In search of local justice

an article from the New Law Journal

Keith Wilding explains the difference Law Centres make to individual lives

• The law can be used as a tool for change.
• Working alongside the socially excluded as individuals, in groups, and in communities can help resolve seemingly intractable problems.
• Seeking to influence local and national policy through the legal process is an integral part of seeking social justice.

It’s not just for lawyers and it’s not simply a legal advice centre. A Law Centre, as a member of the Law Centres Network, adopts the underlying assumption that Law Centres operate in an unequal society and seek to make a contribution to the fight for social justice. In so doing, it uses the law as a tool for change and uses the strengths of the community it serves. It works alongside people who are socially excluded and it works with other organisations striving for similar goals.

An important part of its work is harnessing the strengths of the community.

The government’s austerity programme has resulted in the reduction of public services. The programme of welfare reform has put pressure on housing, on health and care services, and has contributed to the growth of structural poverty including for those in work. Together with an increasingly harsh climate for migrants, the demand for Law Centre services has increased.

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From Immigrants to Robots: The Changing Locus of Substitutes for Workers

an article by George J. Borjas (Harvard Kennedy School, USA) and Richard B. Freeman (Harvard University, USA) published in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Volume 5 Issue 5 (December 2019)

Abstract

Using numbers of industrial robots shipped to primarily manufacturing industries as a supply shock to an industry labor market, we estimate that an additional robot reduces employment by roughly two to three workers overall and by three to four workers when robots are likely to be good substitutes for humans.

The supply shock also reduces wages. The estimates far exceed those of an additional immigrant on employment and wages.

While growth of robots in the 2000s was too modest to be a major determinant of wages and employment, the estimated effects suggest that continued exponential growth of industrial robots could disrupt job markets in the foreseeable future and thus merit attention from analysts and policymakers concerned about the economic well-being of workers.

Full text (PDF 23pp)

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Italy And Beyond

Belén Fernández in the Washington Spectator via 3 Quarks Daily by S. Abbas Raza



Once upon a time in Italy, a prominent citizen declared: “It is unacceptable that sometimes in certain parts of Milan there is such a presence of non-Italians that instead of thinking you are in an Italian or European city, you think you are in an African city.”

In case the message was not crystal clear, he then spelled it out: “Some people want a multicolored and multiethnic society. We do not share this opinion.”

The citizen in question was none other than Silvio Berlusconi: billionaire three-time Italian prime minister, intermittent convict, and head of a super-powerful media empire, who, as the New York Times put it in January 2018, has now “cleverly nurtured a constituency of aging animal lovers—and potential voters—by frequently appearing on a show on one of his networks in which he pets his fluffy white dogs and bottle-feeds lambs.”

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Race, criminalization, and embedded discrimination in immigration court

an article by Michelle VanNatta (Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, USA) pulished in Safer Communities Volume 18 Issue 3/4 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
As the US criminal justice system and immigration system increasingly interconnect, even immigration policy that is facially race-neutral may involve biased practices. The purpose of this paper is to examine how institutional racism in criminal legal processes creates particular barriers for many individuals of Latin American and/or African descent facing deportation proceedings in US immigration courts, particularly in assertions regarding gang affiliation.

Design/methodology/approach
This research is based on ethnographic observation. The work utilized a grounded theory approach. The observation took place at public master calendar hearings at a Midwestern immigration court between 2013 and 2015, yielding over 400 pages of fieldnotes that were coded and analyzed for patterns.

Findings
Non-citizens in the USA, including lawful permanent residents, are subject to deportation if labeled “criminal.” Racial profiling and criminalization of communities of color create heightened risk of deportation. Assumptions that common tattoos or urban fashion indicate criminality, reliance on Facebook posts to “prove” gang membership, and the use of arrest records as evidence of criminality even if charges were dropped all put immigrants of Latin American and/or African descent at heightened risk.

Research limitations/implications
The ethnographic method used has strong validity but weaker reliability and generalizability.

