BOOK REVIEW SECTION

Book Review Essays

Europe, Continent of Migrants

JEFFREY COLEDowling College

Gender and Migration in Southern Europe: Womenon the Move. Floy a Anthias and Gabriella Lazaridis,eds. New York: Berg, 2000. 263 pp.

Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe.Russell King, Gabriella Lazaridis, and Charalambos G.Tsadanidis, eds. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.368 pp.

Guests and Aliens. Saskia Sassen. New York: The NewPress, 1999.202 pp.

As travelers, sports fans, book readers, and moviegoersknow, migrants figure prominently in contemporary Europe.The foreign-born and their sons and daughters live andwork throughout the continent; they join and found asso-ciations, write books, make movies, and lead nationalteams to glory; they touch the fears and aspirations of citi-zens, unions, churches, and political parties. The threebooks under review make substantive and conceptual con-tributions to the understanding of migration past and pre-sent and prompt questions for future research.

In Guests and Aliens, Saskia Sassen challenges "the ico-nography of Europe as a continent of mass emigration" (p.ix). In seven chapters and just over 150 pages, she chartswidespread interregional and international migrations overthe last two centuries. Rather than being a novelty of thepostwar period, migration constitutes a key element inlong-term economic and social development. As such itcan and should be managed rather than feared.

The decline of the peasantry, rising population, growthof rural industry, and urbanization set many on the movearound the early nineteenth century—overseas, to cities,and on annual sojourns. Highlighting the often overlookedseasonal movements, Sassen describes the "seven majorintra-European systems" (p. 22) that involved about300,000 people annually. Later in the century, factory-based manufacture and the commercialization of agricul-

ture undercut rural pursuits, including farming and indus-try. The "rural landscape became far more productive thanit had been in the ancien regime, but far less capable ofsupporting its residents" (p. 39). And as a result of im-proved transportation, too, all kinds of migration in-creased, involving more people, greater distances, andmultiple destinations. And as larger and potentially radicalpopulations moved, governments reconsidered the wel-come formerly extended to newcomers.

An examination of Germany, France, and Italy offerscase studies of state policy and practice. German policyboth permitted mass emigration and encouraged temporaryand regional- or sector-specific immigration. By 1910 overone million foreigners, mostly from the east, were control-led through residence and work permits in a manner simi-lar to the postwar "guestworker" system. The 1913 lawembodied a blood or jus sanguinis definition of the nation.Foreigners could not, by definition, achieve citizenship,whereas Germans abroad were deemed eligible on the ba-sis of descent. The French, in contrast, maintained a politi-cal or jus soli doctrine in which participation in commonculture created nationhood. Thus school, army, and otherinstitutions were to assimilate peasant and foreigner alike.A pronatalist program and, as in Germany, employer de-mand secured open borders over the objections of thosewho proclaimed foreigners dangerous. Italy permittedmass emigration, as southerners typically went overseasand northerners crossed the Alps; the few pockets of Italianindustry drew on internal migrants.

Sassen integrates refugees into the treatment of migra-tion. World War I, the breakup of dynastic empires to theeast, and nationalist struggles created unprecedented num-bers of refugees. State formation—including war, height-ened concerns over national security, and border con-trol—displaced millions. The restrictive U.S. policy of the1920s closed the formerly open door, exacerbating therefugee crisis. In this context, "the emergent inter-statesystem was the key to the creation of the stateless person,

American Anthropologist 103(3):82O-837. Copyright © 2001, American Anthropological Association

BOOK REVIEW ESSAYS 821

the identification of the refugees as such, and their regula-tion or control" (p. 84).

Tackling an immense literature, Sassen next examinesthe situation of refugees, immigrants, colonial returnees,and others after 1945. Again, familiar patterns emerge, asthe willing absorption of millions in the postwar rebuildingeffort and subsequent economic boom gave way to wide-spread, politicized opposition to foreigners by the 1970s.Circular and permanent migration, greater numbers of peo-ple, and more diverse origins and destinations characterizecurrent patterns. This includes renewed movement both inand out of central Europe, the resumption of east-westmovement, the transformation of former sending areas ofthe south into receiving areas, and maturing populations offoreign origins in traditional labor-importing areas of thewest and north. Despite very different starting points,European policy and practice show convergence towardincreased political rights for immigrants, policies favoringintegration, and stricter rules governing asylum seeking.Sassen observes that the European Union has done morethan the United States to bring the circulation of people inline with the movement of capital and goods.

