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Migration: The Controversies and the Evidence
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521662338 |
Book Description
This volume takes a critical look at the current divide over immigration policies. It hopes to shed new light on the debate by bringing together papers that investigate the link between trade and factor mobility, particularly labor migration, from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The team of distinguished international contributors suggests far-reaching implications for business, policy making and scholarship. This is a significant addition to the literature on the economics of migration.
Amazon.com
Questions for Barbara Ehrenreich
Through over three decades of journalism and activism and over a dozen books, Barbara Ehrenreich has been one of the most consistent and imaginative chroniclers of class in America, but it was her bestselling 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed, a undercover expose of the day-to-day struggles of the working poor, that has been the most influential work of her career. Now, with Bait and Switch, she has gone undercover again, this time as a middle-aged professional trying to get a white-collar job in corporate America. We asked her a few questions about what she found:
Amazon.com: Your previous book, Nickel and Dimed, became a blockbuster bestseller with a classic "there but for the grace of God go I" liberal message just when the general political mood of the country seemed to be going in a very different direction. Why do you think it struck such a chord? What sorts of reactions have you gotten to it over the past four years?
Barbara Ehrenreich: A lot of Nickel and Dimed readers are people who regularly inhabit the low-wage work world, and many of them write to tell me that the book affirmed their experience and made them feel less alone and ignored. Other readers though, are affluent people who write to say I opened their eyes to a world they'd been unaware of. For those people, I think one appealing feature of Nickel and Dimed is that it's a personal narrative that gives them a look at lives lived at the margins of their own. The most gratifying response has been from people who tell me the book inspired them to become activists for things like a living wage or affordable housing.
Amazon.com: At what point did you realize that your new book, Bait and Switch, in which you went undercover again, this time to tell a story of working in corporate America, was instead becoming one of not working in corporate America? Is that the story you expected to tell?
Ehrenreich: My initial aim was not "to tell a story of working in corporate America" but to try to understand the human underside of corporate America--the job insecurity, the constant layoffs and downsizings that now occur even in the best of times. I expected to get a job and hence an inside view, but I always knew that that would be very difficult. After about 4-5 months of job searching, I began to get seriously discouraged, but I also came to understand that a fruitless search is in fact a very common experience. After all, today 44 percent of the long-term unemployed are white collar folks--an unusually high percentage. It's their world I entered, and their story that I tell in Bait and Switch.
Amazon.com: For someone with a white-collar career, you didn't have much experience in corporate culture before you attempted to join it for this book. What surprised you the most about what you found?
Ehrenreich: What surprised me most, right from day one of my job search, was the surreal nature of the job searching business. For example, everyone, from corporations to career coaches, relies heavily on "personality tests" which have no scientific credibility or predictive value. One test revealed that I have a melancholy and envious nature and, for some reason, was unsuited to be a writer! And what does "personality" have to do with getting the job done, anyway? There's far less emphasis on skills and experience than on whether you have the prescribed upbeat and likeable persona. I kept wondering: Is this any way to run a business? I was also surprised--and disgusted--by the constant victim-blaming you encounter among coaches, at networking events for the unemployed, and in the business advice books. You're constantly told that whatever happens to you is the result of your attitude or even your "thought forms"--not a word about the corporate policies that lead to so much turmoil and misery.
Amazon.com: You seemed to make much closer ties with your fellow workers in Nickel and Dimed than you did on the white-collar job hunt. What was different this time?
Ehrenreich: You're right--there is a difference. But it's not so much a matter of personalities as it is about two different worlds. There's a lot of camaraderie in the blue-collar world I entered in Nickel and Dimed. People help each other and look out for each other; they laugh together--often at the managers. The white-collar world doesn't encourage camaraderie, far from it. There it's all about competition and fear--of losing one's job, for one thing. Other people are seen as sources of contacts or tips, at best; as competitors or rivals, at worst. And among the unemployed add shame and a sense of personal failure, the constant message that it's all your own fault. All this discourages any solidarity with others or real openness.
Amazon.com: God forbid anyone would come to your book as a guide for finding a white-collar job, but what advice would you give to someone in the shoes you put yourself in: a middle-aged professional woman, in fear of falling irrevocably out of touch with the world of the regularly employed?