Practical implications
This paper can help analysts, policymakers and advocates consider how to adapt systems to increase equity.

Originality/value
This research provides direct examples and ethnographic evidence of how race and cultural bias in criminal legal processes and immigration policies can affect people in deportation proceedings.

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Race, criminalization, and embedded discrimination in immigration court

an article by Michelle VanNatta (Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, USA) published in Safer Communities Volume 18 Issue 3/4 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
As the US criminal justice system and immigration system increasingly interconnect, even immigration policy that is facially race-neutral may involve biased practices. The purpose of this paper is to examine how institutional racism in criminal legal processes creates particular barriers for many individuals of Latin American and/or African descent facing deportation proceedings in US immigration courts, particularly in assertions regarding gang affiliation.

Design/methodology/approach
This research is based on ethnographic observation. The work utilized a grounded theory approach. The observation took place at public master calendar hearings at a Midwestern immigration court between 2013 and 2015, yielding over 400 pages of fieldnotes that were coded and analyzed for patterns.

Findings
Non-citizens in the USA, including lawful permanent residents, are subject to deportation if labeled “criminal.” Racial profiling and criminalization of communities of color create heightened risk of deportation. Assumptions that common tattoos or urban fashion indicate criminality, reliance on Facebook posts to “prove” gang membership, and the use of arrest records as evidence of criminality even if charges were dropped all put immigrants of Latin American and/or African descent at heightened risk.

Research limitations/implications
The ethnographic method used has strong validity but weaker reliability and generalizability.

Practical implications
This paper can help analysts, policymakers and advocates consider how to adapt systems to increase equity.

Originality/value
This research provides direct examples and ethnographic evidence of how race and cultural bias in criminal legal processes and immigration policies can affect people in deportation proceedings.

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There’s A Battle Of Storytelling About Migrants And Muslims: Populists are winning

posted by S Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Suketu Mehta in Scroll.in:

A truly thoughtful piece of writing which deserves a wide audience.


Illustration: Nithya Subramanian

These days, a great many people in the rich countries complain loudly about migration from the poor ones. But the game was rigged: First, the rich countries colonised us and stole our treasure and prevented us from building our industries. After plundering us for centuries, they left, having drawn up maps in ways that ensured permanent strife between our communities. Then they brought us to their countries as “guest workers” – as if they knew what the word “guest” meant in our cultures – but discouraged us from bringing our families.

Having built up their economies with our raw materials and our labour, they asked us to go back and were surprised when we did not. They stole our minerals and corrupted our governments so that their corporations could continue stealing our resources; they fouled the air above us and the waters around us, making our farms barren, our oceans lifeless; and they were aghast when the poorest among us arrived at their borders, not to steal but to work, to clean their shit, and to sleep with their men.

Still, they needed us. They needed us to fix their computers and heal their sick and teach their kids, so they took our best and brightest, those who had been educated at the greatest expense of the struggling states they came from, and seduced us again to work for them. Now, again they ask us not to come, desperate and starving though they have rendered us, because the richest among them need a scapegoat. This is how the game is rigged today.

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Declining teen employment: minimum wages, returns to schooling, and immigration

an article by David Neumark (UCI, NBER, and IZA, and CESifo, University of California-Irvine, USA)) and Cortnie Shupe (DIW, Free University Berlin, and Mercatus Center. DIW Berlin Mohrenstr, Germany) published in Labour Economics Volume 59 (August 2019)

Highlights

• We investigate three main explanations for the decline in teen employment in the United States, which began in 2000 and occurred mainly among those who had been employed while in school.
• The three main explanations we consider are increases in minimum wages, rising competition for low-skill jobs from immigrants, and increases in the returns to schooling.
• The predominant explanation for the decline in teen employment is increases in minimum wages.
• Increased immigration also played a role, while changes in returns to schooling have had a negligible influence.

Abstract

We explore the decline in teen employment in the United States since 2000, which was sharpest for 16–17 year-olds.

