Author Meets Critics: Crossroads

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

In their ambitious study, Crossroads: Comparative Immigration Regimes in a World of Demographic Change (Cambridge 2018), authors Anna Boucher and Justin Gest present an unique analysis of immigration governance across thirty countries. Relying on a database of immigration demographics in the world’s most important destinations, they present a novel taxonomy and an analysis of what drives different approaches to immigration policy over space and time. In an era defined by inequality, populism, and fears of international terrorism, they find that governments are converging toward a “Market Model” that seeks immigrants for short- term labor with fewer outlets to citizenship— an approach that resembles the increasingly contingent nature of labor markets worldwide. The book provides the field of comparative politics with a global landscape of immigration regimes. However, it also raises big questions about the trajectory of immigration policymaking, its relationship with other political phenomena, and it generates a number of hypotheses about the drivers of immigration governance. This panel assembles a diverse array of experts to discuss these outstanding questions and set an agenda for new research only now enabled by such a broad lens.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Sara Wallace Goodman University of California, Irvine

Presenters

• David Leblang University of Virginia

• Brian Burgoon University of Amsterdam

• Noora Anwar Lori Boston University

• Justin Gest George Mason University

• Anna Katherine Boucher University of Sydney