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Bad News for Refugees
Greg Philo, Emma Briant, and Pauline Donald
Pluto Press, 2013

Bad News for Refugees analyses the political, economic and environmental contexts of migration and looks specifically at how refugees and asylum seekers have been stigmatised in political rhetoric and in media coverage.

Through forensic research it shows how hysterical and inaccurate media accounts act to legitimise political action which can have terrible consequences both on the lives of refugees and also on established migrant communities.

Based on new research by the renowned Glasgow Media Group, Bad News for Refugees is essential reading for those concerned with the negative effects of media on public understanding and for the safety of vulnerable groups and communities in our society.

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Battle for Allegiance
Governments, Terrorist Groups, and Constituencies in Conflict
Seden Akcinaroglu and Efe Tokdemir
University of Michigan Press, 2020
Domestic terrorist groups, like all violent nonstate actors, compete with governments for their monopoly on violence and their legitimacy in representing the citizenry. Battle for Allegiance shows violence is neither the only nor the most effective way in which nonstate actors and governments work to achieve their goals. As much as nonviolent strategies are a rarely considered piece of the puzzle, the role of the audience is another crucial piece often downplayed in the literature. Many studies emphasize the interactions between the government and the terrorist group at the expense of the constituency, but the constituency is the common cluster for both actors to gain legitimacy and to demand its allegiance. In fact, the competition between the two actors goes far beyond who is superior in terms of military force and tactics. The hardest battles are fought over the allegiance of the citizens.

Using a multimethod approach based on exclusive interviews and focus groups from Turkey and large N original data from around the world, Seden Akcinaroglu and Efe Tokdemir present the first systematic empirical analysis of the ways in which terrorist groups, the government, and the citizens relate to each other in a triadic web of action. They study the nonviolent actions of terrorist groups toward their constituencies, the nonviolent actions of governments toward terrorists, and the nonviolent actions of governments toward the terrorist group’s constituencies. By investigating the causes, targets, and consequences of accommodative actions, this book sheds light on an important, but generally ignored, aspect of terrorism: interactive nonviolent strategies.
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Becoming Europe
Immigration Integration And The Welfare State
Patrick Ireland
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004
Across Europe, millions of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers have often had difficulties fitting into their new societies. Most analysts have laid the blame on a clash of cultures. Becoming Europe provides evidence that institutions matter more than culture in determining the shape of ethnic relations.

Patrick Ireland argues that it is incorrect blithely to anticipate unavoidable conflict between Muslim immigrants and European host societies. Noting similarities in the structure of the welfare states in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium—as well as in their respective North African and Turkish immigrant communities—he compares national- and city-level developments to show how approaches toward immigrant settlement have diverged widely and evolved over time.

Becoming Europe demonstrates how policymakers have worked hard to balance immigrants’ claims to distinct traditions with demands for equal treatment. Ultimately, it reveals a picture of people learning by doing in the day-to-day activities that shape how communities come together and break apart.
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Before Roe
Abortion Policy in the States
Rosemary Nossiff
Temple University Press, 2000
Few issues in contemporary U.S> politics have remained on the public agenda so long and so divisively as abortion policy. The landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Waade, which held that laws prohibiting first trimester abortions were illegal because they violated a woman's right to privacy, still generates heated controversy today, a quarter of a century after it was made. The seeds of that controversy were sown in the seven years immediately preceding Roe, when state legislatures tried to reconcile religious opposition to abortion and individuals' civil liberties.

In this groundbreaking book, Rosemary Nossiff examines the force that shaped abortion policy during those years, and the ways in which states responded to them. To provide in-depth analysis while still looking broadly at the picture, she studies New York, which passed the  most permissive abortion bill in the country, and Pennsylvania, which passed one of the most restrictive. That these two states, which share similar demographic, political, and  economic characteristics, should reach two such different outcomes provides a perfect case study for observing political dynamics at the state level.

Nossiff examines the medical, religious, and legal discourses employed on both sides of the debate, as well as the role played by feminist discourse. She looks at the role of the political parties in the campaigns, as well as such interest groups as the National Council of Catholic Bishops, the Clergy Consultation Service, the National Organization for Women, and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. In addition, she analyzes the strategies used by both sides, as well as partisan and institutionalized developments that facilitated success or failure. Finally, in the Epilogue, she assesses the Roe decision and its aftermath, including an analysis of the pro-life movement in Pennsylvania.