We consider three main explanatory factors: a rising minimum wage that could reduce employment opportunities for teens and potentially increase the value of investing in schooling; rising returns to schooling; and increasing competition from immigrants that, like the minimum wage, could reduce employment opportunities and possibly also raise the returns to human capital investment. We find that, among these factors, higher minimum wages are the predominant factor explaining changes in the schooling and workforce behavior of 16–17 year-olds since 2000.

The employment decline arises from a combination of a lower likelihood of being both employed and enrolled in school, and a higher likelihood of being enrolled in school only (not employed). These effects are consistent with the minimum wage leading students to increase their focus on schooling to meet a higher productivity standard for jobs with a higher minimum wage.

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Europe's many migrant crises

an article by Rowan Williams published in the New Statesman

Today’s migrant crisis is often talked about as an anomaly. But high levels of displacement and mobility have long been routine and widespread in postwar Europe.

The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present
Peter Gatrell
Allen Lane, 576pp, £30

Much of the familiar political discourse about migration returns obsessively to the claim that the high – and highly visible – number of migrants attempting to enter European countries in recent years represents a kind of apocalyptic anomaly. It is true that in sheer numerical terms, the statistics for people displaced for various reasons across the globe are at a peak – many being “internally” displaced in countries such as South Sudan, as a result of long-term factional violence and atrocity. But one of the major contributions of Peter Gatrell’s meticulously researched and documented survey is to remind us of the levels of displacement and mobility that were routine and widespread across Europe in relatively recent times.

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Hazel’s comment
I found myself nodding in agreement at a large number of the assessments made by Rowan Williams – which is not always the case with the ex-Archbishop.
I’m wishing that my mental health would allow me to read serious books, just at the moment I am struggling to concentrate on light fantasy, I’d be down at the library looking for this book. And then I could refute some of the more bizarre claims about immigrants which are made.

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Immigration and house prices under various labour market structures in England and Wales

an article by Jiazhe Zhu, Gwilym Pryce and Sarah Brown (University of Sheffield, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 50 Issue 9 (July 2019)

Abstract

This article estimates the impact of immigration on local house prices under various local labour market structures in England and Wales. Typically, for the nation as a whole, newly arriving immigrants add to the overall housing demand; this would in general push up house prices when facing an upward-sloping supply curve. However, sorting and native-outmigration response to immigration may change the dynamics and impact at the ‘local’ level, depressing house prices through income change.

We use data on England and Wales to investigate the local house price effect of immigration when taking into account the local labour market structure of the areas, particularly with respect to employment density and average socioeconomic profile (skill) of workers.

We found that in high density of employment areas but with a majority of the occupations in low skill sets, there is a negative house price effect led by immigrant inflows, and this might be due to a type of tenure ‘downgrade’ in the area as immigrants increase the rate of free renting. Free renters are less likely to participate in the housing market themselves and an increase in the rate of this form of tenure could also reduce their mobility further, hence lead to lower levels of housing stock turnover and transaction-related renovation; as a result, both housing quality and house prices fall.

The evidence is in addition to the native flight argument typically found in the literature to explain house price depreciation led by immigration.

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Immigration and preferences for redistribution in Europe

a column by Alberto Alesina, Elie Murard and Hillel Rapoport for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

A large literature shows that generosity, both public and private, is more freely extended within the same group rather than across groups.

This column examines how immigration affects natives’ attitudes towards redistribution and the implications for welfare states in Europe. The main finding is that in regions which have received a larger share of immigrants, natives are in general less favourable towards redistribution. Some European countries face the dilemma of natives favouring generous welfare policies for themselves but opposing them for immigrants.

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Intergenerational and interethnic mental health: An analysis for the United Kingdom

Richard Dorsett (University of Westminster, London, UK; LLAKES Centre for Research on Learning and Life Chances, London, UK) and Cinzia Rienzo and Martin Weale (LLAKES Centre for Research on Learning and Life Chances, London, UK) published in Population, Space and Place Volume 25 Issue 2 (March 2019)

Abstract

This paper uses a nationally representative data set to examine the extent to which family migration history helps explains interethnic variations in mental health in the United Kingdom.

