Immigration Law Research Articles

Teaching asylum and immigration law in a hostile environment: online education’s role in navigating social work challenges

ABSTRACT The impact of COVID-19 restrictions and the shift to online teaching has contributed to a growing interest in distance learning across social work education. The authors of this paper are from the Open University, which has over 50 years of experience in distance learning and over the past 30 years e-learning through blended and fully online methods. The paper shares insights from teaching a social work law module to nearly 400 students across the UK. This paper addresses the challenges of integrating social work values and human rights into teaching asylum and immigration law amidst a UK legal discourse that often creates a ‘hostile environment’ for people with precarious immigration status. It explores teaching from a social justice perspective in the context of restrictive domestic laws. Highlighting the co-production of learning materials with civil society groups through videos and podcasts, the paper emphasizes the importance of including practitioner and migrant, asylum seeker or refugee voices to enrich content. Insights into the practicalities of incorporating these elements into e-learning, along with reflections on the challenges and opportunities, are discussed.

STATE GUARANTEES FOR THE SAFETY OF OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS INSTALLATIONS WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND IMMIGRATION LAW - DOI: 10.12818/P.0304-2340.2024v85p201

Offshore oil and gas installations are independent structures that are vulnerable to disturbances and threats. Like ships, offshore oil and gas installations also have national flags and legal instruments that protect them. Under international law, offshore oil and gas installations are protected by the Rome Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed Platforms Situated on the Continental Shelf 1988. It is noted that there have been several incidents of disturbances and threats that have occurred at offshore oil and gas installations around the world. Some events are well recorded and known to the public, while some events are not public consumption. So far, offshore oil and gas installation operators have received legal guarantees for the security of their installations both on the high seas and in the sea territory of a country based on international law, territorial law and the inherent law according to the citizenship of the offshore oil and gas installation. Through this paper, the author aims to explain the potential threats and disturbances at offshore oil and gas installations and concrete examples of events that have occurred. Another aim is to explain how international legal instruments and immigration law protect offshore oil and gas installations from these threats and disturbances. Through normative legal research, this paper describes a series of threats and disturbances and the international and national laws that have emerged to protect them and their application in the field.

Clinical and Legal Considerations When Optimizing Trauma Narratives in Immigration Law Evaluations.

Asylum seekers in the United States face complex legal processes that require the construction of coherent and credible narratives to establish eligibility for legal status or immigration relief. In this article, we review clinical and legal considerations involved in optimizing trauma narratives in forensic psychiatric evaluations for immigration courts. We highlight significant challenges faced by asylum seekers, including the emotional impact of trauma and cultural factors affecting their ability to disclose their experiences, including the roles of symptoms and cultural and situational elements in disclosure and narrative development. We emphasize the importance of creating a therapeutic and empathetic environment to facilitate disclosure and partnering with interpreters across multiple culturally sensitive evaluations. We address the roles of common traumatic stressors in narrative development, including cultural challenges related to histories of torture, abduction, sexual violence, and human trafficking prevalent among asylum seekers, providing insights and guidance on each. Further, we address specific potential challenges to the forensic psychiatric evaluator during the narrative development process, such as transference, countertransference, malingering, and vicarious traumatization. We aim to provide guidance on the development of trauma narratives of asylees developed for both therapeutic and medico-legal effectiveness.

“Do immigrants cause higher crime rates?” A cumulative cross-sectional general social survey data analysis

