By Ray Jureidini and Said Fares Hassan

Migration and Islamic Ethics, Issues of Residence, Naturalization and Citizenship contains various cases of migration movements in the Muslim world from ethical and legal perspectives to argue that Muslim migration experiences can offer a new paradigm of how the religious and the moral can play a significant role in addressing forced migration and displacement Readership: All interested in migration movements including residence, naturalization, and citizenship; Islamic Ethics and Islamic legal debates on movements in and out of the Muslim world, including asylum seekers and refugees.

Leiden: Brill, 2019. 240p.

Edited by Christina R. Clark-Kazak

Forced migration shaped the creation of Canada as a settler state and is a defining feature of our contemporary national and global contexts. Many people in Canada have direct or indirect experiences of refugee resettlement and protection, trafficking, and environmental displacement. Offering a comprehensive resource in the growing field of migration studies, Forced Migration in/to Canada is a critical primer from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Researchers, practitioners, and knowledge keepers draw on documentary evidence and analysis to foreground lived experiences of displacement and migration policies at the municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal levels. From the earliest instances of Indigenous displacement and settler colonialism, through Black enslavement, to statelessness, trafficking, and climate migration in today’s world, contributors show how migration, as a human phenomenon, is differentially shaped by intersecting identities and structures. Particularly novel are the specific insights into disability, race, class, social age, and gender identity.  

2024.

By Josiah Heyman

US political discourse characterizes the US-Mexico border as a site of threat and, of necessity, exclusion. This frame ignores the importance of borders to economies, families, and culture in our increasingly interconnected world. Moreover, it leads to policies that place people at risk of victimization and death. In conceiving of the border solely in terms of exclusion, nations forego the opportunity to strengthen relationships across borders. This paper argues that the politics of humane migration require a vision of borders as sites of encounter, engagement, and relationship, rather than solely exclusion. This reconceptualization of the US-Mexico border, in particular, would strengthen relationships across borders, and prioritize cooperation between Latin America/the Caribbean and the United States, starting with regulated legal flows. It would also respond to the shared contexts of migration, including contraband in arms and drugs, criminal violence, and climate change. It articulates an alternative vision of borders as a “commons” in which mutual needs can be addressed (a commons is an issue or resource in which every one has access and involvement). Migration itself provides a perfect example of such a need. It takes place in a political climate partially but powerfully shaped by racism and classism. Thus, it has become a polarized “issue” that appears insolvable. In fact, it may not be a problem at all. Rather, in our current demographic-economic situation, as well as for our cultural well-being, migration should be treated as an asset. Insofar as it needs to be addressed, this paper delineates many possibilities. The options are not perfect and magical — the challenges are hard and diverse — but they an advance a vision of a shared cross-border space on migration. That might be a crucial move, not only for migration, but along a path that recognizes relationships and commitments of many kinds across the hemisphere and world. Recognition is not enough; real change in resources and power needs to follow. But a vision of connection rather than exclusion provides the political starting point needed for change to happen. In every political instance in which borders are used to frame migration in terms of who, how, and how much to exclude, connectedness loses ground. A politics of humane migration can only emerge if rooted in a positive vision of borders as sites of engagement and encounter.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 321-331

By Cate E. Bird and Austin Shangraw

This article highlights the importance of accounting for the dead in migration contexts, from international humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law (IHRL), and forensic perspectives. Starting by reviewing obligations under IHL and IHRL for the processes of accounting, the article discusses forensic action and the role that accounting can play to protect the dead and clarify the fate and whereabouts of the missing for their families. Considering the complexity of missing and deceased migrant cases, this problem must be approached from several complementary angles, including States codifying international legal obligations related to accounting for the dead in domestic legal or policy frameworks; developing national mechanisms to collect, centralize, and report disaggregated information on migrant deaths; addressing migrant deaths from a public health perspective; pursuing identification efforts including participating in transnational coordination mechanisms; developing strong partnerships with civil society actors; and coupling accounting initiatives with policies that promote the search for missing migrants.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 310-320