We confirm that there is significant variation in mental health across ethnic group and generation of migration. Furthermore, we show how these dimensions interact.

The analysis explores the extent to which neighbourhood, personal characteristics, and migration experience are related to mental health. We find evidence that all are important. Our results are consistent with a dynamic view of migration and settlement whereby individuals' circumstances and how they might contribute to mental health change over time and across generations.

Full text (PDF 12pp)

Hazel’s comment:
The one thing that cannot be controlled for statistically is the reluctance of people to report mental health issues. My personal experience is that people of Asian origin find it hard to get past the pull yourself together mentality.

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Access to general social protection for immigrants in advanced democracies

an article by Carina Schmitt and Céline Teney (University of Bremen, Germany) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 29 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

Immigration has become a central socio-political issue in most advanced democracies. While research mainly focuses on immigrant-specific policies in the area of immigration, integration and citizenship, we still know very little about the incorporation of immigrants into mainstream social policies.

By analysing cross-national differences in the inclusion of immigrants into general social protection across 27 rich democracies on the basis of comparative indicators from the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) dataset, we seek to address this gap in a quantitative study.

A cross-national comparison of these indicators shows a particularly large variation in the inclusiveness of the access to social protection for immigrants across countries. By drawing on the welfare state and integration regime literature, we assess the power of two contrasting perspectives, namely, the post-national welfare state and the welfare chauvinism models, in explaining this large cross-national variation in immigrants’ access to social security and social housing.

Our overall findings suggest that both the welfare chauvinist and the post-national welfare state models comprise two theoretical perspectives that turn out to be fruitful to interpret cross-national variation in immigrants’ access to social protection.

According to the welfare chauvinism model, we find robust evidence that left-wing cabinets are particularly reluctant to open general social protection schemes to immigrants.

By contrast and in line with expectations derived from the post-national welfare state model, countries with an overall generous welfare state and countries facing large immigration flows tend to provide immigrants with more generous access to social protection.

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Migration route length and intent to migrate: The case of post-Gaddafi Libya

a column by Guido Friebel, Miriam Manchin, Mariapia Mendola and Giovanni Prarolo for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

There is a general understanding that illegal migration only exists because of the smuggling industry. However, there is no reliable information on how migrants’ intent to leave their home country and come to Europe, for example, depends on the availability of smuggling services.

This column uses data on migrant flows arriving at European borders after the effective opening to Libyan refugees of the central Mediterranean migration route, following the 2011 fall of the Gaddafi regime, to estimate the supply elasticity of the lucrative smuggling industry. Findings indicate that when the smuggling distance between country-pairs gets shorter, there is an increase in individual intentions to migrate.

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Pathological integration, or, how East Europeans use racism to become British

Jon E. Fox and Magda Mogilnicka (University of Bristol, UK) published in The British Journal of Sociology Volume 70 Issue 1 (January 2019)

Abstract

East Europeans are integrating into life in the UK. This entails learning to get along with their new neighbours, but it also involves not getting along with certain neighbours.

Integration is not confined to benevolent forms of everyday cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and conviviality; it can also include more pathological forms, like racism. Whilst integration is generally seen as desirable, the learning that it entails necessarily includes less desirable practices and norms.

The aim of this article is to show how East Europeans in the UK have been acquiring specifically British competencies of racism. This doesn't mean all East Europeans are racist or they always use racism; it does mean, however, that racism is a part of the integration equation.

We focus on the racist and racializing practices of Poles, Hungarians and Romanians in Bristol in the UK. These East Europeans are using racism to insert themselves more favourably into Britain's racialized status hierarchies. This is a kind of integration.

Full text (PDF 19pp)

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The many John Kellys: Economic assimilation of the Famine Irish in America

a column by William J. Collins and Ariell Zimran for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Negative sentiment towards immigrants is often based on fears about their ability to integrate into economic, political, and social institutions.