While empirical research in the United States has largely debunked the longstanding stereotypical image of immigrants as criminals, Americans have held onto their prejudices against immigrants. Anti-immigrant sentiments and Americans’ support for restrictive and punitive immigration laws and policies have frequently been triggered by political and media rhetoric. Politicians often sensationalize the unfounded claim that immigrants, especially the undocumented, cause higher crime rates. Given the persistent nature of these beliefs and the negative consequences on immigrant communities, researchers have examined factors that predict anti-immigrant sentiments in the U.S. Many of these studies have utilized the General Social Survey (GSS), cross-sectional datasets, broadly examining anti-immigrant attitudes of Americans and their support for restrictive policies and vice versa. These studies highlight political affiliation, race, sex, age, education, socio-economic status and cultural concerns as predictors of these beliefs. However, not many studies utilized cumulative cross-sectional data to grasp the nuanced nature of these beliefs and their consequences over the years. In addition, the GSS variable measuring the immigration and crime nexus was worded differently and contained fewer response categories in the year 2000 compared to other years. This may have implications for data outcomes. Thus, the current paper analyzed cumulative cross-sectional GSS datasets, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2014, and 2022, that had the variable, “Immigrants cause higher crime rates,” as a dependent variable, in association with predictor variables highlighted by previous studies. This article explains the notable differences in those who believed that immigrants cause higher crime rates in 2000 compared to other years. The current analysis enhances previous cross-sectional studies by showing the nuanced nature of the predictors in the backdrop of changing political climate every year. It supports previous studies in emphasizing the importance of respondents’ political affiliation, race and education as predictors. The article also brings attention to possible limitations arising from differences in response categories and other GSS data issues.

The externalization of legal categories: how U.S. immigration law shapes Central American youth migrants’ journeys through Mexico

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the categorization of migrants under U.S. immigration laws and how Central American migrant youth understand and make decisions about their journeys through Mexico on their way to the U.S. Drawing from four years of ethnographic research in Mexico and Central America, this article shows how youth migrants learn about different legal classifications of migrants under U.S. immigration laws while transiting through Mexico and assess how such categories take (or do not take) into account their experiences during the migration journey. These assessments transform the migrant youths’ journeys – they change their routes through Mexico, and families split before crossing to the U.S. – and make them less likely to denounce or call attention to the violence they suffer in Mexico. This article ultimately shows how U.S. immigration law has an externalized effect that transforms migrants’ journeys well before migrants ever reach the U.S.

Immigrants’ condition of expulsability: a comparative approach to the German and French legal framework

This paper examines recent amendments to French and German immigration law aimed at accelerating and enhancing the expulsion of unwanted immigrants of the territory. The main normative changes resulting from these reforms, entailing an unprecedented retraction of legal safeguards against expulsion and significantly exacerbating immigrant’s condition of expulsability, will be presented in comparative terms, without losing sight of the European dimension. Specifically, these reforms shape immigrant’s expulsable presence on the territory through three aspects: an increase on the precariousness of foreigner status, a reduction of the sphere of freedom needed to lead a dignified life and an expansion of exceptionality that obliges us to reconsider our social contract to include a human-rights based approach to immigration.

US American empire and the telos of US immigration law from 1924 to 2024

ABSTRACT Reflecting on the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Immigration Act, this brief essay suggests that the idea of “US American Empire” forms the telos of the last one hundred years of US immigration policy. Whether in the twentieth or the twenty-first centuries, or under Republican or Democratic leadership, US lawmakers have sought to restrict immigration to those who were deemed most “assimilable.” Such moves are not only about preserving or instituting a particular racial character of the United States but ensuring a particular role for the United States globally.

News production on the arrival of migrants by sea to Spanish coasts: the case of the Balearic Islands

This article explores the communicative strategies of journalists and institutional offices onthe arrival of migrants by sea to Spanish coasts through a case study: the Balearic Islands. For this purpose,media studies and critical approaches to the performativity of borders are taken as a starting point. Theresults indicate the emission of numerical, serialized and single source information in the case of theinstitutions, reactive in the case of the managing organizations and conditioned by institutional processes ofsecuritization of migrations in the case of journalists, who focus their work on the reproduction of the numberof arrivals and on the procedural deployment associated with the immigration law, generating a redundantinformative effect on the procedures of “immigration management”. The study shows the need to analyze themedia representation of migration in terms of its governance.

Navigating and Resisting Educational Systems: The Experiences of Latinx Families in Rural Oregon.

This study explores the experiences of Latinx parents in rural Oregon from the perspectives of Latinx parents, Latinx students, and community practitioners to understand the barriers Latinx families encounter and how they leverage their community cultural wealth to address these barriers within the context of initiatives implemented by the district. This qualitative study is guided by the following questions: What barriers do Latinx families encounter in rural schools, and how do parents leverage their community cultural wealth to address these barriers? Findings indicate that even when families were engaged in initiatives (e.g., dual language immersion programs) implemented by the district to create a welcoming environment, Latinx parents continued to encounter multiple systemic barriers (e.g., immigration laws) and leveraged multiple forms of community cultural wealth (e.g., linguistic capital) to navigate these barriers. Our findings reveal the complex dynamics at play in rural school communities serving Latinx families.

