Precarious Status Research Articles

Extremely Low mtDNA Diversity and High Genetic Differentiation Reveal the Precarious Genetic Status of Dugongs in New Caledonia, South Pacific.

New Caledonia is home to one of the largest remaining populations of dugongs (Dugong dugon) and is located at the southeastern limit of the species range. Local knowledge suggests that current levels of removal due to anthropogenic pressures are unsustainable, whereas trends suggest an ongoing decline in the population. Considering this unfavorable conservation context, this study aimed to assess the New Caledonian dugong population's resilience by determining its level of genetic diversity and degree of isolation relative to other populations. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region sequences (n = 55) collected from live and dead dugongs in New Caledonia were compared with a global data set of previously published sequences (n = 631) representing dugong populations throughout the species range. The New Caledonian dugong population displayed the lowest level of mtDNA diversity documented worldwide (3 haplotypes with 1-bp difference), suggesting a recent origin of the current population through limited colonization events. Population structure analyses indicate a strong genetic differentiation with all the putative populations represented in the global data set, including large neighboring Australian populations. These results show that the dugong population in New Caledonia is particularly isolated, fragile, and vulnerable to anthropogenic threats and diseases with low potential for resilience through incoming gene flow. Our findings call for an instant conservation response and consideration for IUCN population assessment to support the long-term survival of the New Caledonian dugong population.

A Lifeline in troubled waters: A support intervention for migrant farm workers

AbstractWe implemented and evaluated a service delivery intervention (support model) to address the challenges faced by migrant agricultural workers in British Columbia, Canada. Three factors were identified that contributed to the effectiveness of the intervention: (1) face‐to‐face support and in‐person outreach towards connection; (2) accounting migrant workers' hierarchy of needs and addressing their basic needs first towards comprehensiveness; and (3) role clarity and communication between partners involved in supporting this population towards coordination. A final factor, wider constraints, referred to the wider context of migrant workers' lives including their temporary status, tied work permits, and lack of access to rights. These wider constraints, which were exacerbated by the COVID‐19 pandemic, underscore that until greater policy action is taken to address these workers' precarious status, support services can only offer a lifeline in troubled waters.

Precarious reproductive citizenship: gaps in employment protections for pregnant precarious status migrants in Canada

ABSTRACT Understandings of citizenship have increasingly come to include the recognition of family care and reproduction as practices of citizenship and a recognition that migrants who are not citizens nonetheless engage in many practices of citizenship within their host state and rely on their host state for the fulfilment of basic human rights. This paper conceptualizes this intersection of immigration and reproduction as precarious reproductive citizenship, arguing that gaps in entitlements for pregnant precarious status migrants constitute reproductive injustice and present an important challenge for how we understand citizenship and human rights. This conceptualization is illustrated through interviews with women concerning their experiences of pregnancy and new motherhood while having precarious immigration status living in Montreal, Canada. It highlights three employment-related policies: employment discrimination protections, maternity and parental leave, and childcare. In each case, immigration status (directly or indirectly) acts as a barrier to accessing protections and programs meant to support gender equity and overall family thriving.

Leveraging protections, navigating punishments: How adult children of undocumented immigrants mediate illegality in Latinx families

AbstractObjectiveThe objective of this study is to examine how adult children of undocumented immigrants manage parental illegality in Latinx immigrant families.BackgroundThere are 16.7 million people who live with at least one undocumented family member in the U.S. today. Scholars have documented how children of undocumented immigrants can help navigate the negative consequences of illegality in their families. However, less is known about how the immigration status of these youth shapes the support they provide to their undocumented parents.MethodThis study draws on 41 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 19 DACAmented and 22 U.S.‐born citizen college students (18–27) who had at least one undocumented parent. Interviews were collected via snowball sampling technique at a large research university in Southern California.ResultsThe findings suggest that citizen and DACAmented college students engage in distinct strategies when mediating illegality for their undocumented parents. Citizens attempt to leverage their protected legal status to help their undocumented parents become Lawful Permanent Residents and step in during situations where threats of deportation are imminent. DACAmented young adults draw on their experience with legal precarity to help their undocumented parents navigate punishments associated with their immigration status.ConclusionThis research uncovers how parents' precarious legal status contributes to the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage among citizen and DACAmented young adults—and how these youths try to mediate the harms of illegality.ImplicationsThe strategies adult children of undocumented immigrants implement to negotiate illegality in their families highlights the need for policy addressing the legal vulnerability of undocumented and mixed status families.

