Irregular Migration and the City

Abstract

Irregular migrants tend to live in cities. Cities offer to irregular migrants anonymity, opportunities to find a job and other ways to make a living, different forms of accommodation, and access to potentially existing relational, ethnic, social, or cultural networks. Irregular migration can therefore also be understood as an urban phenomenon. The urban aspects of irregular migration are the focus of this bibliography. We discuss the precarious life situations of irregular migrants, as well as the complex urban governance of migration. From a national-state perspective, the term, “irregular migrant,” refers to a person who enters or resides in a country without the necessary authorization or documents required by immigration regulations. Irregular migrants have either never obtained any sort of authorization or status or they had a status but then fell out of it, or the status has lapsed. This definition also includes rejected asylum seekers and persons that lost their temporary projection. This bibliography applies the term “irregular migrants,” which is used in the literature and in practice alongside other terms such as undocumented migrants, sans-papiers, illegalized migrants, or migrants in a situation of administrative irregularity. We are aware that all of these terms carry certain normative assumptions with them and that they therefore have to be applied with caution and are context-dependent. The term illegal migrants should be avoided due to its stigmatizing association with illegality and criminality, and also because being present without an authorization is in most countries not a criminal offense but an administrative infringement. This interdisciplinary bibliography focuses on cities as places where irregular migrants live (see Cities as Places for Irregular Migrants), cities as (political) actors that support irregular migrants (see Cities as Actors that Support Irregular Migrants), and on other important (political) actors such as civil society organizations and irregular migrants themselves (see Civil Society and Irregular Migrants as Political Actors). While this article only includes work written in English, it attempts to integrate publications that cover cities from different world regions.