Deportation at all costs? Adapting US migration policies to the First World War

ABSTRACT The 1917 US Immigration Law marks a significant turning point in migration governance as a whole. More specifically regarding deportation, it shifted from a means of border control to become a post-entry tool of social oversight. Scholars stress that this transition was not sudden and developed gradually during the pre-war decades, yet they overlook how deportation was carried out during the war years immediately preceding the reform. This article discusses how the First World War disrupted deportations to Europe, the pressures this set on migration governance and the solutions the immigration authorities came up with. Apart from legal and humanitarian aspects, the article draws attention to the logistical and financial considerations shaping formal deportation policies and how these were put into practice. It does so from the perspective of an important but much neglected go-between in migration governance: the transatlantic shipping companies. Before 1917 they carried most of the legal, logistical and financial responsibility for executing deportations. In the article I argue that under the new law, shipping companies continued to function as an essential actor in immigration enforcement. Yet, by granting more leeway to the immigration authorities to carry out deportations independently, the law marked a crucial turning point in reducing the responsibility of transport companies for migration governance.

Racialized Hostipitality and Narrative Resistance in Sharon Bala’s The Boat People

Sharon Bala’s The Boat People (2018) is at once a trauma narrative bearing witness to the ravages of Sri Lanka’s civil war, as well as a powerful portrayal of the racialized interpellation of refugee-immigrants from the Global South. A fictionalized account of the Sri Lankan refugees who arrived in Canada on board the ships Ocean Lady in 2009 and MV Sun Sea in 2010, the novel challenges the facile and depersonalized portrayals of asylum seekers that are proliferated uncritically in media. Bala presents a humane and humanizing counter narrative that challenges the arbitrary naming, shaming, and dehumanizing discourse that labels asylum seekers as “terrorists,” “illegals,” “thugs,” and “foreign criminals,” all labels used by Canadian anti-immigrant factions to brand the Sri Lanka asylum seekers in The Boat People. In this paper, drawing on the Derridian neologism “hostipitality,” I introduce the concept of “racialized hostipitality” to understand how Bala sheds light on the racialized and bifurcated nature of Canadian immigration law. By demonstrating how immigration law embeds both hospitality and hostility, and how hospitality is conditionally offered only to the “good immigrants,” I argue that Bala’s novel unveils the racialized hostipitality that conditions Canadian immigration law as portrayed in the novel.

Between a rock and a hard place: domestic abuse and being a migrant woman in England and Wales

Legal responses to domestic abuse have been a political priority of the UK Government since at least 2010, eventually leading to the passing of the seminal legislation in this area for England and Wales, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. However, the exclusion of protection for migrant victim-survivors with precarious immigration statuses under the Act demonstrates a failure in understanding that the experience and risk of domestic abuse differ for these individuals from that of the mainstream, due to their intersectional identities as (predominantly) migrant women. Many migrant victim-survivors still find themselves trapped in abusive situations, as the law fails to safeguard their rights to reside legally should they choose to present themselves to authorities by reporting their abuse. A distinct lack of acknowledgment as to inequalities faced by those at the intersection of migrant status and gender (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991) has led to increased insecurity for some of the most vulnerable. This article shines a light on this discrimination under the law in England and Wales. It adopts an intersectionality framework to examine such inequality, analysing Appendix Violence Domestic Abuse and the Migrant Victim Domestic Abuse Concession in UK immigration law, as well as the Support for Migrant Victims Pilot and its relevant Evaluation Report, against the international standards of the Istanbul Convention. It argues that the UK Government is failing to tackle the problem of migrant victim-survivors’ protection concerning domestic abuse, and in some situations, has made it worse.This article aims to state the law as of 1 May 2024.

