Noncitizens seeking to make sense of US immigration systems encounter a labyrinth of information and deception. In a national study of scams (2011-2014) targeting noncitizens seeking immigration legal services, I use administrative and secondary data sources to analyze the correlates of immigration scam complaints submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Immigrant “sanctuary” jurisdictions have recently reentered U.S. political discourse and engendered contentious debates regarding their legality and influence on public safety. Critics argue that sanctuary jurisdictions threaten local communities by impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts.

This talk will focus on the impact of ICE surveillance – electronic monitor (EM) – on immigrants, and their communities.  She shares insights on how EM operates as a surveillance tool that influences the immigrant’s relationship with the state, community, and self. Release from detention could conceivably provide an immigrant with the benefits of reintegration into a co-ethnic community.

Figures of the Future:
Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change

Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Northwestern University

This talk examines a major historical change in employers’ pay-setting practices. In the post-war decades, most U.S. employers used bureaucratic tools to measure the worth of each job. Starting in the 1980s, employers abandoned these practices and relied instead on external market data to assess the price of a candidate. In doing so, organizations tied employee pay more tightly to the external labor market.

How does the population structure of social settings shape the contexts in which friendships form? I advance a theoretical framework of consolidation as a measure of multidimensional social structure and use it to understand the intergroup dynamics underlying interethnic friendships among adolescents in Western European classrooms.

Race and homeownership have been linked to notions of citizenship throughout American history. Policies including the Homestead Act of 1862 and New Deal policies of the mid-twentieth century have demonstrated the federal government’s commitment to subsidizing homeownership for white households. These policies have contributed to racial inequality in homeownership and, therefore, in wealth.

Drawing on a global and comparative ethnography, this presentation explores how Syrian men and women seeking refuge in a moment of unprecedented global displacement are received by countries of resettlement and asylum—the U.S., Canada, and Germany. It shows that human capital, typically examined as the skills immigrants bring with them that shape their potential, is actually created, transformed, or destroyed by receiving states’ incorporation policies.

Existing development theories predict that factors such as natural resource wealth and the legacies of European colonizers inhibit development. However, the case of Trinidad and Tobago challenges these theories, as a resource-rich former colony that has achieved high levels of development. What accounts for Trinidad and Tobago's development trajectory?