As the author remarks, "Without question people's positions on abortion are shaped by a myriad of social, moral, and economic factors. But ultimately abortion policy is shaped in the political arena. This book examines how one of the most intimate decisions a woman makes, whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, has become one of the most politicized issues in contemporary American politics.
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Behind Closed Doors
IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research
Laura Stark
University of Chicago Press, 2011
Although the subject of federally mandated Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) has been extensively debated, we actually do not know much about what takes place when they convene. The story of how IRBs work today is a story about their past as well as their present, and Behind Closed Doors is the first book to meld firsthand observations of IRB meetings with the history of how rules for the treatment of human subjects were formalized in the United States in the decades after World War II.
 
Drawing on extensive archival sources, Laura Stark reconstructs the daily lives of scientists, lawyers, administrators, and research subjects working—and “warring”—on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, where they first wrote the rules for the treatment of human subjects. Stark argues that the model of group deliberation that gradually crystallized during this period reflected contemporary legal and medical conceptions of what it meant to be human, what political rights human subjects deserved, and which stakeholders were best suited to decide. She then explains how the historical contingencies that shaped rules for the treatment of human subjects in the postwar era guide decision making today—within hospitals, universities, health departments, and other institutions in the United States and across the globe. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Behind Closed Doors will be essential reading for sociologists and historians of science and medicine, as well as policy makers and IRB administrators.
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Behind the Development Banks
Washington Politics, World Poverty, and the Wealth of Nations
Sarah Babb
University of Chicago Press, 2009

The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) carry out their mission to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth based on the advice of professional economists. But as Sarah Babb argues in Behind the Development Banks, these organizations have also been indelibly shaped by Washington politics—particularly by the legislative branch and its power of the purse.

            Tracing American influence on MDBs over three decades, this volume assesses increased congressional activism and the perpetual “selling” of banks to Congress by the executive branch. Babb contends that congressional reluctance to fund the MDBs has enhanced the influence of the United States on them by making credible America’s threat to abandon the banks if its policy preferences are not followed. At a time when the United States’ role in world affairs is being closely scrutinized, Behind the Development Banks will be necessary reading for anyone interested in how American politics helps determine the fate of developing countries.

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Between Woman and Nation
Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State
Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón, and Minoo Moallem, eds.
Duke University Press, 1999
InBetween Woman and Nation constructions such as nationalism, homeland, country, region, and locality are for the first time examined in the context of gender. The contributors—leading scholars of ethnicity, transnationalism, globalization, and feminist theory—are united in their determination to locate and describe the performative space of interactions between woman and nation. These are interactions, claim the contributors, that cannot be essentialized.
This interdisciplinarily collection investigates women in diverse locales—ranging from Quebec to Beirut. The contributors consider such subjects as Yucatan feminism, Islamic fundamentalisms, Canadian gender formations, historic Chicana/o struggles, and Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. Divided into three parts, the collection first examines constructions of nationalism and communities whose practices complicate these constructions. The second section discusses regulations of particular nation-states and how they affect the lives of women, while the third presents studies of transnational identity formation, in which contributors critique ideas such as “multicultural nationalism” and “global feminism.” Arguing provocatively that such movements and concepts inadequately represent women’s interests, contributors examine how such beliefs and their attendant organizations may actually bolster the very formations they ought to subvert.
In its demonstration of the critical possibilities of feminist alliances across discrepant and distinct material conditions, Between Woman and Nation will make a unique contribution to women’s studies, feminist theory, studies of globalization and transnationalism, ethnic studies, and cultural studies.
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Beyond Polarization
Public Process and the Unlikely Story of California's Marine Protected Areas
Steven L. Yaffee
Island Press, 2020
In a time when the United States is divided and positive collective action feels out of our grasp, Beyond Polarization tells a story of hope and hard work. That story goes back to 1999, when California passed a landmark piece of legislation to establish a system of marine protected areas off its coast that would safeguard miles of fragile ocean resources. After a contentious ten-year public process, establishment of a network of 124 protected areas was considered nothing short of miraculous. As important as this achievement was, the legacy it left was even more enduring: a blueprint for successful public policy that can be replicated elsewhere. What lessons can we draw?
 
