Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration

How the immigration policies and popular culture of the 1980's fused to shape modern views on democracyIn the 1980s, amid increasing immigration from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia, the circle of who was considered American seemed to broaden, reflecting the democratic gains made by racial minorities and women. Although this expanded circle was increasingly visible in the daily lives of Americans through TV shows, films, and popular news media, these gains were circumscribed by the discourse that certain immigrants, for instance single and working mothers, were feared, censured, or welcomed exclusively as laborers. In The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration, Leah Perry argues that 1980s immigration discourse in law and popular media was a crucial ingredient in the cohesion of the neoliberal idea of democracy. Blending critical legal analysis with a feminist media studies methodology over a range of sources, including legal documents, congressional debates, and popular media, such as Golden Girls, Who’s the Boss?, Scarface, and Mi Vida Loca, Perry shows how even while “multicultural” immigrants were embraced, they were at the same time disciplined through gendered discourses of respectability. Examining the relationship between law and culture, this book weaves questions of legal status and gender into existing discussions about race and ethnicity to revise our understanding of both neoliberalism and immigration.

Impressive in scope, The Cultural Politics of US Immigration explores popular culture, political rhetoric, and legal discourses from the 1980s and early 1990s as staging grounds for the transformation of multiculturalism and the erosion of welfare policies in ways that anticipated contemporary neoliberal debates. Well-researched and clearly argued, Perrys comparative emphasis on several migratory groups will make a significant contribution to immigration studies. An ambitious book., Provocative and well-researched,The Cultural Politics of US Immigrationanalyzes the public sentiment, congressional discourse, and cultural politics surrounding immigration reform.Methodologically innovative, Leah Perry pulls multiple disciplinary threads in order to produce a unique paradigm for studying the relationship between popular culture and public policy.

Leah Perry is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at SUNY-Empire State College.