ABSTRACT
Immigration studies, like so many other social sciences, focuses disproportionately on the "other", the poor, and the powerless. The work within immigration studies is impressive in both empirical and theoretical terms. This chapter reiterates the approach to immigration by combining in one single view the historical development of nation-state membership and internal and international migration. It argues that the characterization of newly arriving outsiders ("immigrants") makes sense only in contrast to the gradual definition and clarification of insiders ("citizens"). The chapter explores an ideal-type model of the interactions among the three processes of capitalism, labor migration, and state formation. In 1965, the United States' immigration law changed in ways that allowed large-scale legal immigration from throughout the world. The US case has a rather complicated history, with reversions between internal and external labor sources, and likewise internal and external relocations of capital investment.
