Showing papers by "Alejandro Portes published in 1997"

Immigration theory for a new century: some problems and opportunities.

Abstract: "This essay examines some of the pitfalls in contemporary immigration theory and reviews some of the most promising developments in research in this field. As a data-driven field [of] study, immigration has not had to contend with grand generalizations for highly abstract theorizing. On the contrary, the bias has run in the opposite direction, that is toward ground-level studies of particular migrant groups or analysis of official migration policies. As the distillate of past research in the field and a source of guidance for future work, theory represents one of the most valuable products of our collective intellectual endeavor. Ways to foster it and problems presented by certain common misunderstandings about the meaning and scope of scientific theorizing are discussed." The geographical focus is on the United States.

Globalization from Below: The Rise of Transnational Communities*

Abstract: The aphorism " capital is global, labor is local " lies at the base of an edifice built continuously during the last half century. From different theoretical quarters, this edifice has been celebrated as the final triumph of free trade and economic rationality or denounced as the tomb of proletarian consciousness and national liberation. Whatever the outlook, the narrative that follows portrays an increasingly bound global economy with capital-in the form of direct corporate ventures or portfolio investment-criss-crossing the earth in search of accumulation. The success of these initiatives is generally correlated inversely with the economic autonomy achieved by national states and the social and economic prerogatives earned by local labor. For the most part, however, the momentum acquired by global capitalist expansion is such as to sweep away everything, in its path, confining, past dreams of equality and autonomous national development to the dustbin of history. The process of capital going abroad in search of valorization is, of course, nothing, new and is indeed the cloth from which numerous accounts of the evolution of the capitalist world-system have been fashioned. What is new in the contemporary period are the modalities and intensity of the process, driven by technological improvements in communications and transportation. Today instantaneous investments and disinvestments are made in the bourses of remote Asian and Latin American countries and, as Castells (1980) puts it, a garment design conceived in New York can be transmitted electronically to a factory in Taiwan, and the first batches of the product received in San Francisco in a week's time. The advantages of the process seem to be entirely on the side of those best able to avail themselves of the new technologies, thus turning globalization into the final apotheosis of capital against its adversaries, be they state managers or organized workers. Yet, as social scientists professionally trained to look at the dialectics of things, we understand that a social process of this magnitude can not be all one-sided. By its very momentum, the process is likely to trigger various reactions giving rise to countervailing structures. In the end, the technology-driven revolution that we are witnessing at century's end 3 may not usher the era of unrestrained global capitalism after all, but a new form of the struggle of exchange vs use values and of the formal rationality of law vs the substantive rationality of private interests. As a contribution to this …

Neoliberalism and the sociology of development: emerging trends and unanticipated facts.

Abstract: This article reviews sociological theories of development and their predictive successes and failures. It examines changes in the global economy that led to the hegemony of a market-oriented approach to development. Limitations of this approach are examined along three lines: (1) the erratic record of results of the application of neoliberal adjustment models; (2) failures of a market-oriented trickle-down approach to social equity; and (3) responses of local groups via emigration and the rise of transnational entrepreneurial communities. The significant role of population characteristics class structure and the character of the state in accounting for these trends is highlighted with particular attention to countries and communities in Latin America. An alternative set of propositions based on recent sociological theories of the economy is advanced. (EXCERPT) (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)