Migration and Inequality by Mirna Safi (review)

In Migration and Inequality, Mirna Safi seeks to provide a theoretical framework for synthesizing literature on immigration, one that views migration/immigration as a "specific component of inequality". Safi identifies three channels through which migration can be seen as affecting social inequality: the economic, the legal, and the ethnoracial. Within each channel, Safi argues, migrants constitute distinct categories of workers, citizens, and humans, respectively, who affect and are affected by broader social inequalities nationally and globally.

A notable strength of the book is Safi's incorporation of multiple levels of inequalities in relation to migration. In describing the economic channel (Chapter 3), for example, Safi discusses inequalities in the global division of labor (e.g., movement of low- and high-skilled migration from the global South to global cities) as well as labor market inequalities between native and immigrant workers and among immigrant workers within countries. The evolution of notions of citizenship and their relation to contemporary nation-building and power inequalities between different nations are considered in the chapter on the legal channel of inequalities (Chapter 4), as are immigration policies and related inequalities in migrant access to resources. In the chapter on the ethnoracial channel (Chapter 5), Safi provides examples of racialized immigrations laws across national and historical contexts, their relation to ethnoracial inequalities in resource distribution, and the potential of migration to disrupt existing systems of inequalities (e.g., through the introduction of new or reorganization of existing ethnoracial categories). Even as Safi moves between concepts and empirical research at the macro, meso, and micro levels, the reader is continually reminded of the guiding concept of the book: the interrelatedness of migration and forms of inequality.

Another impressive feature of the book is its coverage of literature across disciplines and national contexts. For example, Safi highlights the contributions of economic research to our understanding of immigrant inequalities in labor at the individual and global level while also noting the limitations of a purely economic (or human capital) framework, given the large body of literature documenting the persistence of native-immigrant differences in labor market outcomes that hint at discrimination against immigrants. The incorporation of insights from different social sciences helps broaden the reader's perspective on approaches to the study of migration and inequality beyond any disciplinary silo and provides a useful starting point for those delving into the immigration literature in a different discipline.

Safi also touches upon many of the most pressing concerns around migration today, including narratives of a migrant "crisis", citizenship rights, and ever-present racial and ethnic inequalities. In Chapter 1, Safi shows that despite a recent rise, the share of "humanitarian" migrants constitutes only a small portion of overall migrant flows. Yet, contemporary issues around trust in governance, the rise of xenophobic and far-right movements, and global inequalities, all contribute to the perception of a global migrant crisis. Safi also points out that migrants continually challenge "taken-for-granted" notions of modern citizenship, highlighting the relevance of migration in related and widely debated issues of border control and state surveillance. On the complexity of the intersections of race, ethnicity, and immigration, Safi shows how migrants are subject to existing racial hierarchies while also acknowledging their individual and collective agency to challenge and potentially reshape racial and ethnic orders.

Given the ambitious scope of the theoretical framework proposed by Safi, there are parts of the book that seem to veer from the central focus on connecting migration and inequality. Safi does an admirable job of posing questions to guide thinking about inequality in Chapter 2, but much of the chapter is focused on social stratification alone, and it is not until the very end of the chapter that Safi reveals a very helpful table (table 2.1) that places migration in the context of inequality. Had the contents of the table been elaborated upon, Safi's conceptualization of the link between migration and inequality would have been made much clearer for the reader from the beginning. Likewise, a considerable amount...