LABOR 222G: Labor & Migration

This course places today's controversies about immigration in a broader social and historical context. We explore migration both within and between countries, considering the different reasons that women and men of diverse cultures, nations, races, and ethnicities leave one place and settle in another. It looks at migration historically, studying the reasons for fluctuations in the scale of migration (especially immigration to the United States) over time, and reasons for changes in the United States' degree of "openness" to immigrants. The course considers the conditions of work and life for immigrants themselves - including differences in conditions for different immigrant groups- as well as effects on people in the countries from which immigrants come. It looks at immigration restrictions not only in terms of their effects on the number of people entering the United States, but also in terms of their effects on the status and rights of people who live and work here. The course also looks seriously at the relationship between the conditions under which immigration takes place, on the one hand, and wages and conditions of work, on the other. It pays particular attention to the effects of immigration law and enforcement on immigrant workers' bargaining power at work.