Immigration Governance Research Articles

Unpacking the ideational foundations of South American migration governance: a systematic analysis of the South American conference on migration (SACM)

ABSTRACT Is there empirical evidence for a liberal paradigm that informs South American immigration governance? And how does this paradigm relate to other ideas on managing immigration? Based on Pécoud’s (2020) categorization of immigration governance philosophies, and the content analysis of all final declarations of the South American Conference on Migration between 2000 and 2022, we confirm a dominant liberal paradigm in the region. We further find that in South America, Pécoud’s global rights-based philosophy operates as a hinge between three other philosophies: the free (non) governance of migration, anti-migrant governance, and managerial/development global migration governance philosophy. Through our analysis, we demonstrate the applicability of Pécoud’s (2020) immigration governance philosophies to a major immigrant receiving region in the Global South, and contribute to the ideational literature by showing how paradigms and philosophies represent ideational building blocks that can be combined, merged, and adapted by political actors to different regional contexts.

Cultivated invisibility and migrants' experiences of homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UK government's Everyone In scheme, announced in March 2020, required local authorities to temporarily house all homeless individuals in their area regardless of immigration status. In providing support through safe and secure accommodation, Everyone In also provided a crucial moment of visibility for migrants experiencing homelessness. Yet, just as it provided life-changing opportunities for some, the scheme was not straightforwardly a celebratory moment for migrants. It remained embedded within a wider context of immigration governance and social inequality in the UK, which has both invisibilised migrant homelessness as a crisis and hypervisibilised migrants as undeserving, suspicious or 'illegal' subjects. In this article, we explore life-story narratives co-produced with migrants across three urban contexts that capture their experiences of homelessness before and during the pandemic. In doing so, we introduce the notion of cultivated invisibility, referring to a habitual, deeply-ingrained mode of practice through which migrants respond to and navigate their experiences of being read as 'Other', in racialised or classed terms. It is developed through conditions of material scarcity and in the course of multiple engagements with racial capitalism's various 'faces of the state' in an increasingly hostile environment for migrants. Cultivated invisibility involves staying on the move and blending into the crowd or avoiding it altogether but it also includes the experience of being unseen despite having come forward for help. Importantly, we demonstrate that cultivated invisibility becomes a cause of illegalisation, just as much as a response to it.

‘Running Them Out of Time:’ Xenophobia, Violence, and Co-Authoring Spatiotemporal Exclusion in South Africa

ABSTRACT Immigration governance scholars often focus on formal, national regulations and how local implementation and resistance rations access to space and resources. Research into ‘xenophobic’ exclusion across South Africa suggests recalibrating research along two spatial and temporal dimensions. First, while legal and political discourse often evoke national principles, exclusive speech and action can be highly spatialised and distinctly sub-national. Consequently, people objectively belonging to the same, excludable category (e.g., international migrants; sexual or ethnic minorities) face varied vulnerabilities corresponding to where they work or reside. Moreover, when mobilising nationalistic discourses of exclusion and belonging, sub-national actors customise and emplace them. Such co-authoring infuses them with particularistic interests and language while imposing spatial limits on their legitimacy. This in turn generates a dynamic patchwork of regulatory regimes where local variations may be more practically important than national policy. Second, the effects of co-authored exclusion are spatial, but their foundations may be temporal. South Africa’s national political project rests on forms of restorative justice: of building futures for those materially disadvantaged and disenfranchised by Apartheid’s racist machinations. For South Africans, making claims to a future in place (i.e., in the country or a given site) are predicated on one’s position in this national temporal arc. Even if apartheid disadvantaged millions across Southern African, non-citizens are historiographically excluded from these claims. Immigrants are, in effect, run out of time. By eliding shared pasts, officials and citizens deny the possibility of a spatial future shared with non-nationals. These elements help explain the popular legitimacy of anti-immigrant mobilisation and surface the multiple modes of citizenship and exclusion operating across the country. Recognising this, the article ultimately encourages scholars to re-spatialise and temporalise the study of migration governance in ways that also recognise the dialogical dimensions of bordering and emplacement.

