Episode 50: This Sticky Issue of Immigration

Global in the Granite State

If you want to start a heated debate, pretty much anywhere in the Western world today, just bring up the topic of immigration. While there are plenty of policy issues that drive partisanship today, few are as sticky as the immigration issue. From the arguments of protecting the border and rule of law, to the need to protect immigrant rights and the dynamism that comes with welcoming legal immigrant, there are plenty of ideas, issues, and challenges to work on and argue about. In today's episode, we talk with Dr. James Hollifield, Professor and Director of the Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at Southern Methodist University, about why the United States and the European Union have grappled with immigration for so long. The challenge stems from what he identifies as the "Liberal Paradox", where states need to define borders, citizenship, and rule of law, with the need to respect human rights, uphold values, and welcome new labor. Join us as we take a look at the history of immigration in the U.S. and what these countries can do to solve this issue.
James F. Hollifield is the Ora Nixon Arnold Fellow in International Political Economy, Professor in the Department of Political Science, and Director of the Tower Center at SMU in Dallas, Texas, as well as a member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC.
Hollifield has served as an Advisor to various governments in North and South America, Europe, East Asia and the Middle East and Africa, as well as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the OECD, the ILO, the IOM, the EU, and other international organizations. He currently chairs working groups at the World Bank and the IDB and serves on the International Advisory Board of the National Center for Competence in Research (NCCR for Migration and Mobility) of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He has been the recipient of grants from private corporations and foundations as well as government agencies, including the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Social Science Research Council, the Sloan Foundation, the Owens Foundation, the Raytheon Company, and the National Science Foundation.
His major books include Immigrants, Markets and States (Harvard), L’Immigration et l’Etat Nation: à la recherche d’un modèle national (L’Harmattan), Pathways to Democracy: The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (with Calvin Jillson, Routledge), Migration, Trade and Development (with Pia Orrenius and Thomas Osang, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas), Herausforderung Migration—Perspektiven der vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft (with Uwe Hunger, Lit Verlag), Migration Theory (with Caroline Brettell, Routledge, now it its third edition), and Controlling Immigration ( with Philip Martin and Pia Orrenius, Stanford, also in its third edition). His current book projects are The Migration State (Harvard)—a study of how states manage international migration for strategic gains—and International Political Economy: History, Theory and Policy (with Thomas Osang, Cambridge). He also has published numerous scientific articles and reports on the political economy of international migration and development.