The Immigrant War: A Global Movement against Discrimination and Exploitation

From Asian workers abused in the oil-rich Gulf states and Latinos trafficked at the US-Mexico border to African sans papiers exploited in France and sub-Saharan farmhands attacked by organized crime groups in Italy, immigrant communities have faced acute discrimination, exploitation, and violence. The Immigrant War provides a global and accessible look at the emerging social conflict immigration has evoked. To do so, Vittorio Longhi navigates the conflicting assumptions about many immigrant communities—how they are simultaneously vital social actors fighting for their human rights and passive victims beleaguered by unrelenting antagonism—and exposes the alarmingly absent responses of many governments, which allow these huge populations to falter in a policy vacuum. Sketching this moment in global history as an immigrant war for human rights, citizenship, and equality, Longhi offers a vital rethinking of the immigration policy that needs to be drafted in order to break the chain of exploitation and provide immigrants a viable role in contemporary society. Reviews Matt Carr, author of Fortress Europe “Longhi expertly combines scholarly analysis with sharp reporting, drawing on his detailed knowledge of the global labour movement and trade unionist activism. The material is admirably well-organized and well-assembled. I know of no other book like this.” Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights “An extraordinary account in its up-front questioning of how our states and societies construct the immigrant and erase the memory of our own migrant origins. This book shows us how laws have become blunt instruments for bland evasions of our obligations.” Hilary Wainwright, coeditor of Red Pepper “Here is a book which truly takes forward the struggle for social justice. Vittorio Longhi’s comprehensive and vivid study reveals a growing international movement that gets negligible coverage in the mainstream press but yet which requires a radical rethink of dominant approaches to immigration, development, and democracy. The Immigrant War introduces us to a new generation of migrants who will shape the world in the aftermath of neoliberalism.” Migrants’ Rights Network blog “Longhi’s book is a good introduction to the subject of global migration. Anyone looking for a steer on other interesting places to go to follow up on his arguments will find plenty in the 130-odd pages of this book. The implicit challenge in his final sentences, that the predicament of the migrant in the modern world allows us the opportunity to reorientate the notion of citizenship away from its association with geographical territory towards the networks of work and the associated rights of workers, is likely to lead in controversial but potentially very stimulating directions.”