The changes, causes and difficulties of China's international immigration governance under the changing international situation

Since the founding of The People's Republic of China, with the changes of the international situation, China's immigration governance has gone through periods of strict restrictions, opening and easing, and deepening and improving. Based on the basic national conditions in different periods, the motivation for the change of China's immigration governance policy and the dilemma faced in the new period have been explored. We should give priority to sovereignty, protect human rights, strengthen international cooperation and build a community with a shared future for mankind.

The (re)productive dimension of a gendered deportation regime and immigration enforcement in Texas

In Austin, Texas since 2006, a coalition of immigrant rights organizations and allies has fought against deportation and immigrant detention. As has been found elsewhere, ­immigrant women with precarious legal statuses were ­overrepresented in the local immigrant rights movement. This article questions how despite high rates of deportation these women, have become active political agents. Building on scholarship that analyzes the U.S. immigration system as a highly gendered and racialized complex, and on the ­literature on intimate economies and geopolitics, I claim that the subject positions of noncitizen women are complex and based not only on gender, race, or sexual orientation but also on their ‘reproductive capital’. The latter, since it links reproductive and economic productivity, allows for consideration of gendered immigrant subject formations that influence immigration governance at the local and state level. I will analyze how Latin American noncitizen immigrant women in Texas were constructed as either ‘potential mothers of citizens’—allowing them to become activists and engage in the local political arena—or as ‘detainable and profitable mothers of noncitizens’—depending on their reproductive capital.

Research and Evaluation on Immigration Policy of Russian Federation

Immigration problem is a complex problem that perplexes the economic and social development of the Russian Federation in the transitional period, and has been widely concerned by the Russian government and even the international community. Facing the situation of population crisis, the Russian Federal Government regards immigration as an important means to re solve the population crisis, make up for the population decline and alleviate the labor shortage in economic development, which has caused a series of social, political and economic problems. To solve these problems, the Russian Federation formulated, introduced and adjusted the immigration policy according to the characteristics of immigrants in different periods. Based on the principles of geopolitics and population economy, it introduces more Russian residents, international high-tech talents, investment immigrants and immigrants studying abroad from the former Soviet Union, formulates measures for the management of immigrants, reforms the management mechanism of immigrants, promotes the social integration of immigrants, and creates conditions for the permanent settlement of immigrants. On the whole, the Russian Federation’s immigration policy is clearer, the immigration planning is more perfect, the management focus is more clear, and the immigration governance has achieved good results. However, measures such as public opinion orientation, information statistics system and illegal immigration governance measures need to be improved.

Ad-hocratic immigration governance: how states secure their power over immigration through intentional ambiguity

ABSTRACT This article conceptualizes the term ad-hocratic immigration governance to capture how states intentionally use policy ambiguity as a tool to secure their power over immigration. It does so by analysing the flexibility, pragmatism and informality with which Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have governed immigration since the turn of the 21st century. Drawing on over 100 interviews and in-depth policy analysis, the article shows that Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have privileged executive politics, exemption regimes and case-by-case arrangements on immigration over parliamentary law-making. It demonstrates how the intentional ambiguity created by such ad-hocratic governance allowed Morocco’s monarchy and Tunisia’s young democracy to respond to external and bottom-up demands for more immigrant rights while at the same time securing the state’s margin of manoeuvre over immigration. Such theorization of ad-hocracy sheds a novel light on how immigration is governed not only across North Africa and the Middle East but also in their European neighbourhood.

Global health (security), immigration governance and Covid-19 in South(ern) Africa: An evolving research agenda

