SMU's Tower Center Links Washington with the “Heartland” and the World

The Tower Center for Political Studies at SMU maintains an office in the Centennial Center allowing us to link research activities of Tower Center faculty, fellows, and associates in Dallas (the heartland) with scholars, institutes, and think tanks in Wash ington and around the world. The Tower Center supports research and teaching in three areas: (1) international and comparative political economy, including trade, migration, and finance; (2) foreign policy, national security, and defense; and (3) American political development with an emphasis on policy, institutions, and process. Seyom Brown, Tower Chair in National Security and Director of Studies in the Tower Center, runs the national security program. Brown is conducting research for his two current book projects-an updated edition of The Faces of Power (Columbia University Press) and a new book entitled The Higher Realism (Paradigm Publishers), which advocates a shift in foreign policy after the 2008 election. Dennis Ippolito, McElvaney Professor of Political Science at SMU, leads the Tower Center program on American politics. His recent publications include Why Budgets Matter (Penn State) and he is working on a book entitled Welfare Shift, examining the past growth and projected future of federal social welfare programs and the federal budget. My recent work focuses on migration and world politics, draw ing attention to what I call the "emerging migration state" (Hol lifield 2007). To understand the impact of intemational migration on world politics we must know how sending and receiving states shape and control migration for strategic gains. Since 1945 immi gration in the advanced industrial democracies has been increasing (Comelius et al. 2004). The rise in immigration is a function of market forces and kinship networks, which reduce the transactions costs of moving. These economic and sociological forces are the necessary conditions for migration to occur; but the sufficient con ditions are legal and political, and it is critical to put "the state" at the center of the study of intemational migration (Hollifield 2008). The OECD states, with highly developed industrial and service based economies, reap enormous economic gains from migra tion-new sources of human capital and manpower, more flexible labor markets, lower levels of inflation in periods of high growth. But to get the benefits of migration, these states must be willing to accept certain costs-principally short-term social and political instability and the fiscal burden of concentrated immigrant popula tions (Borjas 1999). Liberal states also must wrestle with the issue of rights (legal status) for migrants (Hollifield et al. 2008). Migration has important costs and benefits for less developed countries. International trade is a well-established determinant for income and growth. In addition to the classic gains from trade for all partners, international economic relations often provide access to technological know-how and thus give less developed coun tries (LDCs) a chance to reduce the development gap at a faster pace. The impact of international migration on the welfare of both source and recipient countries is a more recent phenomenon, and few studies have been done that look at how sending states use migration for strategic gains (see, however, Hatton and Williamson 2005; Sadiq 2005). Recipient countries benefit, inter alia, from the availability of the immigrant workers, both skilled and unskilled.