What are the best recent articles on immigration?

April 11, 2007 6:50 AM

Help me find illuminating, educating, eye-opening articles on immigration for a class I'm teaching at the Kennedy School of Government.

I'm teaching a workshop next week for policy students who are writing about immigration. I'd like to find a small collection of truly superlative articles on immigration--immigration *anywhere*--from popular press sources: anything from Slate to Time to The Economist to the NYT, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and so on.

My students study immigration of all kinds and all the issues associated with it: refugees, brain drain, unskilled workers, highly skilled workers, remittances, immigration and culture, immigration and language, immigration and children.... I'd like to put together a wide range of great articles on everything from the technocratic problems of managing immigration to the experience of being an immigrant.

What have you read that's really opened your eyes, amazed you, or educated you about immigration?

posted by josh to media & arts (5 answers total)

The Chicago Reader's recent story about the difficulties of an American woman seeking legal status for her Pakistani Muslim husband was revealing.
posted by asuprenant at 7:08 AM on April 11, 2007

Each issue of the UK-based lefty New Internationalist magazine is organized by theme. Here are two that are relevant:

Out of Africa: A Migrant's Story

Refugees: The Case for Open Borders
posted by girlpublisher at 7:36 AM on April 11, 2007

NYT: DNA Tests Offer Immigrants Hope or Despair

I read this yesterday and even though it's a very specific issue, it made me think again about how invasive the immigration process can be, with what unforeseen complications (I know this as an immigrant myself, although nothing as dramatic as these stories).
posted by Melinika at 8:53 AM on April 11, 2007

The Boston Globe has had some interesting articles on medical care for immigrant communities. Like this from 2005: Keif halik? (How are you?), and one on how to deal with traditional practices and American sensitivities and laws: Rites and Wrongs.

Beyond just "remittances" one aspect you might show students is innovations like Construmex, which channel remittances through businesses to the uses they were intended for. (Construmex and Patrimonio Hoy were one of the case studies in Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid)
posted by whatzit at 10:20 AM on April 11, 2007

A great resource would be this website for the Center for New Community.

http://www.newcomm.org/

They do fantastic work and have been focusing on the rise of new-nativism and the growth of anti-immigrant groups through-out the nation. Their work brings a broader understanding to the current debate about immigration, what it is really about.
posted by loquat at 4:52 PM on April 11, 2007