The Covid-19 pandemic provides a stark reminder of the political tensions associated with the field of immigration and health, highlighting the central role that nationalism, racism and xenophobia play in determining responses to communicable diseases. The blurring of global health, immigration governance, and the global health security agendas has long been recognised. However, an improved understanding of the politics influencing these entanglements, specifically within the context of the Covid-19 response in low- and middle-income country contexts, is urgently needed. This includes – but is not limited to – the immediate concerns surrounding inclusive social, political and medical responses to Covid-19; vaccine nationalism – at both global and national levels; and calls for ‘vaccine passports’.To this end, we draw on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) context – one associated with high levels of diverse population movements and a large burden of communicable diseases – to explore responses to Covid-19. We unpack tensions surrounding the management of migration and the ways in which sovereignty impacts attempts at building regional, coordinated responses to migration and health, and consider how this affects progress towards global health targets. With an initial focus on South Africa, we build on previous work exploring the blurring of global health, immigration governance, and the global health security agendas in SADC, and draw from ongoing research on the governance of migration and health within the region. This includes current and evolving research exploring migration and Covid-19, initiated in March 2020 when the first cases of Covid-19 were identified in Southern Africa.The aim is for these findings to catalyse a new and evolving researh agenda to inform the development and implementation of appropriate pandemic responses in a region associated with some of the highest levels of inequality globally. To this end, an evolving research agenda should be responsive to current needs. We suggest that, in SADC, priority research should focus on improving our understanding of (1) the political factors influencing the (dis)connections between migration and health governance structures in the context of Covid-19, and how to overcome these in the context of a pandemic; and (2) the motivations for and implications of a ‘vaccine passport’ system on movement within and beyond the SADC region. This requires a reactive, cross-disciplinary, regional research network. In a context where funding for research is increasingly inaccessible, this requires innovative, informal, collaborative engagement.

Local “Battlegrounds”. Relocating Multi-Level and Multi-Actor Governance of Immigration

The multi-level governance (MLG) approach is widely used to understand the complex processes of immigration policymaking. In this literature review, we consider both (i) the vertical dimension of MLG: the local, regional, national, European, or even global level; and (ii) the horizontal dimension of MLG: the relations between public and non-public actors. While focusing on the local level, this review identifies a trend regarding, on the one hand, local processes of bordering, and local policies of inclusion on the other. Furthermore, the article reviews how civil society has responded to the arrival of refugees. It identifies how this literature pays insufficient attention to dimensions of conflict and, more specifically, to how local borders can be challenged. Moreover, it shows a lack of attention to anti-migrant responses, and to the interaction between migrants and civil society regarding immigration governance. Concluding, the paper argues for the adoption of a “battleground” perspective as a more dynamic basis for the MLG approach.

Working with a Family. How a Family-Oriented Welfare System Opens the Border for Migrant Care Workers

In Italy, the strong desire to take care of the elderly at home and within the family opens the border to migrant care workers. Despite an increasing focus on the closure of borders, migrant care workers are considered desirable immigrants and are generally socially accepted in Italian society because they are believed to fulfil an indispensable role in Italian families. Based on ninety-three qualitative interviews with migrant care workers, elderly care recipients, and the family members responsible for the organization of their care, this article considers the favourable position of care workers vis-à-vis the selectivity of immigration governance. Moreover, it discusses the relations established by Italian families with immigrant care workers, in comparison with what the scholarship says about the relationships between immigrant care workers and native families. For this purpose, we propose a typology of domestic elder care relationships, arranging them along a continuum where at one extreme they are asymmetrical and exploitative, whilst at the other they are warm and reciprocal. Finally, we observe a process of “familization” whereby employers and care workers begin to see each other as members of the same “family”. Whilst familialization can be interpreted as genuine affection, it also creates a web of obligations that prioritizes expectations by employers and duties of care workers.

‘Nonwhiteness’ in nineteenth-century Hawai‘i: sovereignty, white settlers, and Japanese migrants

ABSTRACT This paper examines the way considerations of race factored into the colonisation of Hawai‘i and its subsequent governance of immigration and different racial groups. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Kingdom of Hawai‘i faced unprecedented demographic change due to its rapidly declining native population and inflows of people from abroad. To preserve its sovereignty, the kingdom attempted to forge solidarity with Japan and Samoa governed by nonwhite people under threat of Western colonisation. Although official rule by European and American settlers did not start until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, they steadily expanded their influence over Hawaiian politics and economy by monopolising the sugar industry. Wary of the effects of nineteenth-century geopolitics, the kingdom attempted to resist the establishment of a white-dominated society that pursued its political, economic, and social agenda through the management of sugar plantations and the opening up of immigration. In the process of stabilising and maintaining the kingdom's sovereignty in the late nineteenth century, nonwhiteness became a significant racial foundation to confront the white dominance in the Islands and to establish an ally with nonwhite peoples and nations in the Asia-Pacific basin.

