Toward a political sociology of entry policies: Conceptual problems and theoretical proposals

This article presents a critical survey of the state of the current research on immigration policies. The first part highlights the social and disciplinary changes that have recently made ‘immigration policy' a legitimate topic of social inquiry. It is argued that we are currently witnessing a fairly large wave of studies of the topic and that there is evidence of initial attempts to move from idiosyncratic case histories to theoreticallyinformed frameworks. The second part surveys the main conceptual framework currently employed to make sense of such policy fields. The article also argues that most of such frameworks end up taking for granted that it is possible to ‘extend' to immigration policy the basic toolkit employed in relation to other better-known policy domains. Moreover, the study of immigration policies has not yet paid adequate attention to the underlying policy-making, frequently ending up taking at face value the accounts of the actors involved. The third part highlights selected features of immigration policy that are distinctive of such a field. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. Immigration controls will fail. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasise that, when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, controls worked smoothly and children respected their elders' (Anonymous, adaptation from the ‘sunscreen column')