We need to talk about gender: anti-feminist, anti-gender backlash all’italiana

ABSTRACT This paper engages with the topic of anti-feminist, anti-gender backlash in contemporary Italy in three steps. Firstly, it reviews some recent research examining the various ramifications of anti-feminist and anti-gender discourse in the Italian context. The role that the Catholic Church has played in championing the crusade against gender, most visibly by fabricating the so-called ideologia del gender (gender ideology), is addressed extensively together with the analysis of a cluster of heterogeneous men’s groups involved in backlash efforts to endorse and spread anti-feminist sentiments. The focus then shifts to younger generations’ struggles with making sense of and negotiating their own gendered presence in the twenty-first century Italian postfeminist context. Finally, by directing attention to the still precarious and marginal status of Gender Studies as a disciplinary field in Italian academia, the paper seeks to re-assert the relevance of Gender Studies, and to enliven the debate on the full academic institutionalisation of the field in Italy.

Migration, Trafficking, and the Greek Economy: A comment on ‘the trafficker next-door’

This article interrogates the manifestations and implications of the intertwining of migration policies and the global prohibition regime against human trafficking in Greece. In a dramatic reversal of long historical patterns, post-cold war Greece became a migration destination country, receiving a large number of migrants. While Greece’s policies approached the phenomenon as an administrative embarrassment, migrant populations joined the country’s productive structures and arguably made a decisive contribution to the country’s economic boom. The restrictive regime on migration took a further twist as Greece aligned with the global prohibition regime established with the 2000 UNTOC and Trafficking Protocol. The combination of migration and anti-trafficking policies has engendered a punitive overreach that severely disadvantaged migrant populations in Greece. Drawing on our research, we reflect on several common cases where the precarious status of the migrant meshes potentially with the punitive effects of anti-trafficking policies. We argue that the obfuscation of extremely harmful conditions typically experienced by migrants involved in Greece’s economic structures has been the most distinctive effect of the intertwining of migration and anti-trafficking policies.

Conditional citizenship in the UK: Polish migrants’ experiences of diversity

This paper explores Polish experiences of lived diversities in the UK through the lens of their precarious socio-economic status and ambivalent racial identity. Using the concept of conditional citizenship, the article explores how being only tentatively accepted in British society affects Polish migrants’ understandings of British diversity. Drawing on qualitative data from a study of Polish migrants’ lived diversities, this paper exposes the repertoires of actions that individuals apply in different social contexts in the process of learning to live with diversity. It advances the academic debate on everyday multiculturalism through an exploration of the relationship between conditional citizenship and lived diversities and contributes to an understanding of migrants’ racism by contextualising it within national hierarchies of belonging.

Displaced Venezuelans and the Politics of Asylum

Latin America is often referred to as a particularly successful case in refugee protection where, through the 1984 Cartagena Declaration, States have established a tradition of openness, solidarity, and humanitarism. Nevertheless, in practice, the instrument has been unevenly implemented in the region. This has posed consequences to the protection of displaced Venezuelans, who are now the second largest displaced population in the world and often live with precarious statuses. Applying process tracing as a methodology, this paper analyses the case of Brazil, one of the few countries granting asylum to this population, and identifies the drivers which influenced its response.

Legislatively Excluded, Medically Uninsured and Structurally Violated: The Social Organization of HIV Healthcare for African, Caribbean and Black Immigrants with Precarious Immigration Status in Toronto, Canada.

African, Caribbean and Black immigrants face persistent legislative barriers to accessing healthcare services in Canada. This Institutional Ethnography examines how structural violence and exclusionary legislative frameworks restrict the right to HIV healthcare access for many Black immigrants. We conducted semi-structured interviews with Black immigrants living with HIV (n = 20) and healthcare workers in Toronto, Canada (n = 15), and analyzed relevant policy texts. Findings revealed that exclusionary immigration and healthcare legislation shaping and regulating immigrants’ right to health restricted access to public resources, including health insurance and HIV healthcare and related services, subjecting Black immigrants with precarious status to structural violence. Healthcare providers and administrative staff worked as healthcare gatekeepers. These barriers undermine public health efforts of advancing health equity and ending HIV “while leaving no one behind.” We urge continued policy reforms in Canada’s immigration and healthcare systems regarding HIV care access for Canada’s precarious status immigrants.

