A. R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America

Abstract

Zolberg successfully undertakes at least four projects. First, he reconsiders policy making regarding international migration in the early history of the United States. Second, he reveals the significant linkages among migration processes and policy and compelling national issues, notably, the regulation of the slave trade and slavery, the concept of citizenship, economic growth, and national identity. Third, Zolberg considers the evidence for the ‘path dependency’ of U.S. immigration policy, the migration ‘crises’ that have shifted the direction of the path, and the implications of these policy and institutional dynamics for contemporary immigration policy reform. Fourth, Zolberg reflects on scholarly perspectives and analyses of immigration and immigrant settlement that have shaped, and currently frame academic and public discourse concerning the implications of international migration for society, economy, and polity. Mutually reinforcing, these themes form the architecture of Zolberg's critical and critically insightful study of historical and contemporary U.S. immigration policy. A Nation by Design is an exceptional piece of scholarship not only as a comprehensive record of the role of international migration, immigration, and settlement in nation-building in the first century of the republic, but also as an critical synthesis of political, economic, social, and individual dimensions of policy formation, implementation, and reformulation. Zolberg succeeds in his project(s) by making demands of the historical evidence and of research design and method (chapter 5 and the reexamination of nativism, for example). His persistence in addressing alternative explanations—his metaphor of the ‘proverbial glass’ being half empty or half full—reveals his commitment to continuing research and reflection on an ambiguous issue. Fully half of the volume is devoted to revisiting the first century of the independent United States, a long period represented on most powerpoint slides in presentations as an era of ‘laissez-faire’ national immigration policy. With Zolberg's Int. Migration & Integration (2008) 9:105–106 DOI 10.1007/s12134-007-0036-6