Suchergebnisse

The legalization program of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was influenced by the behaviors of three local actors in the implementation process: immigrant communities, community-based organizations, and INS officials. The results of two longitudinal field studies in a southwestern city suggest that local interpretations of legalization affected program outcomes by expanding the scope of the program beyond the participation rate projected by national policymakers. We also find that legalization leads to social changes within the immigrant community—the most important being the strengthening of social ties between the home community and the U.S. community.

Since the 1980s, it has been possible for the Chinese peasant household to diversify its economic base by making use of its social networks to place members in a distant community as migrant workers. Through a microstudy of 50 such migrants in Kaiping County in the Pearl River Delta region, this article illustrates the interplay between macro, meso, and micro factors in the causes and processes of circulatory mobility in post-Mao China. It is found that Hong Kong's search for cheap labor, the PRC's household registration system, and Kaiping's strong localism provide the context in which migrants and their households have to adjust. The particular behavior pattern of these migrants also bears the stamp of their rational household decision-making processes as well as their feelings of moral obligation toward their kin in their community of origin.