A symposium on a new book by Roger Waldinger and two former students is featured in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

UCLA International Institute, October 15, 2019 — A recent book by UCLA’s Roger Waldinger, distinguished professor of sociology and director of the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration (CSIM), continues to generate intellectual debate in the migration studies field.

“Origins and Destinations: The Making of the Second Generation” (Russell Sage, 2018), co-authored by Waldinger, Renee Reichl Luthra (University of Essex, UK) and Thomas Sohel (McGill University, Canada), examines differences among U.S. immigrants within an international framework. The work was the subject of an “Author Meets Critics” symposium at CSIM last spring.

In August 2019, Ethnic and Racial Studies (vol. 42, no. 13) published a written symposium on the book in which four migration scholars weigh in on its arguments. Jennifer van Hook of Pennsylvania State University explores the authors’ methodology and how it might be used in future research. Sin Yi Cheung of Cardiff University (UK) looks at how the authors’ findings challenge assimilation theories, while Filiz Garip of Cornell University highlights the way in which the book clarifies existing debates and identifies key empirical patterns. Finally, Claudia Diehl of the Unviersity of Konstanz (Germany) considers the challenges of the methodology, which replaces group labels with variables at the group level.

The authors’ symposium response begins with an argument for an international perspective in migration scholarship: “We advocate for and adopt a perspective that takes into accounts the ways in which the inherently international nature of population movements across state borders yields effects well after migration has occurred. International migrations encompass sending and host societies, as well as cross-border practices in which immigrants engage and the strategies that states use to control mobility.”

Published a year ago, the book has sparked a discussion that appears to have only started.