This essay examines the Obama administration's developing strategy for responding to immigration issues. By looking at the writings of members of a policy working group that advised the president during the presidential campaign, the author constructs an interpretive framework for discussing the form immigration policy might take. If these are guides for how the group advised President Obama on immigration reform, then the Obama administration might focus on the following key points: (1) providing options and/or opportunities for undocumented immigrants to get on the "pathway to citizenship"; (2) effective methods for border security that do not necessarily criminalize immigrants; and (3) employer sanctions for those that violate the law and/or abuse immigrant workers.

Key words: President Obama, immigration, reform policy

The article analyzes recent pro-migrant advocacy by U.S. labor organizations. In line with theorists such as Iris Young, Nancy Fraser, and others, who argue that both economic and cultural dimensions are present in most social justice struggles, this article analyzes labor's pro-migrant activism in the U.S. as a reflection of specific economic class interests (such as the need to recruit new members and preclude the deterioration of national labor standards) and an expression of cultural values (such as commitment to values of social unionism and recognition of diversity within the labor force), identities, and sentiments linked to these identities.  In emphasizing the economic and the cultural dimensions of labor's pro-migrant activism, the article fills the gap in the scholarship that has focused predominantly on economic reasons behind the interest of unions in the fate of migrant workers.

Key words: migration, labor identity, ethnicity, work, trade unions, North America

This article examines the shift in the poor and working-class demographic in the southern United States from a primarily African American workforce to one that now includes a substantial population of Latino and Latina immigrants. U.S. census figures for 2000 record the total population of Latino/as in the South as 95,928, with Latino making up 49% of the population and Latina 51%. Theories that address issues of immigration and migration, labor markets, and racialization are used to explain these trends and demographic shifts. The author briefly assesses shifts in the workforce in agricultural, poultry, and industrial labor from primarily African-American workers to immigrant labor in the southern states of Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Also examined are the rising racial tensions that have erupted between African-American communities and Latino communities in the Deep South. The discussion concludes with a brief appraisal of the growth in advocacy and resistance activities spurred by several factors that affect Latino communities in these areas, the foremost being the exploitive labor conditions experienced by Latino immigrants.

Key words: Hurricane Katrina, Latino and Latina immigrant workforce

Mexican migration became a polarizing political issue in election campaigns and the popular media in 2006, as massive immigration rights protests and anti-immigration citizen border patrols were organized across the United States. Though political debate has given migration a public face, less is known about the daily strategies used by migrants to mitigate hostility in predominantly white neighborhoods while seeking employment as day laborers. In this exploratory study, the authors use qualitative methods to examine the strategies of migrants to present themselves as clean, quiet, and orderly residents to avoid provoking largely unwelcoming local residents and law enforcement while seeking work.

Key words: day laborers, Mexico, social space

This study explores two contrasting cases of local opposition to services for immigrants. It conceptualizes NIMBYism as the informal policing of boundaries to maintain places of domination. Opponents of a domestic violence shelter and a worker center for day laborers sought to impose physical boundaries through pressuring politicians, using exclusionary tactics, and endangering the safety of immigrants. In efforts to legitimate these activities, opponents constructed discourses of victimization that presented immigrants as either oppressive or as oppressed persons whose victim status victimized residents. The conclusion discusses implications for local efforts to protect the human rights of immigrants in a global economy.

Key words: NIMBY, immigration, race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationalism, discourse

The authors show that the working poor and immigrants are among the most likely to be sanctioned for noncompliance in the Los Angeles County GAIN (Greater Avenues of Independence) welfare-to-work program. The program is significant since only the total welfare caseloads in the states of California and New York exceed those of Los Angeles County. In an overall strategy of survival among the poor, GAIN represents a fallback means of support. The largely unskilled workers in the paid labor market who are compelled to seek such aid resist welfare reform measures whenever program requirements make their struggle for a better life more difficult. Unlike the welfare rights movements of the 1960s that led to progressive changes, today collective patterns of everyday resistance are individual and personal. The authors argue that all current welfare reform measures should aim toward the development of a national strategy to reduce and eliminate poverty as a constitutional right.

Key words: GAIN, welfare reform, sanctions

The authors' view of the U.S.-Mexico border is that it is not a static, one-dimensional representation of social and cultural space. Employing critical theory, they suggest that the border is transnational and transcultural. It has its own synergism, which allows for the blending of social identities and cultural representations into a hybrid representation of border crossers and border residents. The article shows that in building a border fence, the U.S. government robs the U.S.-Mexico border of its identity as a transcultural social space to reinforce Anglo hegemony regarding biased views of the border. Since Mexicans are the only ones perceived as "crossers," this wall strips them of the opportunity to use the border as a vehicle for their representation in border space. Specific anti-immigrant legislation passed in Pennsylvania serves as a case study.

Key words: U.S.-Mexico border, Hazelton, Pennsylvania, ordinance

Within the frameworks of immigration, globalization, and transnationalism, this article seeks to unravel new possibilities for social action within a Diaspora. By focusing on a group of Nepali transmigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area, this article documents their efforts to engage in collaborative social change processes between home and host countries. Through social action, they not only seek to mend severed ties with those in the home country, but also to reconceptualize new possibilities for "development" and social change in their home country while adjusting and contributing to life in the host country. The article acknowledges that the findings are based on the efforts of a relatively small immigrant community, but argues that their innovative efforts provide insights into possibilities for "counter-hegemonic" change processes worldwide. The rapid and increasing movement and relocation of people across borders necessitates new visions for collaborative social action beyond the nation-state paradigm.

Key words: Nepali transmigrants, transnationalism, social action, skills, Kartabya, environmental organizations, health networks