Reviews 779 Overall, their book breaks new ground on the topic of transnational policy networks, revealing how power works through these technocratic, expert-driven networks. Fast Policy is a brisk, engaging read, full of ana- lytically rich and empirically driven sub- stance that teaches us much about new experiments of statecraft, their lure and agendas as they travel, and the tensions which arise as they confront the structural inequities that they are often designed to mask or ignore. The State and the Grassroots: Immigrant Transnational Organizations in Four Continents, by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Ferna´ndez-Kelly, eds. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. 338 pp. $120.00 cloth. ISBN: D AVID S COTT F ITZ G ERALD University of California-San Diego dfitzgerald@ucsd.edu The State and the Grassroots: Immigrant Trans- national Organizations in Four Continents reports findings from a set of ten related proj- ects on the migrant organizations of eighteen different national-origin groups, which are spread across the United States, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The volume, edited by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Ferna´ndez-Kelly, provides a wealth of empirical detail on the activities of these organizations and makes substantial advances toward answering major questions in the literature on migrant transnationalism. The central contributions are fourfold. The book brings together 1) the U.S. and western European destination contexts, 2) national- origin groups with highly variable relation- ships with the governments of their countries of origin, and 3) migrant groups that vary widely in the extent to which they are pre- dominantly working class or highly skilled. Finally, it includes surveys of migrant organ- izations that enable some comparisons across national origin and destination coun- try cases. Early scholarly accounts of migrant trans- nationalism, by which the authors mean engagement of various kinds across state borders, paid insufficient attention to how source and destination country governments shape the contours of migrant organization. The accounts in this volume are far more attuned to the political constraints and opportunities in part because the studies include such different contexts. For example, the relaxation of hostilities between source and destination countries opens up spaces for migrant activities oriented toward the homeland. The growth of such activities in the Vietnamese American case following the establishment of diplomatic relations in the 1990s is the most vivid such example. The political economy of the origin country also structures migrant ties. Market reforms in China and India set the conditions for intensified relationships and investments of overseas Chinese and Indians. On the destination country side, govern- ments vary widely in their interest in assisting organizations oriented toward the homeland. France, Spain, and Belgium have provided government support for ‘‘co-devel- opment’’ in migrants’ countries of origin, though this has been more difficult in Belgium given its complex federal system. The Spanish government has made co- development a condition of much support for migrant organizations, thus shaping their agendas. Reliance on state resources can car- ry a price. Budget cuts in Spain during the 2008 to 2012 financial crisis dealt a ‘‘death- blow’’ to the organizations (p. 267). Destina- tion country factors may also inhibit migrant organization. The political culture in France, which emphasizes national republican unity, restrains the development of national-origin migrant associations with a strong political focus. Destination country policies may have dif- ferent effects on cross-border organizing over different time scales. In his introductory essay, Portes notes that permanent outmigra- tion is accompanied by a weakening of the local productive structure in places of origin, whereas circular migration encourages great- er investment. In the case of Mexican migra- tion to the United States, the 1986 Immigra- tion Reform and Control Act’s legalization provisions and stricter U.S. border enforce- ment have shifted Mexican migration from a pattern of circular mobility to permanent settlement. I would argue that in the short run, mass legalization created the conditions Contemporary Sociology 45, 6 Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com by guest on October 20, 2016
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Jan 1, 2017
Jean Yu-Wen 
Open Access