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Ron Hayduk, "Untangling the Political Roots of Immigration and Inequality in the United States" (Routledge, 2026)
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Ron Hejduk
Welcome welcome to the New Books.
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Stephen Pimpair
Network welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Stephen Pimpair, your host and we are joined today by Ron Hejduk, who is the author of Untangling the Political Roots of Immigration and Inequality in the United States. Newault from Rutledge. Ron, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.
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Ron Hejduk
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Steven.
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Stephen Pimpair
So I wonder if you might kick us off by telling folks a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what brought you to this book.
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Ron Hejduk
Sure. I teach political science at San Francisco State University. American politics is my focus and my research centers on immigration, inequality and political participation. Before coming to San Francisco State in 2016, I taught at CUNY Queens College and the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and I went to the CUNY Graduate center where I got my PhD and I previously worked in New York City government and as a social worker in shelter care, foster care and mental health settings. And these earlier work experiences sparked my long term curiosity about why there's so much inequality in the richest country in the world where so many people struggle to survive while others do well and thrive, and why such disparities hew along distinct class, race, gender and regional lines. And this curiosity and sense of injustice led me back to graduate school to try to seek answers to these questions, where I had the great pleasure of studying with some wonderful scholars who helped me learn about the historical and political developments that shaped such patterns, as well as the social movements historically and today that work to create greater equity and justice.
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Stephen Pimpair
So you argue that immigration and inequality are two sides of the same coin. Talk to us a little bit about what you mean by that.
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Ron Hejduk
Yeah, sure. So the book broadly seeks to shed light on the causes, consequences, and especially the political responses to mass migration and growing inequality we see, you know, on display everywhere, especially here in our region, and to do so from a broadly left perspective, which I think can help shed valuable light. So the book in the book I argue that, you know, mass migration and intensifying inequality are essentially two sides of the same coin, that they result in large part from rapacious forms of capitalist accumulation and imperialist interventionism. And to do So, I examined two 55 year periods in the United States from 1870 to the 1920s and from 1970 to date, when the proportion of immigrants peaked at almost 15% of the total population, when the US experienced steep inequality and political polarization, when immigration and inequality became contentious issues that generated sharp political conflict, and when immigrants and workers organized mass movements that advanced radical politics and transformative change. So, you know, today we see immigrant workers struggle to make ends meet, and they watch their standard of living decline, sometimes wrongly blaming immigrants for their declining well being. We see employers who are faced with an insufficient pool of workers with skills they need seek to expand visas to recruit foreign workers. We see labor unions who want to want workers to be brought out of the shadows so migrants can avoid exploitation by businesses and enjoy the same protections as other workers. And we see ICE agents and border patrol agents chase immigrant and construction workers, busboys and nannies, keeping terrorized families separated from loved ones. You see nativists blame migrants for a range of social ills and call for closed borders and deportation. And we see immigrant rights advocates seek the decriminalization of migrants and create pathways for citizenship and belonging. And these patterns are, you know, not particular to the United States. We watch regimes nearly everywhere struggled, but largely failed to achieve their stated goals, to manage migration, to achieve shared economic prosperity, and to maintain political stability at home and abroad. Largely, I argue as following others because they downplay the key role that capital accumulation processes and imperialism play in driving migration and inequality, leading them to treat symptoms rather than forge more effective solutions. For example, many analysts and policymakers contend migration results from poverty and violence. And while few would deny that poverty and violence and the search for a better life contribute to migration, the larger question is what produces poverty and violence and less than desirable conditions in places where migrants leave to begin with? And how does this, how does these, these varying focuses affect our politics? So the book seeks to elevate the work of left oriented scholars and organizers who really advance different sorts of analyses and political responses.
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Stephen Pimpair
So why don't I ask you to apply that radical perspective and means of analysis to the first period that you examine, the first Gilded Age. What should we be paying attention to in that period? What is important? What kind of resistance was there? And then we can work our way toward talking about the contemporary period.
