The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate Over Immigration.

• Author: Pineda, Richard

The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate Over Immigration. By Robin Dale Jacobson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008; pp. xxvii + 190. $19.95 paper.

In the middle of his new book, Robin Dale Jacobson explains that much of the contemporary debate over immigration revolves around perceptions of the impact of immigrants on American culture. The culture aspect implicates a value set tied to cultural citizenship, but as the author's research material and interviews play out, many of his subjects see culture, and in particular American culture, as a racially defined space. In a number of ways this powerful observation gets to the heart of his argument in the book; proponents of policies such as California's Proposition 187 often will argue from what they believe to be a race neutral stance and yet the language and assumptions of much of their advocacy is in fact racially centered. Proposition 187, aimed at limiting social services to undocumented immigrants, was passed by California voters and ultimately rejected by the state's court system in the mid-1990s. Jacobson's decision to focus on Proposition 187 as a foundation from which to test his argument about the intertwining of color-blind conservatism and racial realism both reminds readers that the debate about Proposition 187 was contentious both socially and politically and that the debate post the legal challenge has informed a great deal of the current debate about immigration reform. Jacobson masterfully advances his theoretical contribution with Proposition 187 as the centerpiece, but the framework sheds light on the current debate and is likely to be a regarded as an important piece of scholarship in the fields of political communication and political argumentation as well as in political science.

The manuscript lays out a brief history of Proposition 187 from its introduction through its passage in the California election and ultimately to its demise through legal challenges after the election. One of the book's strongest contributions is its focus on the language and arguments of supporters of Proposition 187; this focus gets to the individuals involved in the process and avoids painting them in broad, generalized strokes. In each of the chapters Jacobson identifies contentious issues and then uses his framework to uncover the reasoning, both race neutral and racialized, offered by supporters of the legislation. His research was driven by conducting multifaceted...