By Gabriella Soto

This article explores how undocumented border crosser (UBC) deaths are counted as well as mis- and under-counted across the US southwest, and proposes a suite of policy remediations to standardize this process. An accurate count of UBC recovered remains is vital to understanding the scope of fatalities associated with border crossing, providing evidence accounting for the reciprocal relationship between US border enforcement and the incidence of migration-related death. To meaningfully intervene, it is insufficient to advocate only for more robust individual death investigations, though this is pivotal to forensically identify UBC decedents and unite them with their loved ones. Though identification and reunification of UBCs are the elements of forensic care most commonly attributed as humanitarian, the relationship between forensic investigation and international humanitarian principles is equally about accumulating primary evidence for policy intervention and justice claims on behalf of those who wrongfully die. Even if existing counting mechanisms do not provide the means for establishing this attribution between border-crossing deaths and border enforcement policy, this article lays out an argument for why they must do so and it makes recommendations for how this can take place. Necessarily, this article begins with a critique of existing mechanisms for counting UBC deaths, from the federal observation of such deaths by Customs and Border Protection, to the bureaucratic mechanisms for the collection of vital statistics authored at the local level. It then suggests means for improving accurate counting using the US Standard Certificate of Death. It particularly explores two aspects of the certificate, Manner of Death reporting and a section that asks death filers to describe how the death occurred, sections 37 and 43 respectively. Finally, it explores historical precedent for altering the standard death form at local and then national levels, positing that select amendments to the existing death certificate would be useful for standardizing how medicolegal death filers across the border and beyond can more accurately enumerate and characterize UBC deaths.

Policy recommendations include the following, in order of immediacy:

• Jurisdictions across the US southwest must adopt standardized criteria for counting fatalities believed to be associated with undocumented border crossing.

• Despite some local formalization of UBC counting, current means of representing UBC status in vital records remains ad hoc across the US southwest and existing mechanisms for counting elude wider scale national recognition in vital statistics. The most straightforward and reliable method of standardization to ensure systematic representation of UBC deaths across the borderlands would be a UBC checkbox on the death certificate. This would require cooperation with state-level public health departments and legislatures. Precedent exists for changing the death form at the state level, facilitating, in some cases, for eventual inclusion of new components of the death certificate to be adopted on the US Standard Certificate of Death. This is recommended as a longer-term goal.

• Finally, there must be a means to characterize the deadly relationship between UBC fatalities and US border enforcement policy and practice in vital records where UBC Manners of Death are most often characterized as “Natural” or “Accidental.” Both are inaccurate. Unilaterally ensuring an accurate count leaves room for a trend already well underway in which agencies associated with border enforcement have cast UBC deaths as simply due to unfortunate heat-related accidents, resulting in legislation aimed to mitigate deaths that fails to address the role of border policy in causing deaths. This paper recommends that a new Manner of Death category could be useful beyond the border to represent non-capital crimes enforced by leveraging bodily harm.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 290-309

By Jasmine R. Hernandez and Heather J. H. Edgar

The United States is no stranger to migration across its borders. In 2020, its Southwestern border saw a drastic increase in apprehensions by the Border Patrol. While imperfect and an undercount of the true number of migration events, apprehension data is often used as a proxy to understand migration patterns. The rise in migration was coupled with an increased but unknown number of deaths along migration routes. This article focuses on the New Mexico portion of the El Paso Border Patrol Sector and the increased migrant caseload at New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI) over the last few years. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first academic study to examine migrant deaths in detail in southern New Mexico. We begin by contextualizing the changing pattern of migrant deaths in New Mexico within the broader framework of border policing strategies that have intentionally pushed migration routes to remote areas. We describe the work of the OMI, highlighting its very recent initiatives to track migrant deaths in its database. We then discuss the changes seen by the OMI in its migrant caseload from fiscal year (FY) 2009 to 2023, with the most drastic increase in cases occurring from 2022 to 2023. For instance, the data indicate that most of the identified migrants that have died in New Mexico were recovered in June and July (45 percent), crossed through Doña Ana County (66 percent), were male (60 percent), and among those identified, were from Mexico (65 percent) and between 20 and 39 years of age (69 percent). Of the 248 cases of migrant deaths, 87 percent have been identified. The most common causes of death were undetermined (46 percent) and environmental exposure (41 percent). We then explore the effects of changing governmental policies and state initiatives to curb/reduce migration in the US on OMI’s increased caseload. We discuss the impact that the rapid shift in migration deaths is having on the OMI and how OMI is working to respond and adjust to the dynamic situation. This work highlights the collateral damage of border security measures, underscored by the increasing number of deaths and challenges faced by the OMI. We consider the need for new and amended policies aimed at mitigating the humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold, emphasizing the need for the humane treatment of migrants. Finally, we suggest allocating resources to death investigating agencies. These resources would provide essential support to find, identify, and repatriate migrants, improve agencies’ abilities to collaborate with governmental agencies and programs such as Border Patrol’s Missing Migrant Program, and improve our understanding of the circumstances along the Southwestern border.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 226-242

