Model Immigrants and Undesirable Aliens: The Cost of Immigration Reform in the 1990s

by Christina Gerken

Overview

Christina Gerken examines the changing debates around immigration that surrounded the passage of landmark legislation by Congress in the mid-1990s, arguing that it represented a new, neoliberal way of thinking and talking about immigration. She concludes that the passage of pathbreaking legislation was characterized by a useful tension between neoliberal assumptions and hidden anxieties about race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816686353
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	448 KB

About the Author

Christina Gerken is assistant professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Indiana University South Bend.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Building a Neoliberal Consensus
1. Exclusionary Acts: A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Laws
2. Family Values and Moral Obligations: The Logic of Congressional Rhetoric
3. Dehumanizing the Undocumented: The Legislative Language of Illegality
4. Manufacturing the Crisis: Encoded Racism in the Daily Press
5. Entrepreneurial Spirits and Individual Failures: The Neoliberal Human Interest Story
Conclusion: Legacies of Failed Reform

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Christina Gerken has hold of a crucial issue, and her fine book makes clear that we have to confront the neoliberal paradigm to address questions of immigrant rights." —Rachel Ida Buff, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

From the Publisher