The Impact of High Immigration in Lithuania: Addressing Challenges and Understanding Consequences

The maxim "too much of a good thing can turn sour" holds significant relevance across diverse aspects of life, indicating that exceeding optimal thresholds may result in negative outcomes if not carefully regulated; this principle can be observed in the context of immigration rates in Lithuania, an Eastern European country experiencing significant influxes of foreign nationals. Immigration, defined as the movement of individuals into a country for specific purposes, can lead to adverse consequences when unregulated, such as overcrowding, strained social amenities, increased costs due to heightened demand, and potential rises in crime rates. Lithuania has welcomed foreigners for work, business, research, studies, and other purposes. Additionally, the unstable situation in Ukraine has prompted the Lithuanian government to extend support to Ukrainian citizens, offering incentives such as subsidized education and various forms of assistance. However, the generous immigration policies have faced challenges. The Migration Department, under the Ministry of Interior, recently announced impending stricter immigration laws due to identified irregularities, including instances of fraudulent marriages with Lithuanian citizens. Moreover, the increased cost of amenities, food prices, and housing have raised concerns about the sustainability of current immigration levels. This research focuses on examining the immigration and emigration rates in Lithuania and their economic impact over a decade (2013-2022). The study will involve sourcing data from official websites, conducting statistical analyses, and drawing insights from the analyzed data. The goal is to postulate findings, offer recommendations, and draw conclusions on the relationship between immigration rates and economic outcomes in Lithuania.

Between Legalities and Humanities in Refugee Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Indonesia and Hungary Exit Strategy Refugee Crisis

Abstract This study compares Indonesia's and Hungary's legal and humanitarian approaches to managing the 2015–2022 refugee crisis and proposes an exit strategy for Indonesia's refugee handling. Indonesia faces challenges due to the maximum detention duration stipulated in its Immigration Law No. 6/2011, which lacks further legal basis for prolonged detention. Employing a qualitative approach with comparative literature analysis, the study reveals Hungary's emphasis on legal solutions, leading to potential human rights violations but a decrease in asylum seekers, contrasting with Indonesia's humanitarian approach, resulting in positive impacts on refugees but a surge in asylum seekers. It concludes by recommending Indonesia to conduct comparative legal research with Hungarian asylum law to develop more effective refugee policies addressing legal and political concerns. This research enhances understanding of refugee management in Indonesia and Hungary, offering insights for nations grappling with similar crises.

Constructing disposable farmworkers: Interrogating narrative and legal contours of the US racial capitalist state

In this paper, I draw on feminist narrative analysis to reconsider the exceptional character of agriculture under the law and its embodied consequences for contemporary agricultural guestworkers in Georgia, USA. Through engaged participant observation alongside farmworker advocates and archival research of legal texts, I consider the interplay between the law and everyday narratives in (re)constructing the racialized agricultural labor system. I interrogate a century of immigration laws, labor laws, and foreign labor schemes and examine how systems of selective inclusion play out on the ground. My analysis is informed by a theoretical framework that asserts that the US racial capitalist state developed in tandem with conceptions linking territory, whiteness, and the virtues of agriculture. Merging literatures on racial capitalism and the racial state, political geographies of immigration, and agricultural exceptionalism, this paper advances an understanding of the importance of interrogating the farm labor system to illuminate key mechanisms of exclusion characteristic of the US racial capitalist state. I argue that the state's construction of “disposable” farmworkers exposes the extent to which the racial capitalist state acts to discipline labor and uphold racialized hierarchies of “American” identity.

Community resilience and intersections between sociopolitical and racial relations in the aftermath of immigration raids in Mississippi

ABSTRACT Immigration law enforcement operations can negatively affect communities, creating or exacerbating problems among Latinx immigrants. Community resilience perspectives enable examination of how communities overcome challenges created by disruptions. Resilience studies have shown power relations can affect collective responses. However, few studies exist about how politics and race can affect community responses. This study examines how sociopolitical and racial relations influenced community resilience in the context of large immigration raids. Twenty-six Latinx organizers and allies involved in community responses in the aftermath of these raids were interviewed. The findings show how politics intertwined with racism-shaped Latinx community resilience. After the raids, Latinx groups and allies mobilized collective agency to address problems created by the raids, challenged by political and racial dynamics. The findings also show creating more visibility and consciousness about Latinx communities could be an important step for strengthening inclusiveness and community resilience.

