Legal Status, Territorial Confinement, and Transnational Activities of Senegalese Migrants in France, Italy, and Spain

Erik R Vickstrom

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-12088-7_5

Abstract

AbstractMigrants have long maintained ongoing social, economic, and political connections with their homelands, but these transnational activities have garnered increased attention from scholars and policymakers in recent years. Academic research has shown that modern travel and communications technologies have created new kinds and quantities of transnational engagement, findings which have challenged the notions of the state control of borders and of unidirectional immigrant settlement and assimilation. At the same time, international development agencies and sending-country governments have begun to recognize the potential of migrants to be active participants in the development of their home communities. Such “co-development” strategies seek to leverage migrant cross-border activities, such as remittances, investment, and participation in hometown associations, as part of overall development strategies.

Highlights

Physical mobility faced by migrants without secure legal status or the effect that such reduction in mobility might have for non-mobile, long-distance activities
The section reviews the literature on transnational activities and suggests that scholars of transnationalism have largely overlooked both the physical confinement resulting from irregular status and the indirect effect of this confinement on non-mobile activities
Descriptive results provide support for the first two hypotheses: migrants with irregular status return home less frequently, indicating that territorial confinement accompanies these irregular statuses; and migrants with irregular statuses participate less frequently in non-mobile transnational activities, indicating that their lack of secure legal status directly blocks them from cross-border action

Summary

Introduction

Physical mobility faced by migrants without secure legal status or the effect that such reduction in mobility might have for non-mobile, long-distance activities. This chapter explores the link between legal status and transnational activities through the lenses of territorial confinement and blocked transnationalism. It hypothesizes that irregular legal status results both in direct territorial confinement—an inability to visit the homeland—and in indirect caging of non-mobile transnational activities. This caging is hypothesized to result from the withering of affective ties associated with reduced physical co-presence with kin and other important individuals in the homeland from which migrants often draw their sense of status. Researchers initially hailed the concepts as a novel lens for understanding the lived bifocal realities of migrants in advanced postindustrial economies, with advances in transportation and communications technologies making it possible

Results

Discussion

Conclusion