Compared with other nations such as Canada and Australia, the US experiment with welfare reform has yielded steeper and more immediate caseload declines. These declines have been especially pronounced for immigrants who have been subject to a new set of service restrictions implemented under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. This article examines service access for Haitian immigrants in Miami, Florida since the onset of these reforms. The data presented here are derived from a series of qualitative interviews with Haitian service professionals and a quantitative survey of Haitian immigrant households. The survey data indicate that many Haitians who are living in poverty and qualified to access services are not enrolled for government services. Confusion over eligibility guidelines explains some of the variation of these low enrolments for specific services (such as child health insurance and childcare) but not for services most commonly used by immigrant adults such as food stamps and Medicaid. The survey also demonstrates that qualified immigrants living in households with unqualified persons are less likely to access services than are other qualified immigrants and are more likely to experience hardships that impede their ability to find stable employment. The concluding discussion highlights the significance of using a household unit of measure in assessing immigrant enrolments and hardships.
This essay reviews the recent expansion of immigration laws that have been enacted by local and state governments to control unauthorized migration. Although these laws evoke a conventional, territorial paradigm of national sovereignty, I demonstrate that they are actually leading toward a more complex form of sovereignty that tolerates wide variations in the way that immigration laws are enforced in different parts of the United States. I also argue that it is a mistake to view these laws only through the lens of an immigration control agenda. Drawing on the writing of Aiwha Ong and Georgio Agamben, I observe that these laws have been shaped by neoliberal governing strategies that create exceptions to prior legal precedent as well as fostering a looser connection between territoriality, rights and legal status. My discussion explains how local enforcement laws have been shaped by these neoliberal priorities, which are more oriented toward the selective policing of an expanding migrant workforce than toward mass deportation of "illegals." As a result, immigration scholars and immigrant rights advocates should come to terms with the likelihood that these priorities will become the dominant, driving force behind future trajectories of local enforcement and other forms of immigration enforcement.
This article explores the changing form of white and black racial categories in North America. It argues that this transformation is being shaped by several, relatively distinct tendencies; including anti-immigrant sentiments, anti-black racism and the identity politics of racialized populations. The discussion focuses on two aspects of this transformation. First, the identity politics of Afro-Caribbean populations is used to illustrate how immigrant experiences contest and complicate the process of black racialization; second, the racialization of Latino populations is used to illustrate how normative definitions of whiteness are being redefined. The conclusion uses these examples to discuss the need for explanations of racial stratification that can account for multiple nodes of inclusion and exclusion.
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