What shapes population movements? In the popular "in-vasion" model, the actions of poor and desperate individu-als result in migration. Sassen views this as wrong anddangerous. Geopolitical and economic processes forgelinks across borders, as richer areas seek labor to fuelgrowth; economic cycles thus account for much of the pat-terned quality of migrations. In the resultant "dynamic ofinequality" few sending countries stand to gain in the longrun. Sassen urges us to acknowledge our decisive role inthe process and to manage it with an eye toward inclusionrather than to fear and blame migrants whom we need anduse.

Guests and Aliens is an important statement by an ac-complished scholar. The book is not without its flaws,however. Bibliographic omissions and inaccuracies, nu-merous typographical errors, inconsistent use of terms, andfrequent repetitions mar the work. While supportive of in-tegration, for example, Sassen fails to define the term, giveexamples, or address the difficult questions associated withthe project. Her treatment of contemporary trends, thoughadmirably concise, neglects whole literatures—on the sec-ond generation, politics, and race—and offers but a briefand overgeneralized discussion of the labor market. Hermain points regarding migration theory have been madebetter elsewhere, by her (Sassen 1988) and others (e.g.,Portes and Rumbaut 1996). At its best, the book offers auseful revisionist account of population movement inEurope. It is important for citizens, scholars, and policymakers to realize the regularities and structural underpin-nings of migrations, the economic and social significanceof newcomers present and past, the relationship of state-making to policy, and the responsibilities of the receivingsocieties and states.

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, Spain, Portugal,Greece, and Italy, all former countries of emigration, be-came countries of immigration. This transformation is ar-guably the most significant aspect of contemporary Euro-pean migration; it has certainly attracted the attention ofscholars in the United States and Europe (e.g., Booth andCole 1999; Carter 1997; Cole 1997; King 1993; Modern It-aly 1999; Pugliese 1993). Eldorado or Fortress? and Gen-der and Migration in Southern Europe assemble accountsof recent research and make welcome additions to theemerging literature. The first volume offers balanced cov-erage of countries and themes, while the second focuses onfemale migrants and gender relations.

Eldorado or Fortress? contains five sections, includingan introduction and 14 essays addressing the themes of la-bor market, social exclusion, policy, and security issues. Inthe introduction, King describes the important role ofpopulation movement under successive economic systems.Peace, economic growth, falling rates of natality, formercolonial links, propinquity, and ease of entry relative to tra-ditional postwar destinations such as France and Germanyattract contemporary migrants, who numbered perhaps 3.5million by the mid-1990s (p. 11). In this "South Europeanmodel" (p. 18) newcomers provide cheap and flexible la-bor power for the lower tiers of a gendered, segmented la-bor market into whose ranks they cluster as a result of oftenundocumented status and a lack of opportunities at home.In view of Sassen's analysis, this represents the continuedif changing demand for new labor sources in vibranteconomies.

Mingione and Quassoli open the section on the labormarket with a nuanced account of the informal sector inwhich migrants play an important role. Foreigners andnative workers rarely compete because the former areshunted to the worst jobs in a segmented or dualistic labormarket. The underground economy antedates immigration(though it has certainly benefited from it), involves all eco-nomic levels, and includes mutually advantageous and ex-ploitative relationships. The Italian state abets the processthrough public debt, increasing taxation, and feeble repres-sion of tax evasion. With few variations these points echothrough the chapters on Greece (Fakiolas), Portugal (Ba-ganha), and Spain (de Sans, Cardelus, and Solana). InGreece, undocumented Albanians make up much of theforeign population, and they perform many of the dirty, de-manding, and degrading jobs in fields and homes es-chewed by natives. In Portugal and Catalonia, Spain, eco-nomic growth has created demand for both low- and highlyskilled foreigners, the former typically coming from Af-rica, the latter from Brazil and E.U. countries. Romaniszynapplies consumption theory to the behavior of Polish mi-grants in Greece, Spain, and Italy. Most are undocumented,but as white, Christian Europeans they are well regarded.Guided in good measure by investment opportunities back

822 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 103, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 2001

home, some postpone consumption until they return, whileothers enjoy the good life in southern climes.