Ehrenreich: You don't think I'd make a good career coach? OK, but I have three pieces of advice for the middle-aged, middle-class job seeker anyway:
One, be very careful how you spend your money and time. Since the mid-90s, a whole industry has sprung up to help--or, depending on your point of view, prey upon--white-collar job seekers. The "professionals" in this business are usually entirely unlicensed and unregulated. Also, watch out for events billed as "networking" opportunities that really have another agenda--like recruiting you into expensive coaching or proselytizing you into a particular religion.
Two, don't count on the internet job sites to find you a job or even an interview. On any of these sites, your resume will be competing with hundreds of thousands of others, and most large companies today don't even bother reading online resumes; they have computer programs scan them for keywords (and you won't know what those keywords are.)
Three, and most important: stop believing that it's your own fault. That's the first step to recognizing the common problems facing white-collar workers and responding to them. I'd be thrilled if this book, like Nickel and Dimed, also inspires readers to get involved and become active in efforts to make life a little easier for the growing numbers of people who are unemployed, underemployed, or anxiously employed. What could they do? Lobby for universal health insurance that's not tied to a job, for example. Fight for extended unemployment benefits. Raise their voices to complain about corporate tax breaks and subsidies that are justified in terms of "job creation" but often go to companies that are busy laying people off. One major reason job loss is so catastrophic is that we just don't have much of a safety net in this country. That has to change, and who's going to make it change, if not people like those I met in Bait and Switch? I've got a new website, barbaraehrenreich.com, and I'd like to hear from readers--both their stories and their ideas for how to take action.
Classic Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America |
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class |
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War |
Book Description
Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible rsum of a professional in transition, she attempts to land a middle-class job -- undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and -- again and again -- rejected. Bait and Switch highlights the people whove done everything right -- gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive rsums -- yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster, and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Todays ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their surplus employees -- plunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workers -- and little security even for those who have jobs. Like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing expos of economic cruelty where we least expect it.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting, but has holes.......2007-10-17
I read Bait and Switch on a four-hour plane ride. It was entertaining, but I found it a tad intellectually dishonest. While Ehrenreich introduces readers to some colorful characters, she's obviously making points she set out to make. While I share her sympathies entirely, it's tough believing that she could not land a job. The deck was stacked. I would have preferred reading a real profile, not a character created to meet a need.
Flawed, But Worthwhile.......2007-10-14
Ehrenreich is a gifted journalist capable of great empathy with her subjects and blessed with a biting wit. Her description of the status anxiety of the middle class, the pain of unemployment, and the blame-the-victim ethos that so governs the treatment of the unemployed as to be internalized by them, is therefore extremely good.
The problem, however, is that she does not land the job that allows her to write the sequel to "Nickel and Dimed" that she set out to write. She looks for a job, and the story she tells about looking for a job is interesting and worthwhile. But she does not get the job, and her observations about life in the corporate world are simply educated guesses.
One example of this is Ehrenreich's observation at one workshop lunch where she finds the middle class diners to be rude and inconsiderate to the wait-staff. She tries to make the point that this kind of thing is common and even encouraged by the class-based thinking of our society. I have seen some bad behavior, and there certainly is a great lack of empathy revealed in the interaction between business people and those at the lower rungs of social status. But it is not the norm to be rude and inconsiderate. One does not score points at business lunches acting in that fashion. In fact, one of the complexities of our culture is the need to live up to the ideal of treating people from all walks of life fairly. Business people try to conform to this ideal. People generally behave themselves. But the lack of empathy has a way of revealing itself in some interactions. The point Ehrenreich should have made is the ease with which the business diners can ignore wait staff or limit their interactions with them, as opposed to out-and-out rudeness.
Still, I tend to agree with the book's core thesis. There is a certain arbitrariness to the selection of those who fall out of the middle class -- via bad luck, age, and high salary when it comes to downsizing. And there simply are not enough middle class jobs to go around. So people lose their status, and those with jobs are far more anxious about the continuation of their status than was the case 30 years ago.
