ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses briefly the legal and economic sources of immigrant marginality and focuses on the similarities and differences between immigrant exclusion in today’s post-Fordist and global economy and exclusion of immigrants to the United State in the industrializing era. The marginalization of immigrants in the new global economy is at the same time more subtle and more pronounced than the marginalization experienced in industrializing America. Italian sociologist Maurizio Ambrosini claims that no real contradiction exists between high unemployment rates and high rates of immigrant employment. Despite much talk of coordinating policies at the European Union level, most European immigration laws remain localized within the nation-states. In the industrial era, immigration flows to America always slowed during downturns in the economy, and net migration was sometimes even negative as immigrants returned home.