By Abby Córdova, Jonathan Hiskey, Mary Malone and Diana Orcés

U.S. efforts to control unauthorized crossings of its southwest border have long rested on the idea of deterrence — if migrants know that a border is dangerous to cross and the likelihood of deportation is high, they will be dissuaded from trying in the first place. Despite the seemingly intuitive logic of this strategy, and the billions of dollars invested in it, deterrence efforts largely have failed, with the number of border crossings in recent years exceeding those of 30 years ago. To understand why this decades-old, bipartisan deterrence strategy has proven ineffective, we focus on individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who have previous migration experience, with a vast majority of them seeking entry into the U.S. These individuals have direct knowledge of the difficulties and dangers a border crossing poses, yet many report plans to try to cross the border again. To understand why they persist, we rely on survey data specifically collected to better understand the root causes of international migration. We find that citizens with previous migration experience are significantly more likely to report plans to emigrate, in particular women, younger cohorts, and those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In contrast, family reunification does not appear to play a significant role in driving the migration intentions of those with a prior migration experience. Further, deportation does not deter migrants from trying again, as individuals who have been deported are just as likely to report plans to emigrate again as those who returned to their home countries voluntarily and those who never reached their destination. Most importantly, our research indicates that human insecurity is at the core of why Central Americans who have migrated in the past are more likely to report migration plans for the future. Both the threat of violence and food insecurity are central drivers of their persistent predisposition to embark on the journey again. Individuals remain undeterred in their efforts to escape their country because upon returning to that country, they confront the same conditions that led them to attempt to flee in the first place. We draw two main policy implications from our research. First, the U.S. government should continue its prioritization of investments in tackling the root causes of forced migration through the empowerment of civil society organizations and the channeling of foreign aid to marginalized communities affected by human insecurity, such as those suffering food insecurity or fearing violence. The main objective of these investments should be to improve the living conditions of individuals, giving them a viable option of remaining in their country. Second, the U.S. must invest greater resources in its immigration system to reduce the current backlog of asylum cases, and expand H2-a and -b visa programs to provide a more expansive legal path to migration. Facilitating a legal pathway to immigrants who face heightened human insecurity, like the potential repeat migrants in our study, would prevent further deaths that lay at the hands of a border policy focused on deterrence.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 160-181

By Nicole Hallett

The border has never played a larger role in the American psyche than it does today, and yet it has never been less legally significant. Today, a noncitizen’s place of residence tells you less about what rights and privileges they enjoy than it ever has in the past. The border has migrated inward, affecting many aspects of non-citizens’ lives in the United States. The divergence between the physical and legal border is no accident. Instead, it is a policy response to the perceived loss of control over the physical border. But the physical border remains porous despite these legal changes. People keep migrating even as we continue to draw boundaries within communities, homes, and workplaces far away from the border. This paper explores how U.S. law has evolved to render the border superfluous, even as its symbolic importance has grown, and how it might further evolve in the future.

University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2023, Article 6.

By Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto

For the just-ended 2024 fiscal year, the Biden administration turned the tide at the U.S.-Mexico border after two years of record levels of irregular crossings, by deepening its carrot-and-stick approach alongside increased immigration enforcement throughout the Western Hemisphere, especially from Mexico. For the full fiscal year that ended September 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported 2.1 million encounters at and between ports of entry along the Southwest border—a 14 percent decrease from the nearly 2.5 million encounters recorded in FY 2023. The month of September represented the lowest monthly encounters of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization seen during this administration—with 54,000 encounters a steep drop from the all-time monthly high of 250,000 encounters recorded in December 2023. The September tally also represents the lowest level of irregular arrivals since September 2020, at the tail end of the Trump administration. An additional 199,000 encounters were recorded at the U.S.-Canada border during FY 2024, for a total at all borders of 2.3 million. The Biden playbook rests on narrowing asylum eligibility for migrants who cross the border illegally, expanding the use of lawful migration pathways, and encouraging Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and other regional partners to increase their migration controls and enforcement. Unauthorized crossings of the U.S. Southern border began to fall steadily in January as Mexico further stepped up its enforcement. Irregular crossings dropped even more sharply following the administration’s June implementation of the Secure the Border rule. This rule suspends asylum eligibility at the border when crossings reach a seven-day average of 2,500; the bar remains in place until encounters drop below 1,500 for 28 consecutive days. At the same time, options for lawful migration pathways—such as the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) parole program; use of the CBP One app to schedule an appointment to be screened for entry at a port; and Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) that allow migrants to be considered for protection or other pathways far earlier in their journeys—have led to more migrants arriving at ports of entry to be paroled into the country and as refugees.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2024.

By Catherine Wihtol de Wenden

This open-access short reader investigates how migration has become an increasingly important issue in international relations since the turn of the 21st century. It investigates specific aspects of this migration diplomacy such as double citizenship or bilateral agreements on border controls which can become important tools for bargain or pressure. This short reader also discusses the intersections between migration and international relations concerning issues of global governance such as conflicts and refugees, development and mobility, or environmental migration. The book thereby shows the extent of bargaining involved in migration and international relations, the so-called “soft diplomacy of migrations” as seen in the EU/Turkish agreement on borders in 2016, or the EU negotiations with Maghreb or Sub-Saharan countries on readmissions against development programs and visas. As such this reader provides a must-read to students, academics, researchers policy makers, and everyone who wants to learn more about the international relations aspects of migration governance.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2023. 98p.

By Chris Jones , Romain Lanneau , Yasha Maccanico u.a.

For at least three decades, the EU and its Member States have engaged in a process of “externalization” – a policy agenda by which the EU seeks to prevent migrants and refugees from setting foot on EU territory by externalizing (that is, outsourcing) border controls to non-EU states. The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, published in September 2020, proposed a raft of measures seeking to step up operational cooperation and collaboration to further this agenda. This report aims to contribute to public and political debate on the transparency, accountability, and legitimacy of the externalization agenda. It contains a series of case studies on three key target states for the EU – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, and Niger – based on information received in response to access to documents and freedom of information requests submitted to institutions within those countries, as well as within the EU itself.

Brüssel:  Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union, December 2022. 48p.

By: Jennifer Vallentine, Roberto Forin, and Bram Frouws  

Migrant-receiving countries are increasingly focusing on return and reintegration as central elements of migration management. This briefing paper outlines key messages from research MMC has carried out on the experience of returning migrants in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe, since 2017

Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre, 2024. 8p.

Edited by Krista Lynes, Tyler Morgenstern, and Ian Alan Paul

In recent years, spectacular images of ruined boats, makeshift border camps, and beaches littered with life vests have done much to consolidate the politics of movement in Europe. Indeed, the mediation of migration as a crisis has worked to shore up various forms of militarized surveillance, humanitarian response, legislative action, and affective investment. Bridging academic inquiry and artistic and activist practice, the essays, documents, and artworks gathered in Moving Images interrogate the mediation of migration and refugeeism in the contemporary European conjuncture, asking how images, discourses, and data are involved in shaping the visions and experience of migration in increasingly global contexts.

Bielefeld : Transcript, [2020]

Edited by Ivan Ureta

Sensitive issues like migration and human mobility provoke paradigms and prejudices in public opinion. Media, Migration and Public Opinion is a collective effort of academic criticism to overcome these myths. The main motive of this book is linked to the fact that migration, media and public opinion related issues focusing on North Africa have not been addressed properly by available literature. Against this background, the objective of Media, Migration and Public Opinion pursues three aims: Firstly, it fills a gap in the scholarly literature regarding media, political communication and migration by shifting the focus to the North African countries Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Secondly, it assesses to what extent the paradigms of the «other» and its characterization as a source of problems established in receiving countries are also present in sending and transit countries. Thirdly, the book puts North African issues in relation to European countries by presenting case-studies focused on Spain, Malta and Switzerland in order to raise commonalities and differences.

