Undocumented Migration

The Global Migration Center will be the premier institution studying the impacts of immigration policy and immigration law enforcement on the health, socioeconomic status, self-image and family life of undocumented immigrants and immigrant detainees/deportees, as well as on their communities.

Héctor López
"Héctor López (#134) Two Soldier Left Behind" by Leopoldo Peña

Humanizing Deportation Project

The Center will house the Humanizing Deportation project, a project coordinated by Professor Robert Irwin, which includes the world’s largest archive of community testimonial narratives on contemporary migration and deportation.

In response to general lack of first-hand knowledge regarding the experience of deportation and removal, and the consequent dehumanized narratives on the topic, we are producing an online open access archive  of personal stories about deportation. Policy debate on deportation tends to be driven by statistics, with little attention to human experience. This project will make visible a range of humanitarian issues that mass human displacement has generated as the result of its management on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

It employs digital storytelling, a digital genre that puts control of content and production in the hands of community storytellers (deportees and others affected by deportation and deportability), to produce a public archive that will give a human face to the deportation crisis.

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Comparative Border Studies

Border
Nido de las águilas in Tijuana, Mexico (Humanizando la Deportación Project)

Another effort joining the Global Migration Center is the Mellon Initiative in Comparative Border Studies: Rights, Containment, Protest co-directed by Professor Robert Irwin.

This initiative has two major goals: first, to respond to the urgent need for comparative conversations about the question of borders and to interrogate the production, deployment and evasion of regional and geographic categories; and second, to bridge scholarship in area studies and ethnic studies, fields that should be in closer conversation with one another given the realities of transnationalism and the transnationalizing of these fields.

This initiative will help promote new approaches to the study of borders, violence, containment, rights, and protest as scholarship attempts to grapple with new political movements and networks that have emerged spanning Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and North America. These rapid shifts on the ground demand more complex theorization and cross-disciplinary, comparative research as older paradigms of transnationalism and diaspora appear increasingly obsolete or inadequate. Programs as such as the Social Science Research Council have focused on Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections in order to support new research that is needed to study region-making and regional shifts across Asia.

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Humanizando la deportación. Narrativas digitales desde las calles de Tijuana.

Author(s)
Robert McKee Irwin and Guillermo Alonso Menenses
Published in
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte

The Humanizing Deportation team has published the book Humanizando la deportación: Narrativas digitales desde las calles de Tijuana, coordinated by GMC Deputy Director Robert McKee Irwin and the late Guillermo Alonso Meneses (El Colegio de la Frontera Norte). This book, whose seven chapters, written by members of the transnational research team, draw principally from the fieldwork of the project's inaugural team in 2017, will be launched officially in November at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, and presented later this academic year at the Global Migration Center. Cover art by deported migrant Emma Sánchez de Paulsen. 

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Narrando la deportación. Historias de movilidad entre Estados Unidos y México

Author(s)
Miranda-Villanueva, Oscar Mario. Martínez Curiel, Enrique. Morán Quiroz, Luis Rodolfo
Published in
Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí
Publication Date

Edited by Óscar Miranda Villanueva, Enrique Martínez Curiel and Luis Rodolfo Morán Quiroz, the latter two of whom will visit the Global Migration Center November 14 to present the book. Published by Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, and featuring a prologue by GMC Deputy Director Robert McKee Irwin, its chapters are co/authored by a dozen scholars, many of whom are members of the Humanizando la Deportación research team.

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The Life-Course Timing of Legalization: Evidence from the DACA Program

Author(s)
Erin R. Hamilton
Caitlin Patler
Paola D. Langer
Published in
Sage Journals, Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World
Publication Date

Abstract

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created to mitigate some of the harmful consequences of undocumented immigration status. Although research shows that the DACA program promoted employment outcomes for the average DACA recipient, life-course theory and immigrant integration theory suggest that the program may differentially affect younger and older recipients. Using data from the American Community Survey, the authors test whether DACA was associated with different education and employment outcomes for younger and older Mexican immigrants. The results indicate that DACA was associated with increases in the likelihood of working among younger but not older DACA-eligible individuals and with greater decreases in the likelihood of school enrollment among younger DACA-eligible individuals. These results suggest that policy makers should ensure that opportunities to permanently legalize status are available to immigrants as early as possible in the life course.

