Contenu du sommaire : L'immigration : les années 1980.

American immigration policy has evolved into a three-part compartmentalization, pertaining respectively to family reunion, the admission of refugees as well as asylum-seekers, and the procurement of labor. The latter has been the most problematic, and the object of intense activity by contending economic and political interests, with alignments cutting across the usual left-right continuum. The paper examines how the interplay of these forces shaped the legislative process resulting in enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Art of 1986.

Large scale migration to the U.S. emerges as a consequence of a significant presence of the U.S. in a limited number of countries, economic and/or politico-military. This would explain why in the past, emigration to the U.S. occured always from a limited number of countries in a very specific context, for example, the transatlantic economy of the 1980s. Secondly, the types of bridge-building we see in the case of those countries has contributed to a growing incorporation of women into the migration stream. A major policy implication is that U.S. immigration policy needs to recognize that certain U.S. activities abroad establish bridges to the U.S. and that U.S. immigration is one consequence. This would shift the « responsability » for immigration somewhat away from the individual migrant and onto the U.S. government and multinational corporations.

Over the past twenty years, a period during which services have replaced manufacturing as the most important component of New York City's economic base, New York has also attracted over a million foreign immigrants most of whom have come from the Third World. These two developments have produced a new ethnic division of labor, in which immigrants and native-born minorities, that is, blacks and Puerto Ricans, occupy distinct economic niches. Ethnic group location within New York"s post-industrial economy is the consequence of disparities in skills, predispositions and social resources. Positional differences, in turn, spur conflict among various immigrant and native minority groups over the allocation and maintenance of distinct economic niches.

The immigration policies and patterns of the United States and France lend themselves readily to comparison, because both countries have welcomed immigrants, actively promoted their assimilation, and tended to define society in terms of shared values rather than descent. Today, integration policies in both countries are challenged by the mass influx of immigrants — the Mexicans in the USA and the Maghrebis in France — who, by color, culture, or religion, distinguish themselves more from the majority than did earlier waves of immigrants. This article examines the evolution of immigration and exclusion policies, the attitudes of the natives, and the growing political insolvement of immigrants.

Whether legal or illegal, immigrants to the United States and France have increasingly arrived from the Third World over the past several decades. Since the permanent nature of their (and their families') settlement in these societies has become apparent, so have the social and political costs associated with concentrations of non-Europeans. Despite the limitations on noncitizens' legal and political rights, both in the U.S. and France a transient work force has been converted into consumers and residents engaging in active political participation. Immigrants in the two societies have pursued often different political strategies, however. This paper will consider those strategies and will argue that legal discrimination and host governments' choices of structures to link immigrants to politics account for the differing patterns of their political participation. It will be suggested that the very different « linking » or « channeling » processes overseen by the French and American states have proven more important than class and ethnic/racial factors in determining what roles immigrants have been playing in the politics of the two nations.

The Sanctuary Movement emerged in the early 1980s as a response to the immigration from certain countries of Central America (Guatemala and El Salvador primarily). Should the new-comers be considered (and thus treated) as economic immigrants or political refugees ? Through a brief history of the Movement, the article proposes to illustrate the controversy which opposes the US administration to the members of the Movement.

If the US-Mexico border region is complex to define in terms of its identity (Mexican-American, Mexican, Anglo, Chicano), its population though quite diversified has succeeded in creating an original cultural unit. It has invented a new way of life somehow reminiscent of what existed before the territory was divided up. This regional community is thus transcending the border as an international boundary and setting itself against the arbitrary decision to draw a dividing line where there used to be unity.

The phrase « The Mariel generation » designates a certain number of writers and artists who left Cuba in 1980, for the most part, to flee the political persecutions and humiliations which were the common lot on the island. In spite of the predominance of extraliterary criteria in this phrase, one may note in those writers and artists a certain number of common philosophical values which have been kept alive especially by the magazine Mariel founded in New York in 1983 and operating in Miami since 1986. This publication has enabled them to keep in touch with each other and to preserve their cultural heritage in the U.S. But Mariel has also been a link between all Cuban exiles irrespective of the generation they belong to.