Coming Sept. 1 -- Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (New book by David Bacon)

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Available September 1

 

Illegal People

How Globalization Creates Migration

and Criminalizes Immigrants

 

 

For a schedule of coming book discussions

and photography exhibitions, go to:

http://dbacon.igc.org/IndexPS/schedule.html

 

In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.

 

Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States' trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system.

 

In particular, he analyzes NAFTA's corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers.

 

Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants-and the migrants themselves-as illegal. Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.

 

"[I]ncisive investigation . . . Bacon's timely analysis is as cool and competent as his labor advocacy is unapologetic. In mapping the political economy of migration, with an unwavering eye on the rights and dignity of working people, Bacon offers an invaluable corrective to America's hobbled discourse on immigration and a spur to genuine, creative action." - review, Publisher's Weekly,

 

"Bacon, an award-winning photojournalist, labor organizer, and immigrant-rights activist, follows the lives of undocumented workers at the Westin Suite Hotel in California and a Smithfield meatpacking plant in North Carolina, who travel back and forth from Mexico to the U.S. . . . He ties together interviews, personal histories, and political analysis to provide a vivid image of what life is like for workers with little rights or protections in an increasingly globalized economy." review, Vanessa Bush, Booklist

 

"David Bacon is the conscience of American journalism: an extraordinary social documentarist in the rugged humanist tradition of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams, and Ernesto Galarza.." - Mike Davis

 

Book webpage: http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

 

For more articles and images on immigration, see http://dbacon.igc.org/Imgrants/imgrants.htm

 

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

 

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

 

_________________________________________________

Arnoldo Garcia

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Red Nacional Pro Derechos Inmigrantes y Refugiados

310 8th Street Suite 303

Oakland, CA 94607

Tel (510) 465-1984 ext. 305

Fax (510) 465-1885

www.migrantdiaries.blogspot.com

www.nnirr.blogspot.com

www.nnirr.org

 

Join HURRICANE: the human rights immigrant community action network -- help build community power for justice & human rights!

Unete al HURACAN: la red de accion de comunidades inmigrantes para los derechos humanos -- construyendo el poder de las comunidades por la justicia y los derechos humanos!

Click here for Hurricane/Haga click para info sobre el Huracan:

http://www.nnirr.org/resources/docs/NNIRRHurricaneInitiative2.pdf

 

Get a copy of Over-Raided, Under Siege, NNIRR’s new human rights report!

http://www.nnirr.org/resources/docs/OrderFormforOver-RaidedReport.pdf