Media coverage and local cooperation in immigration enforcement

ABSTRACT Public concern about immigrant criminality in the U.S. is reflected in news coverage of immigration, which tends to associate the topic with ‘illegality’ and crime. Although these media characterizations have increased in recent years as local policy action on immigration has intensified, little research has examined whether or how these two phenomena are connected. This study assesses whether local television news coverage of immigration and crime increases the likelihood of county sheriffs adopting 287(g) agreements deputizing officers to enforce immigration law. Employing fixed effect logistic regressions, this study finds that sheriffs’ departments in counties exposed to more news coverage of immigration and crime are more likely to adopt 287(g) agreements. These increases are particularly pronounced in counties with Republican sheriffs as well as areas experiencing above-average immigrant population growth, suggesting that news media may act as an external, politicizing agent that turns seemingly innocuous demographic changes into events that warrant punitive policy action. These findings position news media as an important context of immigrant reception that can trigger threatened responses in local immigration policy.

Offering protection to immigrant youths in America: Is asylum or Special Immigrant Juvenile Status truly in the best interest of the child?

AbstractIn the United States (US), children's ‘best interest’ principles are central to child welfare policy, but their incorporation into immigration laws is less robust. Drawing on data from international and domestic policies, interviews with legal professionals and legal guidelines, we compare how Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) and asylum – the main forms of immigration relief for undocumented youths in the US – align with children's best interest principles. SIJS, while promising, undermines family integrity by imposing rigid child‐rearing standards that may penalize immigrant families. Asylum upholds family integrity, but the application process involves intense interviews and strict evidentiary standards that harm youths’ well‐being. Given asylum's high denial rates, the process often results in trauma without much promise of the permanency asylum can offer. Consequently, both SIJS and asylum fall short of protecting children's rights and best interests. We argue that how legal systems manage youths significantly affects youths’ well‐being and their access to rights and benefits. The impact of legal processes on youths should be paramount to best interest policies and practices. We conclude with policy recommendations for SIJS and asylum that better promote children's best interests.

The Migrant Personal Work Relation: A New Category of Employment

ABSTRACT The relationship between UK immigration law and labour law is increasingly intertwined and complex. Migrant workers are regularly incorporated into the labour market on an unequal and instrumental basis as economic commodities. A central aim of this paper is to expand our conceptual understanding of the legal nature and form of migrant employment. I contend that the regulatory integration of immigration law with labour law into a distinct, intermediate legal framework of 'migrant labour law' challenges and disrupts existing categories of employment classification and orthodox conceptions of modern employment. It does so by constructing ‘migrant personal work relations’ with a unique hybrid legal character of private contract and public immigration status, using migrants’ private capacities to regulate their relationship with the state and vice versa. Central to this endeavour is an idea of labour regulation that incorporates immigration norms of conditionality, deportability, deterrence and immobility into the construction of the migrant personal work relation. Five elements of the migrant personal work relation illustrate its hybrid character: formation, structure, content, variation, and termination. The interplay of public and private law doctrines exhibits immigration status distorting the employment contract and shows that migrant employment cannot be explained on a contractual basis. As a result, we start observing a juridical divide between migrant workers and citizen workers as separate legal subjects allocated to different regulatory regimes. It constitutes a whole new category of employment. Finally, the article examines the implications of its construction and legal character for its power dynamics. I argue that vulnerability to exploitation is a structural feature of the ‘migrant personal work relation’, such that it is a vulnerability-inducing legal institution. It exacerbates the pre-existing asymmetrical distribution of power and creates special vulnerabilities additional to those ordinarily present.

Essential, invisible, discriminated and exchangeable: labour migrants in the EU

ABSTRACT This article aims to lay bare the contradictions between on the one hand the technocratic discourse of the EU praising the contribution of migrant workers to the economy of receiving countries and on the other hand the discriminatory impact of law and policy in the fields of free movement and immigration. Drawing from Luca Mavelli’s concept of neoliberal citizenship, it submits that both free movement law and EU immigration law are connected to a broader transformative framework of neoliberal political economy where rationalities of value exclude, dispose or sacrifice those with low economic or emotional value for receiving countries.