Unfortunately, Ehrenreich did not get the job that would have given her the opportunity to make some of her insights in a persuasive fashion. Her lack of a job may well demonstrate that the screening system is not entirely arbitrary. Ehrenreich lacks the paper credentials for the public relations job she seeks. And, having not really worked in the corporate sector, does not have the contacts necessary to get the job. Given her lack of real interest in the job or real qualification for it, she really can't draw too many negative inferences from her failure to get a job.
Ehrenreich's descriptions of career coaches and the psycho-babble of business books are right on the mark and are very funny.
This is a good book, but not lacks the first-hand undercover experience that made "Nickel and Dimed" a classic.
The book I loved to hate!.......2007-09-22
This book exposes the real world of a dying, struggling middle class.
If you aren't aware of what can happen to hard-working people with great jobs that they love, and suddenly find themselves downsized into poverty, you are one of the lucky ones.
Yes, there are always jobs for people who really want to work, but if the only jobs you can find, as author illustrates, won't allow you to keep up with the basic expenses of living... Well, quite frankly you are up the creek without a paddle. And because of corporate downsizing and outsourcing of jobs to other countries, that boat is full of of passengers without a paddle.
The problem is that people in this situation THOUGHT that they had a paddle that should have allowed them to sail through this situation: education, experience, good resume, references and a solid work ethic.
Read Bait and Switch and decide for yourself if the middle class is dying in America.
As an economics professor.......2007-09-20
I believe in having students read something besides the textbook. This one while informative, I would have to pass on. If my college students read this, they will despair, leave college and then I would be one of those people in the book.
When are companies going to get that it takes two to tango. Supply AND demand? When we are all living on minimum wage, who is going to buy their stuff? Oh well............try this one
biased, selective, scarstic.......2007-09-14
the focus on few loser in the networking process ignores those who got the job and left networking.
the criticism of the self-help movement is inspiring but plays the victimization game that individual problem is entirely the product of the environment and the fault of somebody else.
too much inappropriate and distracted remarks.
Book Description
How can America's information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry's flexible labor management system--a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global "Body Shopping" explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.
Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as "body shopping." In this practice, a group of consultants--body shops--in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor; and upon a project's completion they either place the workers with a different client or "bench" them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement.
Underpinning this practice are unequal socioeconomic relations on multiple levels. While wealth in the New Economy is created in an increasingly abstract manner, everyday realities--stock markets in New York, benched IT workers in Sydney, dowries in Hyderabad, and women and children in Indian villages--sustain this flexibility.
Book Description
Professor Sassen has updated her conclusions for this paperback edition.
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Labor, Capital, and Finance: International Flows
Assaf Razin , and
Efraim Sadka
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 052178557X |
Book Description
This book fills a gap in the literature by combining elements from seemingly disjointed parts of economics and presenting them in a consistent analytical framework. It lays the groundwork for the integration of capital, labor, and finance into a unified treatment of globalization. The book is intended as a compact textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in special topics in international economics and public economics. It can also serve as a reference text for applied researchers and policy professionals.
Book Description
In this bound-to-be controversial book, Lant Pritchett argues that irresistible demographic forces leading to greater international labor mobility are being checked by immovable anti-immigration ideas of the citizens of rich countries. He proposes breaking the deadlock through policies that support development while also being politically acceptable in those well-off nations. These include reliance on bilateral rather than multilateral agreements; greater use of temporary worker permits; permit rationing; and protection of migrants' fundamental human rights.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of Regional Science, published by Canadian Journal of Regional Science on March 22, 1998. The length of the article is 6738 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Borrowed men on borrowed time: globalization, labour migration and local economies in Alberta.
Author: Josephine Smart
Publication:
Canadian Journal of Regional Science (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1998
Publisher: Canadian Journal of Regional Science
Volume: 20
Issue: 1-2
Page: 141-55
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Labour/Le Travail, published by Canadian Committee on Labour History on March 22, 1999. The length of the article is 1208 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Caught in the middle: contradictions in the lives of sociologists from working-class backgrounds.
Publication:
Labour/Le Travail (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1999
Publisher: Canadian Committee on Labour History
Issue: 43
Page: 280-1
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Books:
- Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds, V. 1)
- Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
- Neither Poverty Nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions (New Studies in Biblical Theology)
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
- Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869
- O.J. Is Guilty But Not of Murder
- Papers Clarence Mitchell V 1: 1942-1943 (Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr)
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