Guests and Aliens Book

A penetrating and comprehensive analysis of the history of migration and refugees from a leading expert in the field. Saskia Sassen's analyses of the global transfers of money and power have earned her a reputation as one of the world's leading experts on globalization. In Guests and Aliens she brings her impressive interpretive skills to bear on the related issue of immigration, putting current "crises" in an historical context for the first time. The American experience, she suggests, represents one phase in a long history of global border crossing. She describes the relative normality of the pursuit of work across borders during the emergence of the European nation-states and explains the economic and political mass migrations of Italians and Eastern European Jews during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She also discusses the dislocations -- particularly those after the end of World War II -- that have engendered the "refugee" concept. Using these examples, Sassen explores the causes of immigration that have resulted in nations' welcoming incomers as guests or disparaging them as aliens. Sassen's impassioned conclusion describes ways to improve European and American immigration policy and helps us see current problems in an historical light. Read More