Joan W. Scott in The Nation:
“Immigrant” has become a kind of epithet these days, and not only in France. Everywhere in Europe, and also in the United States, immigrants are blamed for all manner of problems: crime, unemployment, disease, the deterioration of public services, the exhaustion of public funds, threats to liberal culture and mores. Right-wing populist politicians in nearly every country of the Western Hemisphere appeal to voters with plans to cleanse the national body of these impure invaders, to expel them, to build walls to keep them out. References to a “crisis” of immigration have become a convenient way to talk about many other things as well: race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and, especially, the human costs wrought by global capitalism and the growing inequalities it has engendered within and across the nations of the world.
These references to an “immigrant crisis” antedate the arrival of waves of refugees fleeing war and violence in Africa and the Middle East; the recent refugees have only heightened the discourse. Three new books attempt to see beyond the contours of the current crisis and to tap into a deeper set of economic, political, and cultural anxieties.
More here.