California’s experience provides a rare opportunity to learn from a collaborative public process involving private interests and science-intensive decisions. Determined to do just that, Steven Yaffee, a renowned expert on negotiation and collaborative decision making, spent hundreds of hours researching the MLPA process in an effort to understand how California succeeded where other efforts have failed. The result is Beyond Polarization, a highly readable insider’s perspective on complicated decision-making processes and the strategic choices necessary for success. The book follows the initiative process region by region, each with its unique stakeholders and geographic concerns. These lessons can be applied to similar collaborative processes across the country and world.
 
Beyond Polarization presents an optimistic message about the public policy process in a time of civic division. It offers reassurance that, by using proven decision-making processes, policymakers, scientists, and local citizens can successfully collaborate to manage and protect natural resources we all have a stake in.
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Beyond Smoke and Mirrors
Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration
Douglas S. Massey
Russell Sage Foundation, 2002
Migration between Mexico and the United States is part of a historical process of increasing North American integration. This process acquired new momentum with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which lowered barriers to the movement of goods, capital, services, and information. But rather than include labor in this new regime, the United States continues to resist the integration of the labor markets of the two countries. Instead of easing restrictions on Mexican labor, the United States has militarized its border and adopted restrictive new policies of immigrant disenfranchisement. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors examines the devastating impact of these immigration policies on the social and economic fabric of the Mexico and the United States, and calls for a sweeping reform of the current system. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors shows how U.S. immigration policies enacted between 1986–1996—largely for symbolic domestic political purposes—harm the interests of Mexico, the United States, and the people who migrate between them. The costs have been high. The book documents how the massive expansion of border enforcement has wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives, yet has not deterred increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants from heading north. The authors also show how the new policies unleashed a host of unintended consequences: a shift away from seasonal, circular migration toward permanent settlement; the creation of a black market for Mexican labor; the transformation of Mexican immigration from a regional phenomenon into a broad social movement touching every region of the country; and even the lowering of wages for legal U.S. residents. What had been a relatively open and benign labor process before 1986 was transformed into an exploitative underground system of labor coercion, one that lowered wages and working conditions of undocumented migrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens alike. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors offers specific proposals for repairing the damage. Rather than denying the reality of labor migration, the authors recommend regularizing it and working to manage it so as to promote economic development in Mexico, minimize costs and disruptions for the United States, and maximize benefits for all concerned. This book provides an essential "user's manual" for readers seeking a historical, theoretical, and substantive understanding of how U.S. policy on Mexican immigration evolved to its current dysfunctional state, as well as how it might be fixed.
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Beyond Sputnik
U.S. Science Policy in the Twenty-First Century
Homer A. Neal, Tobin L. Smith, and Jennifer B. McCormick
University of Michigan Press, 2008

Science and technology are responsible for almost every advance in our modern quality of life. Yet science isn't just about laboratories, telescopes and particle accelerators. Public policy exerts a huge impact on how the scientific community conducts its work. Beyond Sputnik is a comprehensive survey of the field for use as an introductory textbook in courses and a reference guide for legislators, scientists, journalists, and advocates seeking to understand the science policy-making process. Detailed case studies---on topics from cloning and stem cell research to homeland security and science education---offer readers the opportunity to study real instances of policymaking at work. Authors and experts Homer A. Neal, Tobin L. Smith, and Jennifer B. McCormick propose practical ways to implement sound public policy in science and technology and highlight how these policies will guide the results of scientific discovery for years to come.

Homer A. Neal is the Samuel A. Goudsmit Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Interim President Emeritus, and Vice President for Research Emeritus at the University of Michigan, and is a former member of the U.S. National Science Board.

Tobin L. Smith is Associate Vice President for Federal Relations at the Association of American Universities. He was formerly Assistant Director of the University of Michigan and MIT Washington, DC, offices.

Jennifer B. McCormick is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Ethics in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Mayo College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and is the Associate Director of the Research Ethics Resource, part of the Mayo Clinic's NIH Clinical Translational Science Award research programs.

GO BEYOND SPUTNIK ONLINE--Visit www.science-policy.net for the latest news, teaching resources, learning guides, and internship opportunities in the 21st-Century field of science policy.

