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David Scott FitzGerald (PhD UCLA 2005) is Theodore E. Gildred Chair in U.S.-Mexican Relations and Professor of Sociology at the University of California San Diego. His research analyzes policies regulating migration and asylum in countries of origin, transit, and destination, as well as the experiences of people on the move. FitzGerald’s books include The Refugee System: A Sociological Approach (Polity Press 2023), Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (Oxford University Press 2019), and more. His seven co-edited books include six volumes onMexican migration to the United States and Immigrant California: Understanding the Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Policy (Stanford University Press 2021). FitzGerald’s articles have been published in journals including the Annual Review of Sociology, American Journal of Sociology, International Migration Review,and more. His publications have been recognized with the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Distinguished Scholarly Book Award andMidwest Sociological Society Distinguished Book Award;ten awards from sections of the ASA, American Political Science Association, and International Studies Association; and the ASA International Migration Section Award for Public Sociology.

Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field? 

This is a vibrant period in the study of international migration. There is a growing cadre of researchers who are analyzing to what extent theories developed in a handful of countries in the contemporary Global North apply to other cases. For example, work on the “liberal paradox” argues that liberal states accept more immigrants than their publics prefer because of policymakers’ interest in promoting the economic growth fuelled by immigration, and because of the constraints of the judiciary that prevent other branches of government from applying the harshest exclusions. Yet expanding the cases considered shows that liberal states like South Korea and Japan are perfectly capable of accepting only small numbers of immigrants. The constraints that were identified in the Western European context in the 1990s don’t universally apply.

Within Europe, many theories about migration and citizenship in European countries only applied to the metropoles. Extending the field of inquiry to their colonies and overseas territories complicates many assumptions. For example, “France” famously does not collect census data on race, and the very term is seen as illegitimate in the classic Republican model, but when Algeria was under French control, the census explicitly used racial categories to define the population and assign rights by groups. Studies of metropolitan-colonial interactions are establishing the shifting use of race and colonial categories in migration and citizenship policy with far more nuance.

In the United States, the dominant paradigm in the study of international migration has been assimilation and integration. This research program generally assumes that immigrants permanently settle, with most social change taking place across generations between immigrants and their children and grandchildren born in the country of settlement. Yet many countries have migration systems that strongly discourage permanent settlement, such as the broad pattern in the Gulf Cooperation Council. For the working class, family reunification is all but impossible. Naturalization is denied to all but a tiny minority The basic political drivers behind U.S. assimilation don’t apply. In countries that host large numbers of refugees from neighbouring countries, such as Jordan, there are extensive linguistic, religious, and cultural similarities between most refugees and their hosts, but refugees are excluded from full........

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