“The Freedom of Jail”: Women, Detention, and the Expansion of Immigration Governance along the US–Mexico Border, 1903–1917

Abstract This article traces the contours of immigrant detention along the US-Mexico border between 1903 and 1917. Underfunded and undersized, privately owned but federally managed immigration stations and detention facilities forced government agencies to consider where to hold an increasing number of detained immigrant women. While debate arose over which detention location allowed the most “freedom,” some women suffered verbal, physical, and sexual abuse during their incarceration. This article draws upon US Bureau of Immigration annual and investigative reports, testimony, leasing agreements, and correspondence to argue that gender was a driving force in the construction of detention rooms and facilities along the border after 1903.

Geographic Embeddedness of Higher Education Institutions in the Migration Policy Domain

In 2014, Canada issued its first International Education Strategy, articulating targets for international enrollment and its economic benefits, but lacking international student retention goals. Universities and colleges used to be places where students could get immigration advice, but past Bill C-35 only Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants can provide such advice. There is no requirement for institutions to hire these consultants. I investigate the geographic stretch of the education domain’s engagement with retention, through an examination of immigration advising support provision across Canada’s campuses. This provision is highly uneven, with a moderate association with school size, reflecting the voluntary nature of such engagement. A defined international student retention strategy could possibly change the current state of immigration governance through the education domain.

The Urban Governance of Asylum as a “Battleground”: Policies of Exclusion and Efforts of Inclusion in Italian Towns

The article argues that the governance of immigration, especially at local level, can be considered a “battleground” involving diverse actors. Beyond the idea of a “negotiated order” as the result of the interaction among actors (mainly institutional) in the multilevel governance framework, the management of asylum at a local level is the outcome of conflict and cooperation, of alternative views and political actions, of official policies and practical help, of formal statements and informal practices. The practical governance of immigration and asylum is not only determined at an institutional level; it is also influenced by this mobilization on the part of civil society. In order to reconstruct the dynamics of this “battleground”, the article first analyses the different attitudes of Italian municipalities to asylum seekers, and in particular the mobilization of local governments against refugees’ reception. It then shows by contrast how civil society actors mobilize either in favour of the reception of refugees and immigrants with dubious legal status or against them. Thereafter, among civil society actors, it focuses in particular on “supporters” acting on behalf of asylum seekers in various ways, for moral, political or religious reasons, and on the issue of their political engagement.

Community versus Commodity in Francophone Canada: A Multilevel Approach to the Neoliberalization of Immigration

AbstractSince the 1990s, Canada's francophone minority communities (FMCs) have become increasingly involved in francophone immigration governance, and this trend has coincided with the wider neoliberalization of immigration in Canada. This article analyzes the implications of the growing influence of a neoliberal immigration policy and the narrative of an ideal immigrant on Canada's FMCs by focussing on the francophone Acadian community in New Brunswick, Canada's only constitutionally bilingual province. Making use of three types of sources—semistructured interviews, debates in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick, and official and archival documents—the article argues that francophone and Acadian organizations have adopted the federal, neoliberal perspective on immigration, placing greater emphasis on economic integration and the creation of a bilingual workforce. Changes in the type of immigrant selected and role of the community in the lives of francophone immigrants create new challenges for minority language communities that define and identify themselves through language use and belonging.

The Migration Policy during Covid-19 Outbreak: The Case of Indonesia’s Immigration Governance

Makalah ini membahas kasus tata kelola imigrasi menanggapi kebijakan migrasi Indonesia selama wabah Covid-19. Hal ini mengindikasikan kebijakan imigrasi di Indonesia yang dengan cepat berubah setiap bulannya menjadi isu yang serius, misalnya tentang tumpang tindih kewenangan di perbatasan, kebijakan yang terfragmentasi, sengketa penegakan hukum di perbatasan, dan kebingungan tentang kebijakan visa dan izin tinggal. Makalah ini menerapkan metodologi penelitian kualitatif studi kasus tunggal dengan pendekatan kerangka teori. Studi ini menemukan bahwa kebijakan dan tata kelola migrasi di Indonesia dalam pandemi Covid-19 telah memasukkan teori tata kelola dengan lima proposisi seperti yang dijelaskan dalam Stoker (1998). Namun, tanggung jawab penutupan stasiun lintas batas kabur yang mengindikasikan tidak adanya koordinasi antar lembaga perbatasan, dan ini bisa mengarah pada menyalahkan dan mengkambinghitamkan. Kebijakan imigrasi di perbatasan Indonesia menggambarkan proses pembuatan kebijakan yang ketat namun tidak konsisten dimana instrumen kebijakan direvisi dan diperpanjang setiap bulan. Kebijakan tersebut belum dirancang untuk situasi setelah krisis Covid-19 di Indonesia dinyatakan selesai oleh otoritas yang berwenang.

