars from developing countries into the research agenda.
We need both cross-national and longitudinal data to evaluate the origins of
and change in immigration policy in all countries. Case studies are extraordinarily useful for process tracing and for understanding the mechanisms that
connect the explanatory variables with the explanandum—the immigration
policy we are trying to explain. But we need to sort among generic political
processes and those that are unique to specific countries.
Second, we need to construct theory to take into account different political
processes in countries around the globe. Country experts in the global
south are beginning to generate theory via case studies (see, in particular,
many articles published in International Migration Review and International
Migration). These case studies should inform theory development so that
we better understand political processes in countries other than established
democracies. These can include democracies that do not adopt the same
left–right political dimension visible in the wealthy Western democracies.
New democracies and various types of autocracies have different political
actors with different policy preferences. And we have little knowledge of
the sense of “nationality” and “identity” in the developing world that plays
a large role in understanding attitudes toward migrants in Western democracies. For example, what are attitudes toward immigrants in sub-Saharan
African states? Do Africans develop national identities similar to Europeans
even though their state boundaries were arbitrarily drawn by colonial
powers without regard to the ethnic groups contained therein?
One way of proceeding is to think more generically in terms of politicians’
incentives to permit migration and to incorporate immigrants. Societal actors
have preferences for the level of immigration and the degree of immigrant
integration. Domestic political institutions structure the power of the various societal actors. These can then be understood in terms of the costs and
benefits various policy choices generate for politicians. Bertocchi and Strozzi
(2010) provide one example of the set of incentives politicians face in light of
societal preferences on nationality policy (also see Money & Western, 2014).
This concept could bridge the research on societal attitudes on immigration
to the policy choices of states. And it also provides a generic framework that
travels across the range of domestic political regimes. Politicians’ incentives
may well be the fundamental building blocks of the politics of immigration
policy, writ globally.
The research agenda on the politics of immigration policy has expanded
in several fruitful directions in the past 15 years. Yet we have a long way to
travel. Theory development needs to move past the experiences of wealthy
Western democracies to other regions of the globe and other types of political

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

institutions. Politicians’ incentives may be a fruitful way of drawing together
our theoretical understanding of these political processes. Finally, we must
generate global cross-national and time series datasets to evaluate theory and
separate the wheat from the chaff.
REFERENCES
Beine, M., Burgoon, B., Boucher, A., Crock, M., Gest, J., Helbling, M., … Thielemann,
E. (2014). Comparing immigration policies: The IMPALA database project. Retrieved
from www.people.fas.harvard.edu/∼hiscox/IMPALA.html.
Bertocchi, G., & Strozzi, C. (2010). The evolution of citizenship: Economic and institutional determinants. Journal of Law and Economics, 53(1), 95–136.
Betts, A. (Ed.) (2011). Global migration governance. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Bleich, E. (2008). Immigration and integration studies in Western Europe and the
United States. The road less traveled and a path ahead. World Politics, 60, 509–38.
Brubaker, R. (1990). Immigration, citizenship, and the nation-state in France and Germany: A comparative historical analysis. International Sociology, 5(4), 379–407.
Castells, M. (1975). Immigrant workers and class struggles in advanced capitalism.
Politics and Society, 5(1), 33–66.
Castles, S., de Haas, H., & Miller, M. J. (2013). The age of migration. International population movements in the Modern World (5th ed.). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Castles, S., & Kosack, G. (1973). Immigrant workers and class structure in Western Europe.
Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Cornelius, W. A., Martin, P. L., & Hollifield, J. F. (Eds.) (1994). Controlling immigration:
A global perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Cornelius, W. A., Tsuda, T., Martin, P. L., & Hollifield, J. F. (Eds.) (2004). Controlling
immigration: A global perspective (2nd ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Czaika, M., & de Haas, H. (2013). The effectiveness of immigration policies. Population and Development Review, 39(3), 487–508.
De Haas, H., & Vezzoli, S. (2013). Migration and development on the south–north
frontier: A comparison of the Mexico-US and Morocco-EU cases. Journal of Ethnic
and Migration Studies, 39(7), 1041–1065.
Freeman, G. P. (1995). Modes of immigration politics in liberal democratic states.
International Migration Review, 29(4), 881–902.
Freeman, G. P. (2004). Immigrant incorporation in western democracies. International
Migration Review, 38(3), 945–969.
Gamlen, A., & Marsh, K. (Eds.) (2011). Migration and global governance. Glox, UK:
Edward Elgar Publishers, Ltd.
Geddes, A. and Niessen, J. (2005). European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion
Index. Retrieved from http://www.britishcouncil.org/brussels-european-civiccitizenship-and-inclusion-index.pdf.
Gest, J., Armstrong, C., Carolyn, E., Fox, E., Holzer, V., … Talib, M. (2013) Mapping the process of international norm emergence: Migrants and minority rights
agendas. Global Governance 19(2), 153–186.

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Givens, T. E. (2007). Immigrant integration in Europe: Empirical research. Annual
Review of Political Science, 10, 67–83.
Goldstein, J. L., & Peters, M. (2014). Nativism or economic threat: Attitudes toward
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Hainmueller, J., & Hiscox, M. J. (2010). Attitudes towards highly skilled and low
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Money, J. (2010). Comparative immigration policy. In R. A. Denemark (Ed.), The
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migration. Presented at the International Studies Association Meetings, San Diego.

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Money, J. and Western, S. (2014). The origins of citizenship policy: Sub-Saharan
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Rosenblum, M. (2000). At home and abroad: The foreign and domestic sources of U.S. immigration policy. San Diego, CA: University of California PhD Dissertation.
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NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development. New York, NY: UNDP.

FURTHER READING
There are several review essays that are well worthwhile in obtaining a variety of lenses on the state of the research. Castles, de Haas, and Miller (2013)
provide a broad look at both theory and empirics of the migration process,
concentrating on the post World War II period. Eytan Meyer’s (2000) contribution in International Migration Review provides a clear summary and evaluation of the theoretical approaches to immigration control. Erik Bleich’s
(2008) World Politics article outlines different types of intellectual contributions provided by researchers and points to the potential for broader contributions by political scientists. Gary Freeman’s (2004) article provides a thorough overview of the theoretical literature on immigrant integration; Terri
Givens’ (2007) article focuses on empirical research on that topic; Jeffrey Reitz
(2002) discusses the research agenda and methodological issues. Jeannette
Money (2010) provides an overview of comparative immigration policy that
addresses primarily the foundational research.

Politics of Immigration Policy

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JEANNETTE MONEY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jeannette Money is Associate Professor in the Department of Political
Science, University of California, Davis. Her research agenda focuses on
various aspects of immigration policy. She has published a book, The political
geography of immigration control (Cornell University Press 1999), that explores
the political consequences of immigrants’ geographic concentration. Her
research also examines the prospects for international cooperation on issues
of immigration; a coedited volume, Migration, nation states, and international
cooperation (Routledge 2011), examines regional cooperation on migration
and provides an empirical overview of the types of cooperation and coordination that exist on a regional level. This edited volume is complemented by
a second book-length project that describes, classifies, and explains the types
of international cooperation that exist on issues of international migration.
Dr. Money is currently working on issues of citizenship and naturalization;
this research provides an empirical overview of nationality laws globally
and evaluates the origins and the determinants of changes in those laws. She
is also interested in migrant participation in the host polity and has written
some articles on the influence of migrants on the host country’s foreign
policy toward the migrants’ home country.
http://ps.ucdavis.edu/people/fzmoney
http://migrationcluster.ucdavis.edu/people/affiliate_faculty/index.html
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Politics of Immigration Policy