During the past several decades, France and Britain have become countries of immigration like the United States. Martin Schain provides a systematic comparison of immigration policies and practices in these three transatlantic countries by exploring 1) the reasons why people migrate, 2) the ability of these liberal states to maintain control over their frontiers, 3) the impact of immigration on national identity and on bounded notions of citizenship, and, 4) the way immigrants are integrated and incorporated. Schain seeks to understand why immigration policies are different in countries that appear similar in their economic development, their birthrates, and the demographic composition of their working-to-nonworking populations. Specifically, he asks why the United States practices an open immigration policy whereas France and Britain practice variants of a restrictive one. Rather than accepting a simple economic explanation based on the fluctuation of labor demands, he offers an original and persuasive political explanation.

In this political explanation, Schain discusses how concerns about immigration have been politicized in these countries, especially the way in which immigration policies are framed by competing political parties and leaders. Such framing, he argues, has policy implications (in terms of the distribution of public goods and favors to immigrant groups) and organizational consequences for political parties (such as their choice of candidates). For him, the way political parties construct the immigration issue is influenced by “electoral considerations”: whether the immigration issue poses as a challenge to identity for voters who are anticipated to be anti-immigrant or as a means of mobilizing a potential immigrant electorate. In postwar Britain, where the question of immigration was framed as a challenge to national identity, for example, a combination of exclusionary immigration policies with integration policies that prohibit racial discrimination emerged after a compromise was reached between the Conservative Party (who favored immigration “control”) and the Labour Party (who emphasized a commitment to “rights”). By contrast, in the United States, where considerations of electoral gain or future party gain due to immigration increasingly became relevant after 1965, immigration policies became more open.

The book makes an important contribution to the study of comparative immigration politics in Western countries by stressing the role of electoral politics and the politicization of the immigration issue. By exploring the framing by political actors, Schain skillfully explains how immigration policies and politics within a given country have changed over time. During the prewar period in France, for example, the trade unions and the French Communist Party sought new members, who eventually would become the party's electoral support. These political actors were strong supporters of open immigration policy and pushed local authorities to accommodate/integrate new populations. During a period of strong economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, the French government further encouraged immigrants from other parts of Europe to enter the country in order to meet its labor market needs. When economic growth began to slow down in the 1970s, it was accompanied by housing shortages and increasing militancy by immigrant workers in the workplace. Public officials became concerned and decided to reverse immigration policies through administrative action in 1974 to one that was restrictive. When outbreaks of urban violence and problems of ethnic incorporation and immigrant education (e.g., rising number of dropouts) increased during the 1980s, the question of immigration was increasingly being framed in identity terms (e.g., immigrants as a danger to French identity), while the French state's policy became increasingly restrictive.

Another important contribution to the study of comparative immigration politics is Schain's careful analysis of political actors within their institutional framework, which provides his readers with a nuanced comparison among these three advanced industrialized countries. For Schain, similar political actors, such as interest groups, from different countries must operate within different institutional frameworks. As a result, the impact that interest groups have on immigration policies varies widely among these countries. In the United States, interest groups were successful in influencing congressional committees on immigration politics and policies, such as restrictive immigration legislation based on national origins during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In France, changes in the interest group universe after 1981, which allowed for the emergence of immigrant ethnic associations (with state funding), have impacted local integration policies, although they have yet to influence electoral politics. In Britain, interest groups have been weak and do not have much influence on immigration policies.

In providing an in-depth analysis of the comparative politics of immigration in France, Britain, and the United States, Schain adeptly draws on historical data, government documents, and secondary sources. Three chapters devoted to each country detail the development of its immigration policy, the understanding of its immigration policy, and its politics of immigration. These chapters, which are carefully crafted with sensitivity to differences in the institutional framework and the history of each country, reinforce his core idea that the dynamics of the party system drive immigration policy.

In my view, we need to be cautious in positing the centrality of electoral politics to the comparative study of immigration because naturalized citizens are generally less likely than natives to participate in electoral politics. Therefore, political parties find little incentive to target low-propensity voters like immigrants and prefer to devote their energies toward mobilizing the most likely voters. In contrast to Schain's claim that political parties in the United States have been competing for immigrant votes since 1965 (a crucial component of his explanation for America's open immigration policy), other immigration scholars (e.g., see Janelle S. Wong, Democracy's Promise, 2006) have found that both the Democratic Party and the Republic Party have only recently sought to mobilize immigrant voters. This is also because party members realize that many immigrants (particularly Mexicans) traditionally have not become citizens, even if they were documented and had been in the United States for several generations. Many of these immigrants were galvanized in 1994 by Proposition 187 in California (which would have denied social services to unauthorized migrants, mainly from Mexico and Central America) and later by anti-immigrant hostility evidenced in Congress and in the population as a whole. Many joined the massive immigrant rights marches and, subsequently, were inspired to naturalize. As an increasing number of immigrants did so, political parties then began to compete for their votes, as in the 2008 presidential election.

Whether or not one accepts Schain's thesis regarding the centrality of electoral politics in explaining the variation in immigration policies in these three Western countries, his book offers a compelling theoretical explanation of the politicization of immigration. It draws on ample empirical support and invites intellectual engagement, even from those who might think otherwise. It is an important addition to comparative politics, and I expect that it will be widely read and referenced by students of this important topic.