New SSRN Immigration Articles
I ran across two especially interesting immigrtaion articles on the Social Science Research Network:
“Illegal Immigration and Media Exposure: Evidence on Individual Attitudes” CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP7593 GIOVANNI FACCHINI, Tinbergen Institute ANNA MARIA MAYDA, Georgetown University – Department of Economics, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) RICCARDO PUGLISI, University of Pavia, Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano. ABSTRACT: Illegal immigration has been the focus of much debate in receiving countries, but little is known about what drives individual attitudes towards illegal immigrants. To study this question, we use the CCES survey, which was carried out in 2006 in the United States. We find evidence that – in addition to standard labor market and welfare state considerations – media exposure is significantly correlated with public opinion on illegal immigration. Controlling for education, income and ideology, individuals watching Fox News are 9 percentage points more likely than CBS viewers to oppose the legalization of undocumented immigrants. We find an effect of the same size and direction for CNN viewers, whereas individuals watching PBS are instead more likely to support legalization. Ideological self-selection into different news programs plays an important role, but cannot entirely explain the correlation between media exposure and attitudes about illegal immigration. This Blogger’s bottom line: It might be a good time to vow never to watch Fox News.
“The Politics of Refugee Protection” Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 27, Issue 1, pp. 8-23, 2008 GUY S. GOODWIN-GILL, University of Oxford – Faculty of Law. ABSTRACT: This article looks back to the 1920s, and tries to tease out the politics of refugee protection as it evolved in the practice of States and international organizations in a period of growing ideological divide. The question addressed is whether the politics of protection at any particular moment are humanitarian or whether they serve primarily other purposes, in which the refugee is merely instrumental. It is unrealistic to imagine that the problem of refugees can ever be entirely non-political. What the history of the 1920–55 period confirms is the continued vitality of self-interest as a motivating factor in the responses of States to refugee flows. The international refugee regime that emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s defined refugees through the politics of denunciation in a persecution-oriented definition that continues to limit and confuse, not only at the international operations level, but also in national asylum procedures. In this context, the article concludes that the art for UNHCR is not to allow solutions or assistance to have priority over protection. For if it cannot provide protection, it will be judged a failure and accountable, and not merely excused because it tried hard in difficult political circumstances. Blogger’s Comment: The argument is not truly surprising, especially how nations all-too-often have turned their backs on refugees in the post-WW II period.
KJ