This is an ambitious book, seeking to develop a theory of immigration politics that can be applied across wealthy Western democracies, over time, across immigration policy arena, at various levels of governance. The dependent variables Professor Ellermann seeks to explain are the direction of policy change—restrictive or liberal—and the magnitude of policy change—incremental or paradigmatic. The basic thesis focuses on the degree to which policy-makers are insulated from both domestic and international actors. That said, and in recognition of the complexity of immigration policy-making, a number of other variables come into focus.
The basic model incorporates five actors, the policy-maker, the public, interest groups, and foreign governments, both from “sending” states and “receiving” states. The public and receiving state governments are described as having restrictionist preferences, while interest groups and sending states have liberal preferences. There are four different policy arenas, electoral, legislative, executive, and judicial, and the level of policy-maker insulation varies both across country and across policy arena. Additional theoretical elements call on the ability of policy-makers to strategically shift across policy arenas, the presence or absence of veto players in paradigmatic shifts, and the ability to legitimate paradigmatic policy changes in the broader political community. Policy learning is yet another element of the theoretical frame. Professor Ellermann illustrates and evaluates this theoretical template with a comparative analysis of immigration admissions policies extending across four countries, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States, and across time, from the 1950s to the 2010s.
Professor Ellermann is in her element as she recounts the trajectory of policy in the four country cases. She has a mastery of the political institutions in which the policy-making takes place and a detailed understanding of the immigration policy context and political actors. To provide a small sample of her analysis, an example from the Canadian chapter is illustrative. At its inception, Canada adopted a race-based immigration policy that selected migrants based on “who will have to change their ways least in order to adapt themselves to Canadian life and to contribute to the development of the Canadian nation” (p. 196)—an indirect ban on non-White immigrants. Although this principle was reaffirmed after World War II, Canada enacted immigration regulations in 1962 and 1967 and adopted legislation in 1976 that overturned that status quo in a paradigmatic policy change from race-based selection to economic skills-based selection. On the one hand, she attributes this policy shift to policy-makers’ insulation from public (restrictionist) pressures as immigration policy was the domain of the executive branch. On the other hand, the government lacked insulation from sending states’ (liberal) pressures, as it tried to carve out middle power status for Canada with a central role in both the United Nations and the British Commonwealth. Both international venues promoted universal rights and looked askance at Canada’s discriminatory treatment of potential migrants from the Global South. The insulation from domestic pressures allowed the government to discard the race-based elements of policy and to respond to the demands of foreign countries to construct an alternate method of immigrant selection based on skill. Professor Ellermann follows the policy trajectory through the 1962 Regulations, the 1967 Points System, and the 1976 Immigration Act where the government managed a national dialog through the legislative branch to legitimize the policy change. In every instance, Professor Ellermann’s encyclopedic knowledge of her cases allows her to present evidence consistent with her theoretical frame.
It is easy to point out the many strengths of this book. Ellermann acknowledges the complexity of immigration policy-making by incorporating both different policy-making arenas and variation of political insulation across countries based on institutional structures as well as the strategic choices of policy-makers. The presentation of the comparative case studies is masterful.
However, there is one central lacuna. Professor Ellermann acknowledges the absence of a theory of policy-maker preferences; rather she generates the preferences of this central actor inductively. In many ways, this is an understandable choice as she already has a complex matrix of variables that she weaves together. But it does raise the question of where the preferences of the central actor of the model are generated and also points to potential endogeneity issues. Even if we grant that policy-maker preferences can be distinctive from other political actors, there is the possibility that the initial array of political institutions and actors shapes the key decision-maker’s policy proposal.
The case studies weave powerful stories of immigration policy-making but also introduce elements that appear central to the argument but are not addressed in the theoretical frame. In particular, the insulation of policy-makers from the public’s restrictive policy preferences is an important element in the theory. Yet even when institutional structures remain constant, role of the public varies in part based on whether public opinion remains latent and unorganized versus when it is activated. Yet nothing in the theory accounts for the conditions under which we should expect public opinion to be activated. The role of the economy also appears important in many instances yet that element is not theorized either.
The book is lengthy and dense, so it is difficult to demand more. Yet an important omission is attention to alternate theories. The first chapter introduces and critiques most of the extant theoretical literature, but the case study chapters do not provide the promised attention to alternate theories. Ellermann’s theoretical elements are woven into the case narratives with care, but research design in qualitative methods requires attention to alternative explanations as well.
Nonetheless, this book will leave an important mark on immigration policy scholarship both by its ambitious effort to find an encompassing theory of immigration policy and the careful attention to the complexity of immigration policy-making. Perhaps we should disavow Gary Freeman’s call for multiple theories of migration policy-making and build on Professor Ellermann’s elegant work.