Ambiguous legal status, dead-end jobs, and unflatteringstereotypes conspire to marginalize newcomers, as thechapters on social exclusion demonstrate. Campani re-views the two most common occupations allotted foreignwomen in Italy—domestic service and prostitution—witha focus on the latter. Most prostitutes are foreigners whoarrived after 1989; they engage in a range of activities,from more or less independent call girls, to club dancersand hostesses, to street prostitutes. Criminal organizationsand their accomplices engineer the trafficking of streetprostitutes, particularly young and poorly educated Nigeri-ans and Albanians, whom they force into the trade. Laz-aridis and Psimmenos analyze the multiple exclusions of(undocumented) Albanians in Greece. Hounded by police,relegated to onerous jobs, spatially segregated, and stigma-tized as criminally inclined, Albanians exist at the margins.For the authors, this exemplifies a new international orderin which regions and populations lose economic controland become semicaptive foot soldiers in capitalism's for-ward march. In his essay on the Lisbon area, Malheiro alsodemonstrates the importance of spatial processes. Vigor-ous economic restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s in-volved privatization, foreign investment, and E.U. mem-bership, creating new labor demands. Contemporaneousurban restructuring (building, megaprojects, planning) re-inforced segregation. Poor, usually African, newcomerswere shunted to inferior housing stock in poorly served ar-eas, while richer Brazilians and E.U. nationals activelyclustered in quality accommodations in prestigious neigh-borhoods. Triandafyllidou's chapter explores the potentialfor xenophobia in Greek and Italian national identities.Public officials, NGO spokespersons, and union repre-sentatives describe immigrant difference in terms of civictradition, ethnicity, and culture. Resultant us/them distinc-tions imply that difference impedes integration and war-rants exclusion, illustrating the dialectic process wherebynational identity is recast in the context of the foreign.

Porous borders attracted migrants in the 1970s and1980s. In the 1990s southern European governments regu-larized foreigners through periodic amnesties and quotas,initiated comprehensive legislation, and asserted the desir-ability of integration and legalization. Bonifazi describesItalian legislation moving from an "emergency-based ap-proach" (p. 240) typical of the initial period to a 1998 lawholding the promise of an integrated management ap-proach. He sees in the Italian situation several issues ofwider European relevance—the control of illegal immigra-tion, the need for a practical needs-based approach, andnew ideas on citizenship. In his account of Spain, Arangodescribes the migrant population and evolution of policy.As of the late 1990s, Spain exhibits a double tendencydrawing on the restrictive emphasis of earlier legislationand recent integrative mechanisms. Since 1994, the quota

system has kept the undocumented presence to a mini-mum, reassuring both Spaniards and E.U. member states.Tapinos explores "the relevance and feasibility of the freetrade alternative to trans-Mediterranean migration" (p.277) and finds that steadily declining birth rates in theMaghreb, not trade, will curtail emigration over the com-ing decades. Essays on security likewise examine the re-gional nature of population movement. Collinson disag-gregates different kinds of security—social, economic,military—and underlines the complexity of calculatingcosts and benefits. She concludes that, on the whole, immi-gration will benefit sending and receiving countries alike.Tsardanidis and Guerra also see the "threat" to the Euro-pean Union from the south as minimal. Economic develop-ment and the promotion of human rights in the south to-gether with regional cooperation will, they think, buildregional prosperity and contribute to declining migration.

In Gender and Migration in Southern Europe, an intro-duction and nine essays explore the situation—often pre-carious, sometimes tragic—of women of eastern Europeanand Third World origins in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, andSpain. Anthias provides the conceptual foundation of thecollection. She faults neoliberal and neo-Marxist ap-proaches for neglecting gender or equating migration withthe male, whether as breadwinner or as labor power forcapital. Instead, she would treat population movement interms of gender, transnational links, and labor markets.Segmented, gendered labor markets, often supported bystate actions, channel women into dead-end, "female" oc-cupations. Intersecting hierarchies of class, nation, andrace further structure migrants' lives. In Cyprus, govern-ment regulations direct migrant women into domesticservice, tourism, and the sex trade; nationalist discoursedecries the presence of foreign prostitutes and caregivers.Anthias stresses women's agency and considers the gainsand losses in what are often "solo" or autonomous jour-neys.

Lazaridis contrasts Filipina and Albanian domesticworkers in Athens and Corfu. The former view migrationas a means to provide for a family at home, possess per-mits, often serve as live-in maids, and find jobs throughemployer recommendations, agencies, conational associa-tions, and church organizations. Albanians by contrast fleepolitical turmoil as families and enter illegally, work by thehour or day, and secure employment through word ofmouth. Legal status, organization, and Greek views aboutforeign populations underwrite a racialized hierarchy inthis generally unrewarding sector. As "nice Catholic girls"with higher education and institutional support, Filipinasenjoy the most prestige and highest pay; lacking supportand education and considered "the enemy at the doorstep"(p. 55) as Muslims, Albanians receive low pay and little re-spect. Psimmenos discusses the varied "fenced off' (p. 83)living and work spaces of Albanian sex workers in Greece.Most desperate are the trafficked women and children of

BOOK REVIEW ESSAYS 823

both sexes, held virtual prisoners by criminal organiza-tions; the youngest, who have lost control over their verybodies, view life as disjointed and incomprehensible.

