We Wanted Workers Introduction Reflection
Throughout the introduction of We Wanted Workers, Borjas brings up many interesting points. One that stood out was his discussion of points made by Paul Collier, a professor at Oxford University. Collier asserts: “A rabid collection of xenophobes and racists who are hostile to immigrants lose no opportunity to argue that migration is bad for indigenous populations. Understandably, this has triggered a reaction: desperate not to give succor to these groups, social scientists have strained every muscle to show that migration is good for everyone” (21). Borjas proceeds to assert that this is a damaging statement to social science research, but he has suspected for a long time that much research was ideologically motivated, and “censored or filtered to spin the evidence in a way that would exaggerate the benefits from immigration and downplay the costs” (21). This is a question I have found myself asking before as I try to be very skeptical when reading assertions that are not backed by clear cut data. Borjas further asserts that We Wanted Workers “will provide various examples in which arbitrary conceptual assumptions, questionable data manipulations, and a tendency to overlook inconvenient facts help build the not-so-subtle narrative that Collier detected” (23). I think all of social science and all research in general should seek to pursue research in the way that Borjas does, by looking at the facts, instead of building research off of ideological obligations.
5 replies on “Borjas Introduction Reflection”
Biased statements and research is detrimental to understanding certain situations and topics especially immigration. It is unfortunate that some social scientists lean towards ideological obligations. So, I totally agree with what you are saying. I wonder if something could be done to prevent this issue because it is pretty much fake news.
I find that this statement does a great job of recognizing how there are many pros and cons to immigration. It is more necessary to discuss and debate whether the pros or cons outweigh the other and not pretend that there are only pros or that there are only cons.
I think that this statement does a good job portraying Borjas’ point about how some social scientists base their work off idealogical obligations. I think that in any research it is important to base your work of of proven facts because often people’s conceptions about certain topics can be biased or flat out incorrect. I think a main part of this problem is something that we talked about in class. Often times social scientists conform to preconceived notions to make their work more desirable for publishers and other scholars. They should talk about what they actually believe instead of trying to fit in.
This statement was very well put and shows good evidence of the issues of biases in social science research. I feel that it is very necessary for social scientists to use clear cut evidence when doing research or writing books and articles. Everyone should have the right to their own opinion, but in scholarly writings the facts should shine through more than ones personal opinion.
I would most certainly agree with you in the statement that all research should attempt to be unbiased. However, I would say more often than not for research to occur in the first place there needs to be a biased opinion that individuals want to back up with evidence. Maybe instead of there being fewer biases there just needs to be a more diverse selection of them used responsibly. This might be encouraged by individuality and could lead to a whole bunch of new ideas that were not previously considered.