By Jussi S. Jauhiainen and Miriam Tedeschi

This open access monograph provides an overview of the everyday lives of undocumented migrants, thereby focusing on housing, employment, social networks, healthcare, migration trajectories as well as their use of the internet and social media. Although the book’s empirical focus is Finland, the themes connect the latter to broader geographical scales, reaching from global migration issues to the EU asylum policies, including in the post-2015 situations and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as from national, political, and societal issues regarding undocumented migrants to the local challenges, opportunities, and practices in municipalities and communities. The book investigates how one becomes an undocumented migrant, sometimes by failing the asylum process. The book also discusses research ethics and provides practical guidelines and reflects on how to conduct quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research about undocumented migrants. Finally, the book addresses emerging research topics regarding undocumented migrants.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2021. 190p.

Edited by Marlou Schrover, Joanne van der Leun, Leo Lucassen and Chris Quispel

Two issues come to the fore in current debates over migration: illegal migration and the role of gender in illegal migration. This incisive study combines the two subjects and views the migration scholarship through the lens of the gender perspective, investigating definitions of citizenship and the differences in mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion for men and women, producing a comprehensive account of illegal migration in Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, Mexico, Malaysia, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East over the nineteenth- and the twentieth centuries.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008. 196p.

Edited by Ignazia Bartholini

"This volume, edited by Ignazia Bartholini, principal investigator of the PROVIDE - Proximity on Violence: Defence and Equity project (Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme - 2014-2020) funded by the EU, shifted the interpretative focus of its research from gender-based to proximity violence. This theoretical intuition-assertion, fruitful too at empirical level, is informed by a wide-scale reconstruction of the phenomenon of migratory violence and corroborated by the results of the action research carried out by six international teams ˗ Ismu, Oxfam, Telefono Donna, Badia Grande, Aseis Lagarto, SamuSocial International, the University of Jaén and the University of Palermo. Systems of protection, formal and informal good practices, as well as critical issues regarding the reception of migrants, are explored and narrated by the co-authors of the volume thanks to the action research they conducted with the collaboration of a plethora of professionals who narrate and illustrate the topic of proximity violence, providing their own particular frames of reference, views and counterfactual reflections. Furthermore, the discussion of legislation provided offers a cogent cross section of what has been done to contrast the violence which thousands of asylum seekers and refugees undergo and how much national governments need to do in order to host and recognise victims of proximity violence."

Milano, Italy: FrancoAngel, 2019. 225p.

By Ilse van Liempt

Navigating Borders into the Netherlands provides a unique in-depth look at human smuggling processes. Based on biographical interviews with smuggled migrants in the Netherlands, the study reveals considerable differences that exist in smuggling's underlying causes, how journeys evolve, and outcomes of the process. This research from an insider's perspective clearly demonstrates that smuggled migrants are not passive actors, there is a broad variety in types of smugglers, and interactions between migrants and smugglers largely determine how the smuggling process evolves.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. 215p.

By Jessica M. Vaughn

The Trump administration has declared war on MS-13, the notoriously brutal gang based in El Salvador. A similar initiative launched by the Bush administration in 2005 stifled the gang's activity after several years, but the gang has been able to rebuild itself here since 2012.

Center researchers reviewed more than 500 cases of MS-13 gang members arrested nationwide since 2012. We conclude that this resurgence represents a very serious threat to public safety in communities where MS-13 has rebuilt itself. The resurgence is directly connected to the illegal arrival and resettlement of more than 300,000 Central American youths and families that has continued unabated for six years, and to a de-prioritization of immigration enforcement in the interior of the country that occurred at the same time.

All criminal gangs are a threat to public safety, but MS-13 is a unique problem because of the unusually brutal crimes its members have committed, its success in using intimidation to victimize and control people in its territory, and its focus on recruiting young members, often in schools.

