Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants [Paperback]

David Bacon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2009

For two decades David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People he explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, migration, immigration raids, and an increasingly divided and polarized society. Arguing for a sea change in how we think, debate, and legislate about and around immigration, Bacon promotes a human rights perspective in a globalized world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this incisive investigation of the global political and economic forces creating migration, journalist and former labor organizer Bacon offers a detailed examination of the trends transforming, for example, Mexican farmers into California farm workers. Bacon condemns efforts to criminalize illegal immigrants, noting that Congress's immigration proposals and debates take place outside any discussion of its own trade policies that displace workers and create migration in the first place. The whole process that creates migrants is scarcely considered in the U.S. immigration debate, argues Bacon, who posits that displacement and migration are two perennially necessary ingredients of capitalist growth. According to the author, the same system... produces migration needs and uses that labor while the vulnerable undocumented or guest-worker status keeps that labor controllable and cheap. Readers disinclined to consider economic rights as human rights may balk at the general direction, but 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. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The persistence in calling undocumented workers “illegal” signifies the political forces that mean to demonize workers who are not U.S. citizens. But it also aptly describes the gross lack of legal rights for these workers and their families. 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 examines the economic and social forces in both countries that lure workers to a market where they can earn higher wages but are vulnerable to exploitation. Bacon goes on to analyze guest-worker programs and other developments meant to balance the needs of U.S. employers and workers. 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. A fascinating look at trade and immigration policies and the people directly affected by them. --Vanessa Bush --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807042307
• ISBN-13: 978-0807042304
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #138,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A necessary and powerful work, October 20, 2008

By 

Nathan D. Backlund "blue collar intellectual" (Rio Vista, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Hardcover)

David Bacon has been fighting for the rights of working people for decades. This book is a monument to a life well spent. Bacon goes through the issues around immigration in a highly readable way. The impact of NAFTA and Neoliberalism. The dangers and hardships faced by economic refugees, documented or not. The exploitative conditions that employers force economic refugees to work under. Bacon is very good on the history of guest worker programs and how they oppress its participants. His book is a great mix of hard facts and analysis plus heart wrenching stories from the front lines. I fear that anti-immigrant sentiment may turn even uglier as the economy weakens. We desperately need the information that Bacon provides to counter the bigotry and ignorance in our work places and among our friends and family.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What an eyeopener, October 5, 2008

By 

Shelley A. Mccarty "noitall" (san diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Hardcover)

This is a must read for anyone feeling pinched by a job loss in the US or who is boiling mad about illegal immigration to the US. This book goes a long way toward developing a context and the reasons for the mass migrations of labor throughout societies. If you are not mad at the US government and the Corporations who own it- you soon will be!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Das Kapital, Circa 2009, May 8, 2009

By 

EGD (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Hardcover)

In Illegal People, labor movement veteran David Bacon asks the question of why Americans fail to appreciate the connections between issues like free trade, unionization, widening disparities between rich and poor--and immigration, a natural corollary of these and other topics. Bacon then proceeds to answer the question in a tough, thorough, and insightful work that combines straight-up political analysis with the stories of migrant workers and labor movements across the globe. Bacon's ultimate point--that western governments (especially the USA), in the service of capital, use exclusive immigration policies to undermine rights and depress wages for both native and immigrant laborers--is a sophisticated one, yet argued so brilliantly that the observation seems natural and obvious by the time he's finished.