Abstract
This paper explores the link between legal status and transnational engagement through the lenses of territorial confinement and blocked transnationalism. We hypothesize that irregular legal status results both in direct territorial confinement—an inability to visit the homeland—and in indirect caging of remitting, an important non-mobile transnational activity. This caging is hypothesized to result from an attenuation of social ties associated with reduced physical co-presence with kin and other important individuals in the homeland. Using longitudinal data on Senegalese migrants in France, Italy, and Spain from the MAFE Project, we find that Senegalese migrants who lack of secure legal status are effectively confined to the destination territory, preventing them from making short visits to the homeland. The direct and indirect relationships between irregular status and remittances, though, vary by destination country: the hypothesized relationships are not evident for migrants in Spain, indicating the role played by other facets of the context of reception, such as policy tolerance and the characteristics of the co-ethnic community.
Highlights
Migrants have long maintained ongoing social, economic, and political connections with their homelands, but these transnational activities have garnered increased attention from scholars and policymakers since the 1990s
We argue that there may be a relationship between visits to the homeland and nonmobile transnational activities, based on the maintenance of social ties; this relationship may transmit an indirect effect of irregular legal status on remitting through legal constraints on circulation
Migrants with irregular statuses remit less, indicating that their lack of secure legal status directly blocks them from cross-border action (Table 1)
Summary
Migrants have long maintained ongoing social, economic, and political connections with their homelands, but these transnational activities have garnered increased attention from scholars and policymakers since the 1990s. We review the data and methods, highlighting the advantages of MAFE’s longitudinal data on both transnational activities and legal statuses and the models we use to estimate direct and indirect effects The results of these models show that Senegalese migrants are territorially confined by irregular legal status, limiting their ability to visit their homeland. Outcome and predictor variables The MAFE project collected individual life histories in a comparative fashion in all countries It provides detailed retrospective information on some transnational activities, including short returns to Senegal and remittances—the outcomes of our analyses—and a wide range of variables that influence cross-border connections, including the migrants’ legal status, the main variable of interest in our analyses. The KHB method will allow the calculation of the indirect effects of legal statuses on non-mobile transnational activities as transmitted by the mediator variable of short visits to the homeland
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