"Beyond Sputnik is a readable, concise, yet remarkably comprehensive introduction to contemporary science policy. It is devoid of 'wonkishness' yet serves the needs of policymakers and students alike. Because science and technology policy is of central importance in the twenty-first century this accessible volume is a godsend."
---Charles M. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering and Vice Chair of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering

"This highly researched book is a treasure trove for anyone concerned with science policy relating to such challenges as providing energy, preserving the environment, assuring healthcare, creating jobs, and more."
---Norman Augustine, retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation and recipient of the 2008 Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board

"Science policy is a subject of growing importance in the United States, yet there has long been a vacuum among textbooks in the field. Beyond Sputnik fills it splendidly and will be greeted with enthusiasm by students and faculty alike. Even those who have practiced the art for years will learn from it."
---Albert Teich, Director of Science and Policy Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science

"Homer A. Neal, Tobin L. Smith, and Jennifer B. McCormick have written a landmark work calling for a national effort to restore our nation's power in the fields of science, energy, and education, as we did in the remarkable year following Sputnik. The next preident should read Beyond Sputnik and accept this call to action as did President Eisenhower."
---Ambassador David M. Abshire, President of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Cofounder and Vice Chairman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and President of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation

"At last we have a text that tells the story from where A. Hunter Dupree left off; an excellent core text for courses in science and technology policy, DC policymakers, and anyone who needs to get up to speed in the field . . . The book that we have all been waiting for."
---Christopher T. Hill, Professor of Public Policy and Technology, George Mason University

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Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation
Finncattle, Apples, and Other Genetic-Resource Puzzles
Sakari Tamminen
Duke University Press, 2019
In 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed by over 160 countries and hailed as the key symbol of a common vision for saving Earth's biodiversity, set forth three primary mandates: preserving biodiversity, using biodiversity components sustainably, and enabling economic benefit-sharing. The CBD—which gave signatory countries the ability to claim sovereignty over nonhuman genetic resources native to each nation—defined biodiversity through a politics of nationhood in ways that commodified genetic resources. In Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation Sakari Tamminen traces the ways in which the CBD's seemingly compatible yet ultimately paradox-ridden aims became manifest in efforts to create, conserve, and capitalize on distinct animal and plant species. In using Finland as a case study with which to understand the worldwide efforts to convert species into manifestations of national identity, Tamminen shows how the CBD's policies contribute less to biodiversity conservation than to smoothing the way for frictionless operation of biotechnologically assisted circuits of the global bioeconomy. Tamminen demonstrates how an intimate look at the high-level politics and technical processes of defining national genetic resources powerfully illuminates the limits of anthropocentric biopolitical theory.
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The Biopolitics of Disability
Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment
David T. Mitchell with Sharon L. Snyder
University of Michigan Press, 2015
In the neoliberal era, when human worth is measured by its relative utility within global consumer culture, selected disabled people have been able to gain entrance into late capitalist culture. The Biopolitics of Disability terms this phenomenon “ablenationalism” and asserts that “inclusion” becomes meaningful only if disability is recognized as providing modes of living that are alternatives to governing norms of productivity and independence. Thus, the book pushes beyond questions of impairment to explore how disability subjectivities create new forms of embodied knowledge and collective consciousness. The focus is on the emergence of new crip/queer subjectivities at work in disability arts, disability studies pedagogy, independent and mainstream disability cinema (e.g., Midnight Cowboy), internet-based medical user groups, anti-normative novels of embodiment (e.g., Richard Powers’s The Echo-Maker) and, finally, the labor of living in “non-productive” bodies within late capitalism.
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Biting the Hands that Feed Us
How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable
Baylen J. Linnekin
Island Press, 2016

Food waste, hunger, inhumane livestock conditions, disappearing fish stocks—these are exactly the kind of issues we expect food regulations to combat. Yet, today in the United States, laws exist at all levels of government that actually make these problems worse. Baylen Linnekin argues that, too often, government rules handcuff America’s most sustainable farmers, producers, sellers, and consumers, while rewarding those whose practices are anything but sustainable.

