Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, with David Bacon

“David Bacon is the conscience of American journalism; an extraordinary social documentarist in the rugged humanist tradition of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams, and Ernesto Galarza.”
—Mike Davis, author of No One Is Illegal

Jamaica Plain has a rich history as a “landing pad” for new immigrants to the Boston area, and carries that identity with great pride. However, with recent worry about national policy and a lingering fear of ICE raids, members of our community are being impacted by larger-than-life forces.

Many of us may wonder how immigration policy, criminalization and globalization impact our personal lives, and the experience of others living within the Jamaica Plain community.

Veteran photojournalist David Bacon visits the Jamaica Plain Forum to discuss the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. His book, “Illegal People” explores

• The human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate.
• U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States
• Why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.

Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States’ trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system.

Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants—and the migrants themselves—as illegal. He also analyzes NAFTA’s corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers.

Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.

Many thanks to the Cosponsors of this event