Migrations and Cultures: A World View.

By Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books Inc. 1996. xii plus 516pp.).

Thomas Sowell's publicity claims that he has taken a "sweeping historical and global look" at international migrations in order to place the current American debate on immigration policy in proper perspective. Author of Race and Culture: A World View, and The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Sowell opens with a general chapter which discusses differences among migrants and changing patterns of movement. He promises to investigate the history of six immigrant groups in order to provide insights into "the role of culture in the economic and social fates of peoples. . . ." (p. 49) and, more generally, to "assess what impact their migrations have had on the history of the world." (p. 38) Although culture is central to the book, Sowell does not discuss definitions, but rather cuts to six histories of migration that provide the core of his material, illustrating a variety of migrant cultures.

In the first three historical portraits (titled Germans, Japanese, and Italians around the world) Sowell describes global historical movements with broad strokes. The opening chapter on Germans emphasizes their superiority over many of the peoples with whom they settled, in Russia as well as in the Western Hemisphere and Australia; it celebrates German capacity for innovation. Sowell observes that few people have made so significant social and economic contributions world wide as have German peoples. In his history of Japanese migration to the Western Hemisphere, Sowell takes some pains to put forth the rather simplistic notion that the cruelty of Japanese in the Pacific contrasts with their behavior in the U.S. because the cruelty was caused by the nationalist fanaticism to which Japanese were exposed in the 1912-1924 period - and that immigrants to the U.S. were from a cohort that was not exposed to these politics. The year 1941 was a dark one for both Germans and Japanese, notes Sowell, for the punitive injustices visited upon them in the U.S. and in the U.S.S.R. Nonetheless, the Japanese capacity for discipline and hard work has paid off in astonishing postwar mobility in the U.S. Sowell infers from this that a people's behavior and performance are more important to overcoming prejudices than "moral crusades or emotional denunciations;" this theme is enlarged as the book continues. The poor and illiterate Italians are heros as well - especially those who suffer in the regional contrast between the rather advanced North and the South of the country. In Europe, the Western Hemisphere (including Argentina and the U.S.), and Australia, Italian immigrants demonstrate diligence, sobriety, and hard work in combination with a lack of initiative or interest in education. They manifest an ennobling "quiet dignity and self-sacrifice" which is also a "rebuke to those who whine over less formidable problems." (p. 173)

The virtues of enduring hardship and persecution without complaint are a primary inference drawn by the author from his history of the overseas Chinese. This is the first of three chapters on "middleman minority" immigrant groups which are in the main tales of cruelty and persecution. The history of the overseas Chinese opens with the hard work of this people in South East Asia - Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Indochina. The history of Chinese in the Western Hemisphere is also one of persecution, especially the brutal coolie trade and pernicious living conditions and work in Peruvian guano caves and on Cuban sugar plantations. After the period of exclusion from the U.S. (1892-1943) began a period of upward mobility in the U.S. At first, Chinese immigrants were worse off than other immigrants, indicates Sowell, then rose faster to current prosperity; one must observe that Chinese fared the worst in Indonesia, where their engagement in politics suggests that political action does not pay and recent politics bode ill for their future. "Jews of the Diaspora" takes history from ancient times and the middle ages, tracing, as with the Chinese, the dual thread of immigrants' hard work and others' resentment of their success. As with the chapter on overseas Indians, Sowell articulates and explicates differences among groups - East European and German Jews in one case, Gujaratis, Chettyars, and Tamils in the other. The complex history of Indians in Africa, South America, and North America allows the author few generalizations about this group which at some destinations is a "middleman minority," in others not.

The body of Migrations and Cultures makes a strong historical argument for the value of international migration to the receiving country, cataloging as it does the contributions of immigrant workers, entrepreneurs, and middlemen to economic growth - contributions made at considerable sacrifice of freedom, health, family unity, and even life. The courageous, beleaguered, or unfortunate immigrant - traveling by his own will or not - is the hero of this book. Or so one might think going into the concluding chapter titled "History and Cultures." Yet the book's conclusion makes claims for the importance of history as "an anchor in reality against the rhetorical winds of the zeitgeist" while at the same time making a very strong anti-immigrant argument (p. 371). History shows that skills are not evenly distributed, but vary by culture, writes Sowell; and here culture is defined as "particular ways of accomplishing the things that make life possible," not merely high culture, but the "vast spectrum of skills, values, traditions, and unarticulated habits of thought and action. . . ." (p. 379) He contends that the history of immigration shows a dichotomy between the "doers" and the "do-nots," and that immigration allows entry not only to people of varied talent, but also to disease, strife, and today, resentment on the part of those already in the U.S. Even many of today's refugees lack the human capital of historical refugees like Jews and Huguenots. In the end, argues Sowell, today is not like the past; international migrations are a "less and less effective way of transferring human capital . . ." (p. 390) What is needed at present, rather, is the temporary training and return home of "sojourners bearing knowledge, skills, and attitudes acquired during their stays in more advanced societies." (p. 390) The contributions of immigrants are an important part of the past, yet, the author concludes, they serve to bring into "sharper focus the importance of creating wealth, especially important when so many are preoccupied with its distribution" (p. 391, Sowell's emphasis). Sowell's sweeping historical and global study, then, ends at odds with the lessons of history and out of touch with today's world, in which an estimated 80 million people reside outside their home borders - a number predicted only to increase during the coming decade.

Michigan State University