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Ron Hejduk
Sure. Thanks. I think that period is so fascinating and history is such a great teacher. So. Okay, well, all right. So, broadly speaking, just to begin kicking this off, you know, Marxists illuminate the ways that capital accumulation processes create wage laborers out of subsistence farmers, produce surplus population, so to speak, a reserve army of labor that can be more easily exploited, and denigrate labor and enrich elites and spur migration and inequality on a global scale. Scholars in the black radical tradition highlight the ongoing role and the legacy of colonialism and slavery that continue to play in the subordination of indigenous peoples, African Americans and other and racialized others. In air quotes, processes that shape disparate outcomes today, including the brutal systems of detention and deportation we see on display today under the Trump administration. Feminists underscore the central role of women in maintaining and reproducing social life by performing unpaid care work and the enduring exploitation in labor markets. Environmentalists point to the unfolding climate catastrophe in the contemporary period, all of which, and of course, others, cast light on US foreign policy, from economic sanctions to military inventionism that destabilize regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere, generating what Juan Gonzalez has aptly called the harvest of empire. And so, although migration may not be the first word that come to mind when people think about Karl Marx, Marx did theorize about the relationship between capital accumulation and migration. And if you think about these processes that Marx illuminates, Let me do that for a bit, that can shed light on the 19th century and today. In fact, one can argue, I try to argue in the book, and others do this as well, described the history of capitalism as the history of people, commodities and value on the move. You know, a cornerstone of Marxist theory is the notion of forced migration, which involves two processes and realities. The expropriation of land and the displacement of people who become surplus population and wage workers. And second, the exploitation of these, of this surplus population of wage workers in the service of capital, which together comprise the engine of capitalism, and, of course, for Marx, the potential engine of socialism. So if you think of the United States, you know, the, the, the conquest of the territory that became the United States from the original colonies, you know, you could think of it as a process of primitive accumulation, the displacement and genocide of Native Americans, the role of slavery to generate capital, the seed money, so to speak, for capitalist development during the emerging world markets, the dispossession of peasants from the commons that Marx talked about in Europe, you know, or some similar dynamics that we can see here on display in the 19th century, including, as Marx does, focus on, you know, how European lords and states established colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas, right in the United States and its relationship, especially to the Caribbean and Latin America. So, you know, Marx describes. Marx talks about these processes as producing surplus population who are forced to relocate to survive, and the use of this population by capital to maximize its profits. So, you know, Marx famously talked about the. The Irish as the archetype of immigrant labor in industrial capitalism, describing Irish immigration as forced migration caused by landed property and capitalist enterprise during England's colonial rule and the emergence of the world market. Then characterizing Irish migrants as a reserve army of labor and crucial for my study, Marx observed how the Irish encountered not only exploitation, but also discrimination upon arrival in England by reducing the wages of both English and Irish workers and perhaps more importantly, inciting antagonisms between English and Irish workers that undercut solidarity among both working classes, thereby increasing ruling class power in both places. And we can see these sorts of dynamics amply in the United States during the earlier period, the late 19th century and early 20th century in particular, when nativism really reached a fervorous pitch that led to the closing of the doors to immigrants in the United States as well as, of course, on display today. And contemporary migrants will point out similar dynamics today between Turkey and Germany and Africa and Italy and so on, that these sorts of dynamics that can undermine greater international sideality that have been weaponized by the rise of the right in ways that can incite these antagonisms. But getting back to the case of the United States, you know, the United States sort of amply exemplifies the dynamics in these distinctive forms of settler colonialism, slavery, and the emerging and emerging forms of capitalism that combine to drive wedges between segments of the growing working class, which, you know, were comprised largely of immigrants from Europe mostly, but also China and, you know, Mexico, which was essentially annexed to become parts of the United States, which produced segmented labor markets along racial and ethnic lines where, you know, white Anglo Saxon Protestants largely dominated skilled crafts that were emerging and sat over and above newer immigrants, you know, Irish, initially Germans, and then southern and Italian, southern and eastern Europeans, my ancestors, who worked in assembly line jobs and in turn sat over and above, of course, African Americans, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans who work the worst jobs. In other words, these evolving forms of US Capitalism dovetailed with racializing social structures in ways to generate social differentiation within the working class that undermine greater solidarity, just as Marx theorized, but not entirely. In the 19th century, like today, there are processes involved in capital Accumulation that in rate working class folks and can generate opportunities for greater solidarity. So Marx described how mechanization brought increasingly immiserated workers and migrants, in the case of the United States, immigrants and native born workers into greater contact. Right? So as the factory system grew, as production became less located in, you know, people's homes or in small scale production into large scale production, it brought these sorts of workers into greater contact, into political alignment. And like today, their shared conditions and grievances facilitated some forms of class consciousness and certainly strike upsurges and radical movements during the late 19th century and early 20th century, including labor movements, populist movements and socialist movements, all of which threw up third political parties and called for far reaching change in some cases, including the nationalization of industry, creation of public banks, worker cooperatives and other ways to decommodify and democratize economic and social and political life. And of course, there's also lots to say about how these processes and political responses and class conflict of sorts affected the, how we think of the nature of state formation and imperialism as well. And so, you know, in the 19th century and early 20th century, you know, think of immigration policy in the United States. You know, the 19th century immigration policy was largely characterized, you could characterize it as essentially having an open border policy. The United States was in great need of workers as the United States expanded territorially. However, you know, in periods of economic crisis and contraction, when nativism surged, like in the 1840s and 1850s, when the know Nothing Party, you know, really advanced, policymakers sought to, but failed to increasingly impose sharper restrictions, but did impose repression, deported. And then in the 19th century, late 19th century and early 20th century, those restrictions were successfully enacted initially with the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the deportation of immigrants at, the crushing of militant worker movements, and the thwarting of more progressive possibilities and outcomes. So yeah, I mean, there's so much more to say about this rich period. But to the extent that a broadly left approach can help glean lessons from this time, it has implications for what policy might look like that could produce greater solutions to these so called problems of migration and inequality.
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Stephen Pimpair
And I want to turn to solutions before we finish. But first, so bring us up to the contemporary period. What's similar, what's different? What kinds of lessons should we learn from this most recent and ongoing history?
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Ron Hejduk
Well, like the historical period, in the contemporary period, many immigration policies reflect the political organizing and agitation by various groups in society, aside from political factions in parties and in government. So some immigration policies reflect the successful promotion by businesses that are seeking Workers to enhance profits, such as creating visas for, you know, STEM jobs, science, technology, engineering, math, as well as for visas for low skilled agribusinesses, construction and domestic work. You know, so this bifurcated, you know, working class that is infused with immigrants at every level, but at the same time often limits access to citizenship that can lead to their criminalization and exploitation, which can drive down wages, lead to scapegoating and nationalism, and divide workers across various sectors, rather than, of course, targeting capital as the cause of their plight in some ways. So in many ways, Marxists point to the inverse relationship between profit and wages that sets capitalism and capitalists and politicians in motion to sort of manage migration and labor in the interests of capitalism. And here the role of imperialism is important to stress where, you know, the United States has, you know, from notions of manifest destiny and you know, the Monroe Doctrine, which is, you know, gain new life again with the Donro version here in the 21st century. You know, the case of the US in its sort of extractive relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean is, is one that has been overlooked often. And the book following other scholars seeks to shed light on, you know, back in the 19th century and early 20th century, not only did US businesses have more invested in Latin America, you know, by the 1920s than they did in Europe, you know, this gave the United States incentives to, you know, quote, unquote, guard its backyard, you know, and extend the Monroe doctrine into the 20th century, which the United States regularly did via, you know, brutal interventions in Latin America that largely were aimed to thwart progressive movements in the region or independence movements. The United States played a key role in establishing a global financial architecture after World War II, including the World bank, the IMF, GATT, NATO, WTO, which along with the turn to neoliberalism in the 1980s, really did foster form of imperialism, the extraction of resources, the exploitation of labor that continued to fuel not only inequality between and within regions, but also migration from these regions. And so these developments are directly related to patterns of migration. Most immigrants in the United States today hail from Latin American countries, Central American countries, Caribbean countries that have been subject to U.S. economic and military interventionism. You know, they sort of act as a reserve army of labor, much as Marx described. At the same time, of course, however, you know, these developments have like has happened in the United States in the earlier period, generated political responses along left lines for progressive outcomes. So, you know, US imperialism and neoliberalism fostered instability and precarity both in developing, so called developing areas, the Global South Latin America, but also here in the United States. Right, which in turn generated radical movements in transnational organizing. Think of the 1994 Zapatista uprising against neoliberalism, the 1999 anti WTO protests, the pink tide movements in Latin America and Central America, and radical movements in the United states from the 1980s sanctuary movements to the massive 2006 immigrant rights marches, to the resurgence of labor organizing and immigrant rights activism today. So again, the dynamics and the politics that we can see on display. Following others, I argue that left oriented scholars and activists can shed some valuable light to understand these dynamics we see on display today, as well as of course, advancing more effective solutions.
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Stephen Pimpair
Right, and let's talk precisely about that. And I am going to ask you a question that you ask toward the end of the book and you write, can we create a world where instead of being forced to flee from one's home because of violence, poverty and environmental degradation, everyone can flourish in place or move where they want and thrive? Can we?
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Ron Hejduk
It's a great question. I wish I had a crystal ball that worked. You know, the future is beautifully open and contingent. Having said that, you know, history is a great teacher in ways that might shed light on where and certainly the analysis of the forces in motion, the current conjuncture, might indicate what those possibilities are. So I try to outline some short term, medium term and long term strategies or possibilities that might shed light on that very important and pressing question. So, okay, I guess just broadly speaking, left oriented scholars, Marxists in particular, might contend that, you know, migration and inequality poses real formidable challenges, but it also creates new opportunities for radical transformation. So on the one hand, you know, migration can reinforce, and immigration has been a wedge, you know, kind of an Achilles heel for, you know, more effective progressive movements historically and today, you know, because it can reinforce racial and class divisions, ideological divisions can be weaponized by the right and nativists, which has really been an Achilles heel undermining greater working class power. And you know, it fuels political movements on the right, not just here in the United States, but globally. We're living in this period where, you know, in 19, in 2024, some large number of countries had elections, something like 70 countries had elections that year. And no surprise, incumbents in most of those places lost. You know, people are, are, are feeling like their institutions are not producing the solutions to their problems in, in all, all kinds of ways. And migration and inequality are at the center of this dissatisfaction. The two top issues in the 24 election here in the United States, and they still remain high are the economy and immigration. And that's true in many other places. So on the one hand, there are these formidable obstacles that continue to exist. On the other hand, you know, immigrants are transforming without erasing, you know, racial hierarchies that characterize social structures and workplaces. And they are opening up new avenues to organize along race, class and gender lines. You know, the brutal attack on immigrants and working people today are occurring at the same time that we see a broad range of social movements that, that show signs of maybe, I don't know, a nascent convergence at the ideological and organizational levels. You know, in Minneapolis and many other places, labor unions, community groups, small businesses, faith based groups, and young people who are much more ethnically and racially diverse, more progressive, you know, they find themselves on the streets or in groups or organizing together in ways that, you know, hold the potential certainly for a greater convergence, right? If, if that convergence expands and deepens, if there's sort of kind of intern intersectionalism, you know, these radical movements, movements of movements we might say, you know, could coalesce along the lines of a more class based, anti racist feminist alliance capable of wielding significant power, you know, that, that's a possible, those possibilities exist. And we hear, you know, according to public opinion polls, you know, there's, there's greater dissatisfaction with the two parties, there's a larger growing of so called independent registrants. And, you know, it opens the possibility certainly for the left, broadly speaking, these movements. Who knows how this is going to all pan out. But certainly mass migration and inequality present the left with new opportunities not only to help explain the current conjuncture, but perhaps to challenge its configuration and change its trajectory.
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Stephen Pimpair
You're listening to the New Books Network and we've been speaking with Ron Hejduk, the author of Untangling the Political Roots of Immigration and Inequality in the United States from Rutledge. Ron, thanks so much for joining us today. Much appreciated.
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Ron Hejduk
Thank you for having me. Take good care. Of.