This column analyses the impact of the influx of Irish immigrants into the US in the 19th century. It shows that the children of immigrants had assimilated in terms of labour market outcomes within one generation, providing some perspective for the current debate about immigration policy.

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Labor market mobility and the early-career outcomes of immigrant men

an article by Mohsen Javdani (University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Canada) and Andrew McGee (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada;
IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany) published in IZA Journal of Development and Migration Volume 8 Article 20 (2018)

Abstract

We examine the role of between- and within-firm mobility in the early-career outcomes of immigrant men. Among Canadian workers with less than 10 years of potential experience, we find that visible minority immigrants were significantly less likely to have been promoted with their initial employers than similar white natives but were just as likely to have moved to new employers over the course of a year between interviews.

White immigrants, on the other hand, were just as likely to be promoted as white natives but much more likely to move to new employers—suggesting that they enjoyed more overall mobility than white natives and other immigrants. We present tentative evidence linking these mobility patterns to differences in wage growth and occupational change between immigrants and natives.

Overall, our findings suggest that the between- and within-firm mobility of white immigrants may play an important role in their relative economic success in Canada, while adding to growing evidence that visible minority immigrants experience frictions in the labor market that hinder their mobility and thus their economic prospects.

JEL Classification: J61, J71

Full text (PDF 28pp)

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Patterns of trade and immigration in historical perspective

a column by David Jacks and John Tang for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Foreign goods and workers are regularly blamed when the national economy is performing poorly. Economic theory suggests that trade and migration are substitutes – one can import cheaper products from a trade partner, or one can import the foreign workers themselves to narrow the difference in international factor prices.

Yet, empirically this is not obvious.

Based on available long-run data for international trade and migration since the late 19th century for the US and Canada, this column finds that during the interwar period, trade and immigration did in fact appear to be substitutes.

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The effect of immigration shocks on native fertility outcomes: evidence from a natural experiment

an article by Kelvin K. C. Seah (National University of Singapore; IZA Bonn, Germany) published in IZA Journal of Development and Migration Volume 8 Article 18 (2018)

Abstract
ᅟ
This paper investigates whether immigration shocks have a causal effect on native fertility patterns. It uses a natural experiment, exploiting the large, unexpected and localised immigration of Cuban nationals to the Miami area in the USA in 1980 to examine the fertility consequences for non-Cuban Miami women.

Using a synthetic control estimator and an extended individual difference-in-differences analysis, the results from this study indicate that the immigration shock had an overall negative, though short-lived, impact on the fertility of Miami women. In addition, fertility effects are found to vary by homeownership: While the immigration shock had a considerable negative impact on the fertility of women living in rented homes, it had no effect on those living in owned homes.

This differential impact was likely due to the rise in local housing rents accompanying immigration, making childbearing less affordable for those living in rented homes.

JEL Classification: J61, J13

Full text (PDF 34pp)

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The ethnic segregation of immigrants in the US from 1850 to 1940

a column by Katherine Eriksson and Zach Ward for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Those opposed to immigration often contend that immigrants are slow to assimilate.

This column takes a longer-term view of assimilation by looking at the degree of ethnic spatial segregation in the US during and after the Age of Mass Migration. New methods and newly digitised data suggest that segregation in the US between 1850 and 1940 was both higher and more widespread than previously thought.

However, despite slow rates of spatial assimilation, immigrants tend to assimilate culturally at a fast rate.

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Misperceptions about immigration and support for redistribution

a column by Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano and Stefanie Stantcheva fod VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The debate on immigration is often based on misperceptions about the number and character of immigrants.

The column uses data from surveys in six countries to show that such misperceptions are striking and widespread.

The column also describes how an experiment in which people were encouraged to think about their perception of immigrants made them more averse to redistribution in general, suggesting that the focus on immigration in the political debate – without correcting the misperceptions respondents have about immigrants – could have the unintended consequence of reducing support for redistribution.

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