On the Role of Structural Competency in the Healthcare of Migrant with Precarious Residency Status

The literature on the health care of migrant patients has often emphasized the importance of cultural skills and cultural humility that caregivers must bring to their care. Recent work has emphasized the importance of adopting a structural reading of this competency. Based on two empirical surveys conducted in France and Germany in facilities providing access to care for migrants with precarious residency status, this article demonstrates the importance of competency linking in terms of what is produced by structures and institutions and what is produced during medical interactions between patients, medical professionals, and volunteers. The complexity of accessing health protection systems for migrants with precarious residency status is often the main structural and institutional barrier to care. To remove this barrier, health professionals can develop legal and administrative competency regarding residency and health rights. They can also develop institutional and practical competency regarding the possibilities of access to health care for people without health coverage in the local geographical context. Structural competency is also effective in deconstructing the stigma and discrimination that minority groups experience in the healthcare system.

Nutritional Status, Dietary Intake and Dietary Diversity of Landfill Waste Pickers.

The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe the nutritional status, dietary intake and dietary diversity of waste pickers in South Africa, a socioeconomically vulnerable group who makes a significant contribution to planetary health through salvaging recyclable material from dumpsites. Participants were weighed and measured to calculate body mass index (BMI). Dietary intake was recorded using a standardised multipass 24 h recall. Individual dietary diversity scores were derived from the dietary recall data. Data were collected from nine purposefully selected landfill sites located in six rural towns and three cities in four of the nine provinces in South Africa, providing nutritional status information on 386 participants and dietary intake on 358 participants after data cleaning and coding. The mean BMI of the study sample was 23.22 kg/m2. Underweight was more prevalent among males (22.52%) whilst 56.1% of the females were overweight or obese. The average individual dietary diversity score was 2.46, with 50% scoring 2 or less. Dietary intake patterns were characterised as monotonous, starch-based and lacking vegetables and fruits. The nutritional status, dietary intake and dietary diversity of waste pickers reflect their precarious economic status, highlighting the need for health, social and economic policies to improve access and affordability of nutritious food.

Future use or no future at all? An examination of post-excavation historical archaeological repositories in NSW

In NSW the availability of excavation records, physical remains (primarily artefacts), technical datasets, and reports associated with a historical archaeological project can only be described as varied. These forms of data can be collectively termed an archaeological archive. The storage of archives commonly includes any combination of small-scale centralised repositories, on-site facilities, private (client or investigator) off-site storage, or digital platforms. Archaeologists recognise the value of sustainably archiving these resources, as well as making them available for research, public access, or other intentions, however, what is the status of our combined approaches? Data collected from 40 historical archaeological sites in NSW has been used here to benchmark the current situation in the state. It was found that only three of the investigated sites had a complete and accessible archaeological archive with suitable metadata available before reaching the storage facility. This research outlines the precarious status of our efforts in archiving for perpetuity and the reliance on informal and personal networks within the archaeological community to discover and access archives. It is argued here that a framework of visibility, accessibility, and longevity should be applied to any project to consider the strength of archaeological archive retention methods. While the focus remains on understanding the key issues, several recommendations are also made for improving the consistency and long-term success of accessing historical archaeological repositories and data management systems. Key suggested approaches are to promote significance in the decision to create archaeological archives in the first place, prioritise resolving visibility constraints and focus on small and achievable system improvements.

