Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants

by David Bacon

For two decades veteran photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.

Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States' trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system.

In particular, he analyzes NAFTA's corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers. For example, Bacon explains that, pre-NAFTA, Oaxacan corn farmers received subsidies for their crops. State-owned CONASUPO markets turned the corn into tortillas and sold them, along with milk and other basic foodstuffs, at low, subsidized prices in cities. Post-NAFTA, several things happened: the Mexican government was forced to end its subsidies for corn, which meant that farmers couldn't afford to produce it; the CONASUPO system was dissolved; and cheap U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market, driving the price of corn sharply down. Because Oaxacan farming families can't sell enough corn to buy food and supplies, many thousands migrate every year, making the perilous journey over the border into the United States only to be labeled "illegal" and to find that working itself has become, for them, a crime.

Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants-and the migrants themselves-as illegal. Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Social Justice, Cultural Studies, Social Issues, Political Science

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

David Bacon is a writer and photojournalist based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He is an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and writes for TruthOut, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He has been a reporter and documentary photographer for 18 years, shooting for many national publications. He has exhibited his work nationally, and in Mexico, the UK and Germany. Bacon covers issues of labor, immigration and international politics. He travels frequently to Mexico, the Philippines, Europe and Iraq. He hosts a half-hour weekly radio show on labor, immigration and the global economy on KPFA-FM, and is a frequent guest on KQED-TV's This Week in Northern California. For twenty years, Bacon was a labor organizer for unions in which immigrant workers made up a large percentage of the membership. Those include the United Farm Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the International Ladies' Garment Workers, the Molders Union and others. Those experiences gave him a unique insight into changing conditions in the workforce, the impact of the global economy and migration, and how these factors influence the struggle for workers rights. Bacon was chair of the board of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and helped organize the Labor Immigrant Organizers Network and the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health. He served on the board of the Media Alliance and belongs to the Northern California Media Workers Guild. His book, The Children of NAFTA, was published by the University of California Press in March, 2004, and a photodocumentary project sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, Communities Without Borders, was published by the ILR/Cornell University Press in October 2006. In his latest project, Living Under the Trees, sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities and California Rural Legal Assistance, Bacon is photographing and interviewing indigenous Mexican migrants working in California's fields. He is currently also documenting popular resistance to war and attacks on immigrant labor and civil rights. He has received numerous awards for both his writing and photography.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bacon's new book does a good job of exploring the ways in which neoliberalism has affected the individual lives of immigrant workers and assessing case studies of local struggles against exploitative employers and immigration authorities. He's also especially good in explaining why attempts at instituting "comprehensive" immigration reform, particularly those that include employer sanctions and guest worker programs, are inherently exploitative and should be strenuously opposed by anyone who cares anything about the rights of workers forced to migrate by international economic policy. And his critique of NAFTA and other "free trade" measures is especially effective in demonstrating how they've accomplished the exact opposite of their ostensible purpose - promote development in poor countries and reduce migration to the rich countries.

There are some problems with the book, however. Bacon seems to have far too sanguine a view of the nationalist/developmentalist import substitution regimes that dominated Latin America from the 1940s through the 1970s. While this development strategy certainly had some successes, it also contained a host of major problems (many of these regimes were corrupt and brutally repressive of oppositional movements on the left), and it had legitimately run out of steam by the 1970s. As Doug Henwood and other left economists have pointed out, the system had to either break in a neoliberal direction (which it did) or in an explicitly anti-capitalist/socialist direction (which it did not). While Bacon mentions certain drawbacks of this strategy in passing, he fails to adequately identify its major weaknesses. I know that this book isn't an academic treatise on historical or comparative political economy, but these are important issues.

Further, the book completely lacks any sort of citation system and doesn't even have an index. It would have been helpful to have some sort of citations attached to his interview testimony as well as some of the facts and figures he employs so that they might be checked or followed up on by the reader. The lack of an index takes an incredibly important access point away from the reader and makes it hard to go back to the book to locate specific bits of information one might want to use. These problems do not affect the content of the book, but they're large enough to make me dock a star from the book's score. The publisher should really take care to include these features in the paperback edition of the book.

