Suchergebnisse

Using Public Use Microdata Samples, we analyze the temporal marriage patterns of recent Mexican immigrants in the United States, and relate these patterns to socioeconomic and political events, such as U.S. immigration reform, increasing returns to skill, and rising incentives for unattached Mexicans to migrate during the 1980s. Our findings indicate that recent Mexican immigrants (particularly men) were less likely to be married within five years of migrating in 1990 than their counterparts had been in 1980. An empirical extension further suggests that the relative endogamy odds among Mexican immigrants who migrated to the United States by 1980 increased during the next decade. Such demographic changes may affect policies involving issues such as education, welfare and retirement.

This article examines an overlooked dimension of adaptation among international migrants: how they use the host society's legal system to seek redress for grievances that arise during the resettlement process. The article terms this process legal adaptation and focuses on foreign-born plaintiffs in civil litigation. A sample (N=137) of state and federal civil cases with at least one Vietnamese litigant is used to analyze the temporal patterns in legal adaptation among Vietnamese refugees from 1975 to 1994. Several aspects of Vietnamese litigation match their macro-level resettlement process, such as civil rights and intraethnic litigation occurring later than other types of cases. But civil suits with a Vietnamese plaintiff and a native defendant tended to occur earlier than civil suits with a native plaintiff and a Vietnamese defendant. The article identifies the role of legal organizations and international grievances as the sources of Vietnamese refugees' rapid legal adaptation. The best aspects of the American legal system are the appeals process, access to the courts, and especially the court of equity. This concept of equity never existed in Vietnam. We had the Napoleonic Code where everything is written, and if it is not written, it basically does not exist. You know, too, that under the Code you are guilty until proven innocent…I think the biggest problem is with translators. You know, at its worst, justice translated can be justice denied. So much can be lost in the translation, even by a very good translator. So many American legal concepts do not exist in Vietnamese law.

This article examines the global forces that are responsible for the transformation of the meaning and practice of UNHCR's humanitarianism, and asks whether a transformation that enables the organization to become more deeply involved in the internal affairs of states is welcome or worrisome. I open by reviewing the changing relationship between multilateralism, sovereignty, and humanitarianism, and link that conceptual discussion to the international refugee regime. I then argue that the combination of state pressures and the normative principle of popular sovereignty enabled a more political and pragmatic UNHCR to widen its activities under the humanitarian banner and to become more deeply involved in the circumstances in the refugee-producing country. This expanding humanitarian umbrella, I suggest, might be a stealth agent for a policy of containment and a threat to refugee rights. This possibility is suggested by recent debates over the category of internally displaced peoples; the decided preference for repatriation; and UNHCR's involvement in reintegration activities. These developments generate the worrisome possibility that a more pragmatic UNHCR is potentially (though unwittingly) implicated in a system of containment. I conclude by reflecting on UNHCR's role in global politics and the dangers of a sovereignty-led humanitarianism.

This article reviews the growth of the field of refugee studies, focusing on its links with, and impact on, refugee policy. The last fifty years, and especially the last two decades, have witnessed both a dramatic increase in academic work on refugees and significant institutional development in the field. It is argued that these institutions have developed strong links with policymakers, although this has often failed to translate into significant policy impacts. Areas in which future policy-orientated work might be developed are considered.