Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the US

This is a shameless self-promotion of a just-released book written by my son, Greg Weeks, and I called "Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the United States and Its Effect on the South," published by the University of New Mexico Press. The book informs the discussion of the migration transition in the Population text and, as you might suspect, the Population text significantly informs our new book. However, the book also updates and advances the concept of political demography--the intersection of demographic change and policy choices that countries make. 

The central argument of this book is that only through an analytic combination of politics and demography can the dynamics of migration (and the reactions to it) be fully grasped.  This political demographic approach will demonstrate that irresistible forces are at work changing the face, quite literally, of the South--changes that are broader than often realized.  People in Latin America are not just moving to the traditional “gateways” in the United States (e.g. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida); they are also arriving in new areas of the country.  Furthermore, these new migrants are not only from Mexico, but are from all over Latin America. 

Our approach is a macro-level one, in that we are trying to understand the patterns of migration in the context of the interaction between demographic changes and political changes taking place simultaneously in countries of origin (focusing on Latin American origins), and the country of destination (focusing on the United States).