The chapters on Italy examine parameters of inclusionand exclusion in a country with a longer immigration his-tory than Greece. Chell-Robinson compares Somalian andFilipina domestics in Rome. War refugees and recent arri-vals drawn in part by government supports, Somaliansview the work as temporary. Filipinas, in contrast, have ar-rived since the late 1970s in search of work; by the late1990s, some daughters and mothers exchanged places inan example of "intergenerational sequential migration" (p.118). As in Greece, Filipinas have become the "domesticof preference" (p. 109) on the basis of skills, networks,conational associations, and church institutions. Andall'sstudy of ACLI-COLF (Associazioni Cristiane LavoratoriItcdiani-Collaboratrici Familiari), a national Catholic as-sociation for domestic workers, describes the changingideological and institutional contexts in which Filipinasand others operate. Established in 1946 as part of a broadercold war battle against the Left, the association has movedfrom a clerical position on domestic labor (Christian duty),to a radical class analysis (exploitation) in the 1970s, to agender focus (female solidarity) in the 1980s and 1990s.Despite periodic recognition of the problems besetting for-eign domestics, ACLI-COLF's focus on solidarity be-tween female workers and employers subtly promotes theinterests of Italian women over those of foreigners. Orsini-Jones and Gattullo demonstrate the power of place. In Bo-logna, (female) migrant associations and related initiativesspring to life in the nourishing soil of leftist and feministtradition; a strong welfare structure supported by church,government, and associations; and a sympathetic CityCouncil. In Florence, dominant economic interests hostileto poor newcomers, unresponsive local government, fewerservices, and more racism and exploitation impede organi-zation. In this hostile and all-too-common environment,foreign women turn to networks where they easily fall preyto jealousy.

In Spain, state policy supporting a gendered, segmentedlabor market channels women into domestic work andother services. The status of women is complex, as Escrivashows. On the face of it, solo migration, gainful employ-ment, and amenities of the welfare state bespeak increasedautonomy, comfort, prestige, and opportunities for chil-dren and spouses. Counterbalancing these benefits are pos-sible de-skilling, dead-end jobs, isolation, and frustrationwith unaccountable partners back home. Ribas-Mateos de-scribes migration to Catalonia from Morocco, Gambia,and the Philippines. Women came to Spain for many rea-sons, but generally Filipinas came to support families; Mo-roccans, to join husbands or to work; and Gambians, tojoin husbands. The book's closing chapter continues thetheme of exclusion, this time treating the situation of Brit-ish women residing along the costa del sol O'Reilly de-

scribes the cloudy and sunny aspects of life in southernSpain. The women initially enjoy life abroad as more re-laxed, healthier, safer, and less restrictive than at home.Deeper probing, however, reveals an undercurrent of con-fusion, isolation, and loneliness. Few learn Spanish orknow natives; the British are confused by Spanish bu-reaucracy and rebuffed by a state that regards them as"residential tourists" without prospects of integration; andtransience among conationals impedes the development oftrust and stable friendships.

Eldorado or Fortress? and Gender and Migration inSouthern Europe advance our understanding of contempo-rary southern Europe. Balanced coverage and consistentlyhigh quality make the King et al. volume indispensable forinterested scholars and libraries. The Anthias and Lazaridisvolume, despite some weak essays, provides timely and in-sightful treatments of gender and migration. And U.S.readers will gain from the somewhat different perspectivesof the European scholars whose work is collected here.Collectively, these studies demonstrate how gendered,segmented labor markets and state policy and practicestructure the variable inclusion and exclusion of migrants,contribute to essentialized hierarchies of populations, cre-ate the conditions for their visibility and invisibility, andframe their life chances. They also show the relevance ofmigrant networks and local institutions and culture. Impor-tantly, some authors (e.g., Baganha, Malheiros, de Sans etal., O'Reilly) point to the significant influx of retirees, gov-ernment officials, corporate representatives, and profes-sionals, especially in Spain and Portugal. Rendering vis-ible the high-end migrants, who in Europe as in the UnitedStates escape notice in debates on the subject, produces amore complete picture of the mobility of capital, com-modities, and labor under postindustrial capitalism. Thebulk of the contributions, in line with much current re-search (e.g., Koser and Lutz 1998), concentrate on mi-grants who find themselves at the margins of southernEuropean society—exploited, undocumented, bereft of po-litical representation, and identified in the media as worri-some threats or pitiable victims. Such an emphasis rightlydraws attention to a plight that should be addressed withmore responsibility by governments and businesses; and asSassen, Bonifazi, and Anthias suggest, continued migra-tion in an age of restrictive policies invites rethinking defi-nitions of individual rights, political participation, and citi-zenship. Future study should include other facets ofmigrants' lives and could benefit from the models and con-trasts afforded by research on migration in the UnitedStates and traditional receiving areas of Europe. Detailedethnographic examination can flesh out the bare-bonesstructural view through examination of migrant businesseslarge and small, the revitalization of decrepit (urban) areasby newcomers, novel forms of identification, the revival ofmoribund religious institutions and the introduction ofnovel faiths, family strategies including transnational

