Comparative Immigration Regimes in Europe and the World – A Lecture by Justin Gest

Europe is at the center of countervailing trends in the governance of global migration. On the one hand, many European countries are among the fastest aging societies in the world, highly dependent on immigration, and reliant on supranational arrangements to circulate and shift labor supply around the free mobility zone. On the other hand, Europe is also the epicenter of xenophobic Far Right populism which has compelled many countries to limit the entry of third country nationals, externalize their borders, and process asylum seekers offshore. How do these trends define the nature of immigration governance across European states? And how is this governance contextualized in the broader, global landscape of immigration regimes? In this talk, Justin Gest will present a unique analysis of immigration governance across 14 European states, and 30 countries worldwide. Relying on a database of immigration demographics in the world’s most important destinations, they present a novel taxonomy and an analysis of what drives different approaches to immigration policy over space and time. In an era defined by inequality, populism, and fears of international terrorism, they find that governments are converging toward a “Market Model” that seeks immigrants for short- term labor with fewer outlets to citizenship— an approach that resembles the increasingly contingent nature of labor markets worldwide.

Justin Gest is an Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He studies immigration and the politics of demographic change. He is the author of four books: Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West (Oxford University Press/Hurst 2010); The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (Oxford University Press 2016); The White Working Class: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2018); and Crossroads: Comparative Immigration Regimes in a World of Demographic Change (Cambridge University Press 2018). He has authored peer-reviewed articles in journals including Comparative Political Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and the International Migration Review. He has also provided reporting or commentary for BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, NPR, The New York Times, Politico, Reuters, Vox, and The Washington Post. Professor Gest received the 2014 Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize, Harvard’s highest award for faculty teaching. In 2013, he received the Star Family Prize for Student Advising, Harvard’s highest award for student advising. In 2007, he co-founded the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics.