Doug Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, delivered the 2012 Sheffrin Lecture, "The Paradoxical Origins of America's War on Immigrants."

 

Massey’s research points to paradoxical origins of what he terms the United States’ “war on immigration.” While immigration reforms initiated in the 1960s are widely thought to have opened the door to mass immigration from Asia and Latin American by eliminating past discriminatory policies, Latin Americans faced more restrictions, not fewer, according to Massey. The boom in Latin American migration, he asserts, occurred in spite of changes in U.S. immigration laws. 

Massey is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His books include American Apartheid (1993), which won the Distinguished Publication Award of the American Sociological Association, as well Brokered Boundaries: Constructing Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times (2010). 

The Sheffrin Lectures in Public Policy are possible thanks to a gift from economics professor emeritus Steven M. Sheffrin, and his wife, Anjali. Co-sponsors are the Division of Social Sciences, the Department of Political Science, the Institute for Governmental Affairs, and the Herbert A. Young Society.