Beyond insiders and outsiders: welfare and immigration reforms in 1960s US

Abstract

Both welfare and immigration policies sort, monitor and handle people, but each targets a different population. Whereas welfare policies address those who reside within national borders, immigration policies address those who originate outside of them. What, if any, is the logic underlying the relationship between welfare and immigration policies? A growing interest in this subject in Europe postulates that states with generous welfare policies execute restrictive immigration policies, while states with limited welfare policies are relatively open to outsiders. Plausible as this explanatory logic sounds, it does not resonate with the main currents of the 1960s in the US, in which both welfare and immigration policies witnessed far-reaching expansions (The War on Poverty of 1964 and the Immigration Act of 1965). Using official archival material and secondary sources, I argue that welfare and immigration during the 1960s were indirectly linked through the Civil Rights discourse of the time. A growing awareness of racial discrimination was one of the main reasons for the War on Poverty, but it never became a legitimate rationale for addressing poverty in the 1960s. In immigration, on the other hand, racial discrimination provided the main discursive frame for abolishing the quota system. Civil Rights discourse at the time was thus more dominant in the process of homogenizing distinctions between whites from diverse ethnic and national origins than in addressing the correlation between race and poverty. This case both calls into question the argument that immigration policy depends on welfare policy and demonstrates that welfare recipients and immigrants do not constitute a homogenized social category. Instead, it shows that in the welfare-immigration equation social distinctions between citizens can be more important than distinctions between citizens and outsiders.

Keywords:

• immigration
• welfare
• civil rights

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank Bill Roy and Rebecca Emigh for a thorough and caring companionship throughout the various stages of this project. Also, I am grateful to Gabrielle Raley, Hillel Eyal, Jennifer Winther and Leisy Abergo for their valuable comments.

Notes

1. The only account to my knowledge in which the relationship between welfare and immigration at the level of policy in the US context is discussed is Carens (1988). His is not a sociological analysis of a specific intersection of these two policies but rather an ethical call for expanding welfare at the expense of restricting immigration. He summarizes his argument as follows: ‘I think it is reasonable to believe that unrestricted immigration, or even greatly expanded immigration, would significantly weaken the welfare state, at least in the foreseeable future’ (p. 208).

2. The literature about this connection even in Europe is relatively scarce and by no means developed into a well-established theoretical tradition. I concentrate on similar theoretical assumptions in the existing literature mainly as an analytical device, in order to delineate the main issues that should be incorporated into the study of welfare-immigration intersections.

3. The 1952 McCarren Walter Act is considered permeated with the doctrine of racial supremacy as it established an immigration quota of 100 per year for each British, French and Dutch colony in the Caribbean.

4. On the long-term influence of the civil rights discourse on immigrants’ claims for incorporation and affirmative action see Graham (1999, 2001).