Patricia Landolt - Böcker

The Urban Caribbean studies urbanization in five countries-Costa Rica, Haiti, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica-during the 1980s and 1990s when the region's economy shifted from one heavily dependent on imports to one directed more to producing exports. This shift caused producers and entrepreneurs to rely more on microenterprises, thus challenging the informal economy networks of the central cities. Sociologist Alejandro Portes and the other contributors use rich, in-depth data to examine both qualitative and quantitative changes in these five countries. Their research method allows them to make generalizations applicable to all five economies while retaining the concreteness of the similarities and differences that make each country unique. "This volume is an incentive to other collaborative efforts to chart the paths taken by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean as they seek to accommodate to the new global political and economic context...The message of the volume is a convincing one. Because of similarities in the trends affecting countries of the region and policy debates, each country can benefit from the experiences of the others.However, the differences in political structure and in the nature of citizenship mean that social and economic policy debates must take into account the national context."-from the Foreword, by Bryan Roberts, University of Texas-Austin

Most examinations of non-citizens in Canada focus on immigrants, people who are citizens-in-waiting, or specific categories of temporary, vulnerable workers.  In contrast, Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship considers a range of people whose pathway to citizenship is uncertain or non-existent. This includes migrant workers, students, refugee claimants, and people with expired permits, all of whom have limited formal rights to employment, housing, education, and health services.The contributors to this volume present theoretically informed empirical studies of the regulatory, institutional, discursive, and practical terms under which precarious-status non-citizens – those without permanent residence – enter and remain in Canada. They consider the historical and contemporary production of non-citizen precarious status and migrant illegality in Canada, as well as everyday experiences of precarious status among various social groups including youth, denied refugee claimants, and agricultural workers. This timely volume contributes to conceptualizing multiple forms of precarious status non-citizenship as connected through policy and the practices of migrants and the institutional actors they encounter.