REVIEW ARTICLE: A NEW KIND OF ENTANGLEMENT? IMMIGRANTS, THE 'AMERICAN DREAM' AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING

摘要

The normative context of global immigration has changed markedly, and understanding this is at once an arduous and necessary task. Over the past two decades, international migration has responded to the need for manual and intellectual labour for the sustenance of the Pancapitalist production mode (Tehranian, 2004). In the global economy an unimpeded flow of labour is important for the proper oiling of the economic machinery of the North, the trend specifically favouring engineers, scientists, information technology specialists and their ilk from around the world. Obviously, these classes of people possessing valid bargaining chips in the form of special skills have limited friction on the way of their entry. Notwithstanding, the exclusionary politics of immigration cannot be detached from overarching conditions of contemporary geopolitics, foreign policy and the problem of socio-spatial disparities, the latter depicted by differentials in earnings between countries of the North and those of the South (Demeny, 2002). Similarly, international migration has increased in keeping with unease around the world - the plethora of post-Cold War revolutions, civil wars and ethnic cleansing events, from Rwanda to Somalia and Kosovo, are chilling, yet instructive, reminders.