‘We are all refugees’: how migrant grassroots activism disrupts exclusionary legal categories

ABSTRACT Migrant activists with precarious legal status mobilize against border regimes in Berlin under the label of ‘refugees’. They engage in a classification struggle through which they disrupt the legal notion of refugee by reappropriating an externally assigned category. Their struggle is crucial because legal status categories produce an exclusionary system in which only some migrants can obtain residence rights as well as other rights. I contend that migrants, in the context of their mobilization, collectively interpret their structural position vis-a-vis border regimes, characterized by oppression and exclusion. This collective interpretation is associated with the emergence of a refugee* collective identity that disrupts the legal notion of refugee. I argue that migrants mobilize under the label of ‘refugee’ not only for strategic reasons but also because of their shared beliefs regarding the unfairness of the asylum system. The refugee* collective identity not only disrupts exclusionary legal status categories but also interrupts some of the divisions among migrants that border regimes produce. This article contributes to showing that while migrant activism takes place in a political field that is not chosen by migrants, it has an impact on the regulatory framework that characterizes that political field. Moreover, my findings emphasize the importance of the connections between structural forms of oppression, including regulatory frameworks and classificatory systems, and collective identity processes emerging in the mobilization of subaltern groups.

Protection or police harassment? Impacts of punitive policing, discrimination, and racial profiling under end-demand laws among im/migrant sex workers in Metro Vancouver

In 2014, Canada implemented end-demand sex work legislation which leaves the sale of sex under some circumstances legal. However, immigration policies based on discourses positioning sex work as exploitation and migration as trafficking continue to criminalize many im/migrant sex workers. Despite community reports of punitive policing, limited research has explored how police interactions with im/migrant sex workers have impacted labour conditions since this legislative shift. As part of a longstanding community-based Vancouver study, we drew on the conceptual framework of slow violence to analyze 20 in-depth interviews with sex workers born outside Canada. Despite rhetoric positioning im/migrant sex workers as victims deserving protection, participants described experiences of punitive, racialized, and stigmatizing police treatment. Fear of being ‘outed’ as a sex worker and living with precarious immigration status undermined participants' ability to seek police protections; yet when they did seek assistance after experiencing violence/theft, police were unsupportive or discriminatory. Our findings suggest that policies depicting im/migrant sex workers as victims act not to protect them, but to justify targeted repressive, racist policing that severely undermines women's occupational safety. Our results illustrate the harms of policies conflating sex work with trafficking; demonstrate the inherent opposition between legislative aims to protect those who sell sexual services and to abolish the sex industry; and interrogate who the state affirms as a deserving victim. The full decriminalization of sex work, removal of prohibitions on sex work among im/migrants, and community-led alternatives to the criminal justice system are urgently needed to uphold im/migrant sex workers' labour rights.

Strategies that Promote Equity in COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake for Undocumented Immigrants: A Review.

There has been a dearth of reports that examine the effect of immigration status on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. While intention to be vaccinated has been higher among adults in immigrant families than non-immigrant adults, uptake of the vaccine has been lower among immigrants and especially those who are undocumented. Concerns raised by immigrants usually centered on the lack of access to information, language barriers, conflicts between work and clinic hours, and fears over their precarious status in the U.S. To perform a rapid review, our time frame was December 2020 through August 2021. Our search strategy used the PUBMED and Google search engines with a prescribed set of definitions and search terms for two reasons: there were limited peer-reviewed studies during the early period of roll-out and real-time perspectives were crucially needed. Strategies used to promote equity include the use of trusted leaders as well as direct communication styles. Other strategies centered informational messaging from government agencies and the medical community, with a strong emphasis on coalescing broad engagement of the community and being responsive to language and cultural needs. In addition to communication and messaging to educate about COVID-19 vaccines, another important aspect of COVID-19 vaccine uptake was overcoming multiple obstacles that affect ease of access. This report suggests that vaccine uptake, and more generally pandemic response, in vulnerable communities may be better able to launch when they build on existing, trusted, culturally intelligent community-based organizations and local sociocultural processes. These organizations need continued support to contribute to population health equity in emerging health crises.

Micro and Macro Determinants of Precarious Employment in Indonesia: An Empirical Study of Paid Workers using Multilevel Binary Logistic Regression

Decent work for all is one of the goals stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One indicator that can represent proper work conditions is the precarious employment rate (PER). In recent periods, the precarious employment rate in Indonesia has shown an increasing trend. It indicates a decent work deficit in Indonesia. In addition, the PER among provinces has a different figure. This study aims to analyze the micro and macro factors that influence the status of precarious employees in Indonesia. The analytical method used in this study is multilevel binary logistic regression. The results show that micro factors; namely the worker's characteristics, including age, education level, employment sector, previous work status, and urban-rural area; have a significant effect on the precarious status of employees. In terms of macro factors, it is found that an increase in the output of the industrial and construction sectors can reduce the tendency of a worker to become a precarious employee. Meanwhile, an increase in labour supply increases the likelihood of workers becoming precarious employees. Various parties, including society and government, have to put extra efforts to reduce the precarious employment rate by improving the quality of human capital and domestic products demand.