Pensando la inmigración desde las instituciones de la ciudad

This paper conducts a bibliographic review of the main theoretical formulations that make migration processes dialogue with urban dynamics. From this, two records of academic literature arise. The first one, from a sociological approach, problematizes not only the modalities of gradual integration of immigrants into urban space but also the challenges resulting from the forms of occupation and transformation of the social, economic, cultural, and symbolic spaces of the city. The second one has a political science approach that explores the new analytical perspectives that reconstruct and reformulates the problems of the urban management of immigration, examining the different scenarios and factors that influence and shape the governance of immigration and cultural diversity in cities. These two approaches are significantly useful and have undeniable heuristic value to construct a modern immigration theory in the urban context.

The potential of dialogues on social identity and diversity for immigrant civic integration

Local governments have become increasingly important in the governance of immigration. The present study evaluates a local government sponsored dialogue on social identity and diversity aimed at promoting the civic integration of immigrant participants. Based on models for community dialogues across cultural differences and on the literature on immigrant civic integration, the researcher designed, implemented and evaluated the dialogue. The evaluation was based on an exit questionnaire completed by participants, observation notes taken by the researcher, and a follow-up interview with the program coordinator. The evaluation suggests that dialogues among newcomers about social identity and diversity that match most of the ideal conditions for positive intergroup contact stated in the literature likely facilitate immigrant civic integration. Participants reported improved feelings of mutual understanding and inclination to collaborate across cultural differences. The findings also indicate that participants developed a capacity to balance appreciation for cultural differences and group identities with proclivity to collaboration across cultural groups.

National-Local Networks and Immigration Governance

The ability to regulate the flow of goods, capital and people across borders is one of the defining characteristics of nation-state political power. But there is not always agreement between the central government and local officials as to the desirability of immigration, where local governments may desire greater, or fewer, numbers of immigrants, depending on the local economy and labor needs. In South Korea, a unitary form of government offers an opportunity to examine the policy distance between the national government’s stance on immigration based on the politics of the ruling party, and the attitudes of local officials who work for metropolitan-level governments (those with a population of one million or more). I look at the impact of local economic market needs on local attitudes towards national immigration policy through the lens of intergovernmental relations and Lipsky’s concept of bureaucratic discretion. Comparing two cases drawn from local governments in South Korea with dissimilar economic bases but similar levels of local autonomy, I find that economic needs at the local level are addressed by local approaches to immigration policy. Contrary to expectations, the cases illustrate the relative importance of fiscal autonomy and a new understanding for political autonomy. These cases illustrate the need for caution when applying political and institutional theory within new contexts and offer new variables for future investigations of local autonomy.

The Bureaucratic Capture of Child Migrants: Effects of In/visibility on Children On the Move

AbstractThis article investigates the “bureaucratic capture” of migrant children through three technologies of the state: labelling, data production and social services, illuminating the ways visibility and invisibility are constructed and managed in the context of restrictionist immigration regimes. Using the case of unaccompanied asylum‐seeking children, Roma children and undocumented children, we examine how in/visibility is produced; for what purposes, and with what consequences. We demonstrate through the simultaneous broadcasting and disappearance of migrant children, bordering is reconstituted through various performances, rationalities and technologies of immigration governance. The article argues the notion of “best interests” is drawn on when the state can define these interests in accordance with their political aims and resources. The set of cases taken together provide novel insights into how states reconcile conflicting logics and reveals how the implementation of the child rights regime prevents some children from actualising their rights.