824 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 103, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 2001

networks for childrearing, and the path of the next genera-tion through school and society and subsequent segmentedassimilation. Today's Africans, Asians, eastern Europeans,and others are remaking Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece,offering another example of migrants' often unrecognizedcontributions to European economy and society. Anthro-pologists can and should train their ethnographic sights onEurope, continent of migrants.

References Cited

Booth, Sally, and Jeffrey Cole1999 An Unsettling Integration: Immigrant Lives and Work

in Palermo. Modern Italy 4(2): 191-205.Carter, Donald

1997 States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New Euro-pean Immigration. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress.

Cole, Jeffrey1997 The New Racism in Europe: A Sicilian Ethnography.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

King, Russell, ed.1993 Mass Migration in Europe: The Legacy and the Future.

London: Belhaven.Koser, Khalid, and Helma Lutz, eds.

1998 The New Migration in Europe: Social Constructionsand Social Realities. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Modern Italy1999 The Italian Experience of Immigration. Special Issue.

Modern Italy 4(2).Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben Rumbaut

1996 Immigrant America: A Portrait. 2nd edition. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Pugliese, Enrico1993 Restructuring of the Labour Market and the Role of

Third World Migrations in Europe. Society and Space11:513-522.

Sassen, Saskia1988 The Mobility of Capital and Labor: A Study in Interna-

tional Investment and Labor Flow. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Poverty and Downward Mobility in the Land of OpportunityCATHERINE KINGFISHER

University of Lethbridge

Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Ageof Affluence. Katherine S. Newman. Berkeley; Univer-sity of California Press, 1999. 328 pp.

"So You Think I Drive a Cadillac?": Welfare Recipi-ents' Perspectives on the System and Its Reform,Karen Seccombe. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. 246

PP-

Braving the Street: The Anthropology of Homelessness.Irene Glasser and Rae Bridgman. New York: BerghahnBooks, 1999. 132 pp.

In "Sociology after Society" (1997), Mitchell Dean ex-plores the manifestations of risk in the contemporary West,While the threat of poverty and dependence (among otherthings) may be higher among particular segments of thepopulation, such as people of color and the elderly, what isnoteworthy about the current situation is that risk is nolonger confined to such groups but, rather, "traverse[s]each and every member of the population" (Dean 1997:219). "There are," Dean claims, "only 'at risk' groups,high and low risk groups.... Risk . . . can be minimized,localized and voided, but never dissipated. There are, it istrue, sub-populations to be targeted, but the entire popula-tion remains the primary locus of risk" (1997:219).

The books under review provide convincing empiricalevidence of Dean's assertion. They trace a trajectory ofdownward mobility and enduring poverty that begins withthe middle classes and then moves down to welfare recipi-ents and finally to the bottom, where the homeless reside.Together, they make the point that wealth and poverty, inboth relative and absolute terms, lie along a continuum: thedistinctions between the two are much more fluid than anumber of us would like to think, and security under cur-rent neoliberal regimes has become precarious for many.Poverty and dependence (or the "fall from grace," for thosewho are not always already at the bottom) have spilledover their erstwhile containers, and, with the exception ofthe minority who benefit—and clearly benefit well—fromwhat Katherine Newman refers to as "a distorted vision offree-market economics" (p. 239), we are all now subject tocontamination and dis-ease.

This point is most forcefully made for those of us whohave felt protected by our class positions in Newman'sFalling from Grace, originally published in 1988 and reis-sued in 1999 with updated contextual data that illustratethe continued relevance of the original work. Reminiscentof Friedan's (1983) "problem with no name," downwardmobility among the American middle classes is, accordingto Newman, "a hidden dimension of our society's experi-ence because it simply does not fit into our cultural uni-verse" (p. 9). Given the status of the downwardly mobile as