How did support systems in Western countries transform and adapt to meet underserviced and marginalized migrants' needs? A scoping review

Prior studies on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrants with precarious immigration status (refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants who arrived in a host country fewer than five years ago) have shown that they have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic because of their migration and socioeconomic status. Across the world, support systems for these marginalized migrants at local levels had to be reinvented to face the pandemic and ensure continuity of services. The objective of this systematic review was to provide a portrait of the interventions that were set up to address underserviced and marginalized migrants’ needs in Western countries during the pandemic and to categorize them by area of intervention. We identified peer-reviewed papers published in English and French between March 2020 and February 2022 in MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed and Web of Science. We included original research studies, commentaries, essays and editorials. For grey literature, we searched in Google Scholar and the websites of major health organizations and institutions that worked with underserviced and marginalized migrants. We also consulted the articles’ list of references. We included 31 publications: 15 peer-reviewed articles and 16 grey literature documents. Our results indicated that in order to address vulnerable newcomers’ needs, support systems intervened in the following areas: immigration, health and social services; raising awareness about COVID-19, food security, primary and secondary basic needs; and mental health and control of COVID-19 infection in settings with high concentrations of underserviced and marginalized migrants. Selected interventions adopted a collaborative approach between actors in different sectors. Most of the interventions were carried out by community-based organizations. Our scoping review highlights the role of community-based organizations in improving the living conditions of migrants with precarious immigration status during the pandemic and emphasizes the relevance of intersectoral collaboration as a strategy to respond effectively to the needs of underserviced and marginalized migrants in times of crisis.

Marriage, bridewealth and power: critical reflections on women's autonomy across settings in Africa.

This article examines ongoing discourses on the importance of the marriage payment and its role in constraining women's autonomy across societies in Africa. First, we review how bridewealth has been conceptualised across multiple disciplines, including the work of evolutionary human scientists. We then summarise our research grounded in residential ethnographic fieldwork data collected over a period of a year in a rural settlement in north-western Ghana. Feminist accounts on women's lived experiences throughout bridewealth practising societies point to their subordination. In some contexts, including northern Ghana, bridewealth is perceived as engendering women's oppression. To liberate women from patriarchal norms, some gender advocates call for undoing of the institution of the marriage payment. Nonetheless, the women who bear the brunt of gendered oppression and the men who derive patriarchal dividends from it are averse to this undoing discourse as the bridewealth normatively secures legitimacy for women. Undoing bridewealth may mean further rendering precarious women's status in the marital family. We conclude that rather than undoing the revered institution of bridewealth, there is need to build on culturally appropriate notions of communitarianism as encapsulated by the Ubuntu philosophy and indigenous systems such as the traditional courts for negotiating the rights of women.

Asylum seekers and other precarious immigrants on the frontlines of the pandemic: Work experiences, resilience, resistance and social contributions

This article describes the labour conditions of asylum seekers and other precarious migrant workers before and during the pandemic. Although this group’s labour conditions were already precarious prior to the pandemic, we show how those conditions worsened during the COVID crisis because of their racialized condition and precarious migratory status. We also discuss the systemic impacts these negative conditions had on their personal lives, families and communities in spite of measures implemented by the provincial and federal governments. The article describes the resilience and resistance shown through the actions of grassroots community organizations, with immigrant and migrant members denouncing the hardships in their working environments and their community life. A mixed-methods research approach was used to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. The discussion and conclusions recognize the crucial social contributions of precarious immigrants, highlighting both their individual and political and collective resistance to their racialized condition and the negative effects they suffered during the pandemic.

'Because she was born here': how children with citizenship rights affect precarious status migrant worker experiences in Canada

'Because she was born here': how children with citizenship rights affect precarious status migrant worker experiences in Canada