Biting the Hands that Feed Us introduces readers to the perverse consequences of many food rules. Some of these rules constrain the sale of “ugly” fruits and vegetables, relegating bushels of tasty but misshapen carrots and strawberries to food waste. Other rules have threatened to treat manure—the lifeblood of organic fertilization—as a toxin. Still other rules prevent sharing food with the homeless and others in need. There are even rules that prohibit people from growing fruits and vegetables in their own yards.

Linnekin also explores what makes for a good food law—often, he explains, these emphasize good outcomes rather than rigid processes. But he urges readers to be wary of efforts to regulate our way to a greener food system, calling instead for empowerment of those working to feed us—and themselves—sustainably. 

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The Black Reproductive
Unfree Labor and Insurgent Motherhood
Sara Clarke Kaplan
University of Minnesota Press, 2021

How Black women’s reproduction became integral to white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy—and remains key to their dismantling

In the United States, slavery relied on the reproduction and other labors of unfree Black women. Nearly four centuries later, Black reproductivity remains a vital technology for the creation, negotiation, and transformation of sexualized and gendered racial categories. Yet even as Black reproduction has been deployed to resolve the conflicting demands of white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, Sara Clarke Kaplan argues that it also holds the potential to destabilize the oppressive systems it is supposed to maintain.

The Black Reproductive convenes Black literary and cultural studies with feminist and queer theory to read twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts and images alongside their pre-emancipation counterparts. These provocative, unexpected couplings include how Toni Morrison’s depiction of infanticide regenders Orlando Patterson’s theory of social death, and how Mary Prince’s eighteenth-century fugitive slave narrative is resignified through the representational paradoxes of Gayl Jones’s blues novel Corregidora. Throughout, Kaplan offers new perspectives on Black motherhood and gendered labor, from debates over the relationship between President Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, to the demise of racist icon Aunt Jemima, to discussions of Black reproductive freedom and abortion. 

The Black Reproductive gives vital insight into the historic and ongoing conditions of Black unfreedom, and points to the possibilities for a Black feminist practice of individual and collective freedom.

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Black Wave
How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters
Daniel P. Aldrich
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Despite the devastation caused by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 60-foot tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, some 96% of those living and working in the most disaster-stricken region of Tōhoku made it through. Smaller earthquakes and tsunamis have killed far more people in nearby China and India. What accounts for the exceptionally high survival rate? And why is it that some towns and cities in the Tōhoku region have built back more quickly than others?
           
Black Wave illuminates two critical factors that had a direct influence on why survival rates varied so much across the Tōhoku region following the 3/11 disasters and why the rebuilding process has also not moved in lockstep across the region. Individuals and communities with stronger networks and better governance, Daniel P. Aldrich shows, had higher survival rates and accelerated recoveries. Less-connected communities with fewer such ties faced harder recovery processes and lower survival rates. Beyond the individual and neighborhood levels of survival and recovery, the rebuilding process has varied greatly, as some towns and cities have sought to work independently on rebuilding plans, ignoring recommendations from the national government and moving quickly to institute their own visions, while others have followed the guidelines offered by Tokyo-based bureaucrats for economic development and rebuilding.
 
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Blockading the Border and Human Rights
The El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration Enforcement
By Timothy J. Dunn
University of Texas Press, 2009

To understand border enforcement and the shape it has taken, it is imperative to examine a groundbreaking Border Patrol operation begun in 1993 in El Paso, Texas, "Operation Blockade." The El Paso Border Patrol designed and implemented this radical new strategy, posting 400 agents directly on the banks of the Rio Grande in highly visible positions to deter unauthorized border crossings into the urban areas of El Paso from neighboring Ciudad Juárez—a marked departure from the traditional strategy of apprehending unauthorized crossers after entry. This approach, of "prevention through deterrence," became the foundation of the 1994 and 2004 National Border Patrol Strategies for the Southern Border. Politically popular overall, it has rendered unauthorized border crossing far less visible in many key urban areas. However, the real effectiveness of the strategy is debatable, at best. Its implementation has also led to a sharp rise in the number of deaths of unauthorized border crossers.

Here, Dunn examines the paradigm-changing Operation Blockade and related border enforcement efforts in the El Paso region in great detail, as well as the local social and political situation that spawned the approach and has shaped it since. Dunn particularly spotlights the human rights abuses and enforcement excesses inflicted on local Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants as well as the challenges to those abuses. Throughout the book, Dunn filters his research and fieldwork through two competing lenses, human rights versus the rights of national sovereignty and citizenship.