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Voluntary International Migration

Author(s)
Jeannette Money and Timothy W. Taylor (Wheaton College)
Published in
Oxford Bibliographies (2016)

Introduction:
Although migration has been a human phenomenon from time immemorial, the creation of a system of states, usually dated from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), has posed the issue of individuals crossing state boundaries, encompassed in the concept of state sovereignty. The decline of transportation and communication costs has increased human mobility over time, with international travel expanding exponentially since the Second World War. Remarkably, the proportion of the global population living outside their country of origin has remained relatively stable over the past seven decades, running around 3 percent of the global population. The fact that international migration remains the exception rather than the rule in an increasingly globalized world is an important observation. International migrants travel in all directions, with at least half moving within the Global South. However, the distribution of international migrants is not uniform; typically migrants move from poorer, more unstable states to wealthier, more stable states.

And international migration has become a salient political issue virtually everywhere: in receiving societies, in sending societies, and even in transit societies. So a bibliographical article on the various dimensions of international migration is timely. International migration is a multidisciplinary research arena. Economists evaluate the impact of migration on the economy, on the state, and on different groups in the society, in both home and host societies. Sociologists examine the processes of immigrant incorporation, seconded by psychologists and anthropologists; sociologists are also attentive to the ties that migrants maintain to their home society, even while becoming members of the host society. Political scientists explore the determinants of immigration control policies and policies that govern resident foreigners upon arrival, as well as the determinants of state policies toward emigrants, such as remittance policies. And virtually all of these disciplines, enlarged by geographers, have weighed in on the processes that fuel the movement of individuals across international boundaries. Migration is usually divided into two categories, “forced” and “voluntary.” This is a useful dividing line, even though it is widely acknowledged that migrants have multiple reasons for moving and that there is often no clear dividing line to distinguish “forced” versus “voluntary” migrants.

Due to the breadth and multidisciplinarity of the literature, this bibliography covers only voluntary international migration, both short and long term. It does not cover the research on forced migration flows (refugees and asylum seekers) as defined in the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 and 1967). Subsequent to the overview of international migration and migration processes, the literature is organized around four themes. Immigration control focuses on state choices to admit a specific number and type of migrant; various categories of migrants, workers, family members, students, etc., are included in this section. Immigrant incorporation addresses issues of immigrant treatment upon arrival in the host state, immigrants’ willingness and capacity to adapt to the host society, and the maintenance of ties to their home state and society. Migration governance deals with the degree to which states are willing and able to cooperate with their counterparts in the international system to achieve their interests. Migrant rights are a central component of this section.

Finally, the last section deals with linkages between international migration and other international issues, such as security, trade, aid, and development.

This article reflects the bulk of the scholarship on international migration that has been produced in the Global North and/or published in globally prominent scholarly journals.

There are additional resources, in regional or national journals and books, in languages other than English, that are often referenced in the articles and books cited in this bibliography.

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Cecilia Tsu explores "Immigration in a rural context" in the book "The Routledge History of Rural America"

Author(s)
Cecilia Tsu
Published in
Routledge
Publication Date

Description
Cecilia Tsu chapter "Immigration in a rural context" was published in the book "The Routledge History of Rural America." The Routledge History of Rural America charts the course of rural life in the United States, raising questions about what makes a place rural and how rural places have shaped the history of the nation. Bringing together leading scholars to analyze a wide array of themes in rural history and culture, this text is a state-of-the-art resource for students, scholars, and educators at all levels. This Routledge History provides a regional context for understanding change in rural communities across America and examines a number of areas where the history of rural people has deviated from the American mainstream. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding of the interplay between urban and rural areas, a knowledge of the regional differences within the rural United States, and an awareness of the importance of agriculture and rural life to American society.

The book is divided into four main sections: regions of rural America, rural lives in context, change and development, and resources for scholars and teachers. The chapters on rural lives provide an entrée into the social and cultural history of rural peoples – women, children and men – as well as a description of some of the forces shaping rural communities, such as immigration, race and religious difference. 

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