That said, Illegal People will still be very useful to activists involved in struggles for immigrants' and workers' rights, and is one of the few books on immigration to identify its major cause in the contemporary political climate - the unjust structure of the international political economy.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love the last line of this book: "The borders between countries should be common ground where they can come together, not lines to pull them apart." Beautiful. It captures the idea of a sense of globalization based in true human community rather than exploitation.

This is an excellent investigation into how globalization, migration, and labor all tangle together and affect policy decisions on the local, national, and international levels. There's so much in this book that I don't know where to begin. What I really love about Bacon's study is that he carefully lays out the history behind all of the current issues surrounding labor and immigration. He goes into great depth about why a guest-worker program is really just a revamped version of indentured servitude vis-a-vis the Bracero program. He also explains at great length, with many specific stories and examples, how keeping workers in an undocumented status keeps wages low and discourages union forming. He also explores in depth the phenomenon of contract hiring as a way to keep profits high but wages low -- it's a way to keep workers in a state of dependent insecurity while maxing the profit from their labor.

If you are interested in labor, the rights of workers, immigration, or globalization, then this is a must-read. I won't say that it's an easy read. It's dense at times and doesn't always follow a clear trajectory, but the information in this book is extremely important to know if you believe that all human beings do, in fact, deserve equal rights.

[Kiren Chaudhry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent investigation into how globalization, migration, and labor all tangle together and affect policy decisions on the local, national, and international levels. Labor everywhere from the tertiary sector of vulnerable undocumented people to HI-B visa holding specialized engineers in Silicon Valley Tech industry.  The theme is unionized labor and workers' right are necessary because things quickly becomes exploitive in the context of Globalization. In the context of globalization everything is for profit, money if free to move around the people creating the money not so much. There’s a lot of poignant stories to give the phenomena a human face. This book is important because it gives a better understanding of the human cost of the consumption of exploited labor. Labor and Migration is the catch 22 of our time, you can’t sustain the current global economy without migration, but migration is illegal leaving those migrating more vulnerable than ever to the string that comes attached to it. Not a feel good read, but a really important one.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am someone who is torn about undocumented immigration to the US. I want all people valued and treated with dignity but I am trying to formulate a way in which granting illegal entrants is fair to people who came here legally and US citizens. I did not feel like this book made a great case for anything really. I do like that the author takes the time to point out the garbage heap that is NAFTA and what it’s done to create the drive for people to migrate illegally. The thing that probably bothers me most about this book is citing statistics and legislation with no actual citations.

[Janie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is almost completely US/Mexico-centric. David Bacon is a photojournalist, and I think he should stick with the photos. I dragged myself through parts of every chapter. I was determined to finish, but my effort almost outweighed the benefit. Pros: my information and awareness of day laborers is more complete. I appreciated that he didn't try to hide his purpose and bias.

I've come up with some good questions (I think?) after reading this, but it's going to be a fight to find answer discussions.

I am even more confuzzled about unions than I was before starting the book.

One of my most informative and unfortunate personal lessons about worker exploitation came as a result of my nickel-and-diming bosses at an immigration law firm. Bacon would eat that up.

[Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this is a great book with an important story to tell, one that goes largely unreported in the mainstream media. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bacon's work as a journalist. However, the book would have worked better as a collection of essays as the structure was a bit disjointed.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

While a much needed wake up call concerning immigration in America, David Bacon’s very pro-immigrant Illegal People reads much more like a compilation of articles on the subject rather than a coherent book on the subject.

[My Bookshelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this to Neela for her birthday in 2008, but truth be told, it was a bit of a chipmunk gift as I wanted to read it as well. Anyway, I started reading it during the tail end of my time in LA and finished it up in New York. Interesting book, but poorly organized.

[Astrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really ugly to read. Poor trajectory in the argument structure, but anecdotes and case studies are satisfying. A few really intense points made on the latent power of immigrant workers in the US and the nation state's concept of "illegal."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

magnificent. beautiful. everyone should read this.

[Theadora Davitt-Cornyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Beacon Press ~ need I say more...? ;-D

[Naglerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by a former Union Organizer, this progressive view of the miseries and unfair treatment of undocumented migrants gives needed insight into the need for immigration reform.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Social and political view of immigration and migration issues. Repeats itself a lot. But a good book to use to study the issues.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Bacon stakes out his turf right away; he has been an immigrant rights activist and a trade union organizer.

[Jessica Honiker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Informative book.