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Boko Haram
Brandon Kendhammer
Ohio University Press, 2018

From its small-time origins in the early 2000s to its transformation into one of the world’s most-recognized terrorist groups, this remarkable short book tells the story of Boko Haram’s bloody, decade-long war in northeastern Nigeria. Going beyond the headlines, including the group’s 2014 abduction of 276 girls in Chibok and the international outrage it inspired, Boko Haram provides readers new to the conflict with a clearly written and comprehensive history of how the group came to be, the Nigerian government’s failed efforts to end it, and its enormous impact on ordinary citizens.

Drawing on years of research, Boko Haram is a timely addition to the acclaimed Ohio Short Histories of Africa. Brandon Kendhammer and Carmen McCain—two leading specialists on northern Nigeria—separate fact from fiction within one of the world’s least-understood conflicts. Most distinctively, it is a social history, one that tells the story of Boko Haram’s violence through the journalism, literature, film, and music made by people close to it.

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Border Oasis
Water and the Political Ecology of the Colorado River Delta, 1940–1975
Evan R. Ward
University of Arizona Press, 2003
The environmental history of the Colorado River delta during the past century is one of the most important—and most neglected—stories of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Thanks to entrepreneurs such as William E. Smythe, the surrounding desert in Arizona, California, Sonora, and Baja California has been transformed into an agricultural oasis, but not without significant ecological, political, economic, and social consequences.

Evan Ward explores the rapid development of this region, examining the ways in which regional politics and international relations created a garden in the Mexicali, Yuma, and Imperial Valleys while simultaneously threatening the life of the Colorado River. Tracing the transformation of the delta by irrigated agribusiness through the twentieth century, he draws on untapped archival resources from both sides of the border to offer a new look at one of the world's most contested landscapes.

Border Oasis tells how two very different nations developed the delta into an agricultural oasis at enormous environmental cost. Focusing on the years 1940 to 1975—including the disastrous salinity crisis of the 1960s and 1970s—it combines Mexican, Native American, and U.S. perspectives to demonstrate that the political and diplomatic influences on the delta played as much a part in the region's transformation as did irrigation. Ward reveals how mistrust among political and economic participants has been fueled by conflict between national and local officials on both sides of the border, by Mexican nationalism, and by a mutual recognition that water is the critical ingredient for regional economic development.

With overemphasis on development in both nations leading to an ecological breaking point, Ward demonstrates that conflicting interests have made sound binational management of the delta nearly impossible. By weaving together all of these threads that have produced the fabric of today's lower Colorado, his study shows that the environmental history of the delta must be understood as a whole, not from the standpoint of only one of many competing interests.
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Border Watch
Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control
Alexandra Hall
Pluto Press, 2012

Questions over immigration and asylum face almost all Western countries. Should only economically useful immigrants be allowed? What should be done with unwanted or 'illegal' immigrants? In this bold and original intervention, Alexandra Hall shows that immigration detention centres offer a window onto society's broader attitudes towards immigrants.

Despite periodic media scandals, remarkably little has been written about the everyday workings of the grassroots immigration system, or about the people charged with enacting immigration policy at local levels. Detention, particularly, is a hidden side of border politics, despite its growing international importance as a tool of control and security. This book fills the gap admirably, analysing the everyday encounters between officers and immigrants in detention to explore broad social trends and theoretical concerns.

This highly topical book provides rare insights into the treatment of the 'other' and will be essential for policy makers and students studying anthropology and sociology.

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The Border Within
The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear
Tara Watson and Kalee Thompson
University of Chicago Press, 2021
An eye-opening analysis of the costs and effects of immigration and immigration policy, both on American life and on new Americans.

For decades, immigration has been one of the most divisive, contentious topics in American politics. And for decades, urgent calls for its policy reform have gone mostly unanswered. As the discord surrounding the modern immigration debate has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes unauthorized entry to the United States a permanent, costly undertaking. And the challenges don’t end on the other side.

