Current Visiting Fellows and Guest Scholars
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Peter B. Brownell
Visiting Research Fellow
Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies
In residence September 2006 - June 2007
phone: (858) 534-6430 fax: (858) 534-6447
e-mail: peterb@berkeley.edu
web page: http://www.peterbrownell.net |
Expertise
Immigration Policy, Law and Enforcement; International Migration; Stratification/Inequality; Labor Movements; Demography; and Quantitative Methods.
Regions of Interest
United States, Mexico, Western Europe.
Current Project
Brownell is currently completing a dissertation arguing that the importance of immigration status stems from policy choices about which rights and remedies are available to people without valid immigration documents. He examines the role of the 1965 Immigration Act and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) in creating and reproducing the “illegal alien problem.” The dissertation includes a detailed examination of IRCA’s employer sanctions provisions and their transformation from a policy directed against unscrupulous employers who hire unauthorized immigrants into practices and legal decisions which strip unauthorized workers of remedies for discriminatory or retaliatory firing. Brownell argues that employer sanctions have become another of many policies which strip immigrants’ rights and create perverse incentives for unscrupulous employers to hire unauthorized immigrants.
Perspective
Brownell has expertise to discuss border enforcement and barriers, and well as issues of workplace immigration enforcement and proposals for employment authorization verification systems.
Publications
In 2001, Brownell published research from his bachelor’s thesis on US-Mexico border enforcement in a special issue of Social Justice (volume 28, number 2) focused on the militarization of the US-Mexico border. The article is entitled "Mexican Migration and the Reproduction of Mexican Migrant Labor." In 2005, he published an article on workplace enforcement entitled, "The Declining Enforcement of Employer Sanctions" in the Migration Information Source, published by the Migration Policy Institute. Another article relating to employer sanctions and Mexican immigrants’ wages is currently under review.
Academic Background
Peter Brownell earned a B.A. with High Honors in Interdisciplinary Studies (with a concentration on Immigration) at the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. He completed a M.A. in Demography in 2002 and expects to receive his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2007, both from the University of California, Berkeley.
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