Bern, SWIT: Peter Lang, 2011. 292p.

By Shreya Bhat and Hui Yin Chuah

Mixed migration from Myanmar to countries in South and Southeast Asia has become a common phenomenon driven by various factors, including violence, insecurity, conflict, deprivation of rights, and economic reasons. The complexity of migration journeys is evident, often involving transit through multiple locations over extended periods. This report underscores the integral role of smugglers in facilitating migration from Myanmar to Malaysia and Thailand, influenced by a complex interplay of factors that result in considerable variation in the dynamics of smuggling among different population groups and on different routes. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing targeted interventions aimed at addressing the vulnerabilities and challenges faced by refugees and migrants in the region.

Geneva, SWIT: Mixed Migration Centre. 2024, 17pg

By Julia Black

Nearly 60 percent of deaths documented during migration are linked to drowning. Search and rescue capacities to assist migrants in distress at sea must be strengthened to help save lives, while working with IOM, partners, and governments to facilitate regular migration pathways. More than two-thirds of those whose deaths were documented through IOM’s Missing Migrants Project are unidentified. Without knowing the fate of migrants from their households and communities, families and those communities of origin must face the lasting impacts of the ambiguous loss of a loved one. More than one in three migrants whose country of origin could be identified come from countries in conflict. This implies attempts to leave areas of conflict without safe pathways to do so. One of IOM’s strategic priorities is to work with countries to facilitate safe, regular, and orderly pathways to ameliorate unnecessary loss of life through dangerous, irregular means.   

Berlin: Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) International Organization for Migration (IOM). 2024, 19pg

By Amnesty International

In recent years, human rights defenders and civil society organizations that have helped refugees and migrants have been subjected to unfounded criminal proceedings, undue restrictions of their activities, intimidation, harassment, and smear campaigns in several European countries. Their acts of assistance and solidarity have placed them on a collision course with European migration policies. These policies are aimed at preventing refugees and migrants from reaching the EU, at containing those who make it to Europe in their first country of arrival, and at deporting as many as possible back to their countries of origin.

By rescuing refugees and migrants in danger at sea or in the mountains, offering them food and shelter, documenting police and border guard abuses, and opposing unlawful deportations, human rights defenders have exposed the cruelty caused by immigration policies and have become themselves the target of the authorities. Authorities and political leaders have treated acts of humanity as a threat to national security and public order, further hindering their work and forcing them to divest their scarce resources and energy into defending themselves in court.

This report shows how European governments, EU institutions and authorities have deployed an array of restrictive, sanctioning and punitive measures against individuals and groups who defend the rights of people on the move, including by using immigration and counter-terrorism regulations to unduly restrict the right to defend human rights.

London, Amnesty International. 2020, 92pg

By Milena Belloni

Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations. 

Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2019, 242pg

By Vinh Nguyen

In a world increasingly shaped by displacement and migration, refuge is both a coveted right and an elusive promise for millions. While conventionally understood as legal protection, it also transcends judicial definitions. In Lived Refuge, Vinh Nguyen reconceptualizes refuge as an ongoing affective experience and lived relation rather than a fixed category with legitimacy derived from the state.

Focusing on Southeast Asian diasporas in the wake of the Vietnam War, Nguyen examines three affective experiences—gratitude, resentment, and resilience—to reveal the actively lived dimensions of refuge. Through multifaceted analyses of literary and cultural productions, Nguyen argues that the meaning of refuge emerges from how displaced people negotiate the kinds of safety and protection that are offered to (and withheld from) them. In so doing, he lays the framework for an original and compelling understanding of contemporary refugee subjectivity.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2023, 186pg

By American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona

This report documents the U.S. government’s inhumane practice of confiscating migrants’ most essential and prized personal belongings as they cross our southern border, including vital medications and medical devices, legal and identity documents, religious items, and items of practical or sentimental importance. Drawing on case examples and perspectives of border organizations that interface directly with migrants and work on this issue firsthand, we present an in-depth depiction of the severe harms caused by the U.S. Border Patrol’s confiscation of migrants’ personal belongings. We also offer concrete policy solutions to help ensure that Border Patrol treats migrants and their belongings with care and respect.

United States, ACLU. 2024, 46pg