At once enlightening and devastating, The Border Within examines the costs and ends of America’s interior enforcement—the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing immigrants already living in the country. Economist Tara Watson and journalist Kalee Thompson pair rigorous analysis with deeply personal stories from immigrants and their families to assess immigration’s effects on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. What emerges is a critical, utterly complete examination of what non-native Americans bring to the country, including immigration’s tendency to elevate the wages and skills of those who are native-born.

News coverage has prompted many to question the humanity of American immigration policies; The Border Within opens a conversation of whether it is effective. The United States spends billions each year on detention and deportation, all without economic gain and at a great human cost. With depth and discipline, the authors dissect the shock-and-awe policies that make up a broken, often cruel system, while illuminating the lives caught in the chaos. It is an essential work with far-reaching implications for immigrants and non-immigrants alike.
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Braking the Special Interests
Trucking Deregulation and the Politics of Policy Reform
Dorothy Robyn
University of Chicago Press, 1987
In 1980 Congress voted to eliminate the federal system of protective regulation over the powerful trucking industry, despite fierce opposition. This upset marked a rare example in American politics of diffuse public interests winning out over powerful economic lobbies. In Braking the Special Interests Dorothy Robyn draws upon firsthand observations of formal proceedings and behind-the-scenes maneuverings to illuminate the role of political strategy in the landmark trucking battle.

Robyn focuses her analysis on four elements of strategy responsible for the deregulator's victory—elements that are essential, she argues, to any successful policy battle against entrenched special interests: the effective use of economic data and analysis to make a strong case for the merits of reform; the formation and management of a diverse lobbying coalition of firms and interest groups; presidential bargaining to gain political leverage; and transition schemes to reduce uncertainty and cushion the blow to losers.

Drawing on political and economic theory, Braking the Special Interests is an immensely rich and readable study of political strategy and skill, with general insights relevant to current political battles surrounding trade, agriculture, and tax policies. Robyn's interdisciplinary work will be of great value to scholars and practitioners of politics, economics, and public policy.
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Britain's War on Poverty
Jane Waldfogel
Russell Sage Foundation, 2010
In 1999, one in four British children lived in poverty—the third highest child poverty rate among industrialized countries. Five years later, the child poverty rate in Britain had fallen by more than half in absolute terms. How did the British government accomplish this and what can the United States learn from the British experience? Jane Waldfogel offers a sharp analysis of the New Labour government's anti-poverty agenda, its dramatic early success and eventual stalled progress. Comparing Britain's anti-poverty initiative to U.S. welfare reform, the book shows how the policies of both countries have affected child poverty, living standards, and well-being in low-income families and suggests next steps for future reforms. Britain's War on Poverty evaluates the three-pronged anti-poverty strategy employed by the British government and what these efforts accomplished. British reforms sought to promote work and make work pay, to increase financial support for families with children, and to invest in the health, early-life development, and education of children. The latter two features set the British reforms apart from the work-oriented U.S. welfare reforms, which did not specifically target income or program supports for children. Plagued by premature initiatives and what some experts called an overly ambitious agenda, the British reforms fell short of their intended goal but nevertheless significantly increased single-parent employment, raised incomes for low-income families, and improved child outcomes. Poverty has fallen, and the pattern of low-income family expenditures on child enrichment and healthy food has begun to converge with higher-income families. As Waldfogel sees it, further success in reducing child poverty in Britain will rely on understanding who is poor and who is at highest risk. More than half of poor children live in families where at least one parent is working, followed by unemployed single- and two-parent homes, respectively. Poverty rates are also notably higher for children with disabled parents, large families, and for Pakistani and Bangladeshi children. Based on these demographics, Waldfogel argues that future reforms must, among other goals, raise working-family incomes, provide more work for single parents, and better engage high-risk racial and ethnic minority groups. What can the United States learn from the British example? Britain's War on Poverty is a primer in the triumphs and pitfalls of protracted policy. Notable differences distinguish the British and U.S. models, but Waldfogel asserts that a future U.S. poverty agenda must specifically address child poverty and the income inequality that helps create it. By any measurement and despite obstacles, Britain has significantly reduced child poverty. The book's key lesson is that it can be done.
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Bureaucrats, Clients, and Geography
The Bailly Nuclear Power Plant Battle in Northern Indiana
Nancy J. Obermeyer
University of Chicago Press, 1989


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