Nevertheless, because such a large share of MS-13 members are not citizens, they are especially vulnerable to law enforcement, and many can be removed from the communities they terrorize. Strategic use of immigration enforcement is a necessary element to disrupting and dismantling MS-13 gangs and any other transnational criminal organization operating in our communities.

The proliferation of sanctuary policies that interfere with cooperation between state and local law enforcement agencies threatens to hamper efforts to stifle MS-13 activity. The federal government must take steps to clarify how federal law permits such cooperation and also must set up consequences for those jurisdictions and officials who impose sanctuary policies.

Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2018. 17p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

This study shows that migrant smuggling routes affect every part of the world. It is based on an extensive review of existing data and literature. The study presents detailed information about key smuggling routes, such as the magnitude, the profiles of smugglers and smuggled migrants, the modus operandi of smugglers and the risks that smuggled migrants face. It shows that smugglers use land, air and sea routes – and combinations of those – in their quest to profit from people’s desire to improve their lives. Smugglers also expose migrants to a range of risks; violence, theft, exploitation, sexual violence, kidnapping and even death along many routes.

New York: University Nations, 2018. 170p.

By Sylvie Bredeloup and Olivier Pliez

Since the mid 1990s, the media have directed our attention to the thousands of Southern Sahara Africans who take life threatening risks crossing the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic ocean. Their numbers on migratory routes leading to Europe are increasing, joining up, especially in the “Libyan crossroad” with North Africans, Egyptians and even Asian migrants on the same quest. This image reflects reality, but only partially so, for it leads one to believe that these migrants cross the Sahara in the hope of reaching Europe. It should be pointed out that one of the main misunderstandings when evoking these migrations flows is to reduce them to the act of crossing the straits of the Mediterranean Sea. Since the 1990s, the Libyan case exemplifies the way the multilateral (EU-Maghreb) or bilateral (Libya-Italy) political negotiations between the two shores of the Mediterranean sea rapidly focus on the figure of the “illegal sub-Saharan migrant in transit”. This simplistic view is dangerous because it erases the historical dimension of the movement of people and its consequences. The Sahara is not merely a desert to be crossed; it is an area that has been shaped for more than half a century by the various migrant, trader or pastoral communities who have contributed to its massive urbanisation and economic development. At the same time, the reorganization of African migration is affected by the inflation of tensions, border and police controls, the diversification of routes between Niger, Chad Sudan and Libya consequently contributes to the perpetuation of transit spaces. There are tens of thousands of these migrants who settle down more or less durably in these new transit areas dependants on opportunity, status controls, and expulsions. But these transit areas have also become places where migrants seek employment, create new economic activities, or develop new skills while working, studying or practicing other tongues. As migration patterns across the Sahara are reconfigured, the impact is more visible in some places. But their durability should not be taken for granted. Villages specialised in the transit economy may easily decline as new diplomatic relations are formed between countries of immigration and third countries

Florence, Italy: European University Institute. 2011. 23p.

By Linguère M'Baye

The aim of this thesis is to study through four essays the economics of migration from developing countries. The …rst chapter assesses the e¤ect of natural disasters (mainly due to climate change), in developing countries, on migration rates and looks at how this e¤ect varies according to the level of education of people. Our results show that natural disasters are positively associated with emigration rates and also involve the migration of highly skilled people. The second chapter presents the di¤erent channels explaining the intention to migrate illegally. One of the novelties of the analysis is that it uses a tailor-made survey among urban Senegalese individuals. We …nd that potential illegal migrants are willing to accept a substantial risk of death and tend to be young, single and with a low level of education. We also show that the price of illegal migration, migrant networks, high expectations, tight immigration policies and the preferred destination country all play a role in the willingness to migrate illegally. The third chapter completes the second one by studying the role of risk-aversion and discount rate in illegal migration from Senegal. Our results show that these individual preferences matter in the willingness to migrate illegally and to pay a smuggler. Finally in the fourth chapter, we are interested in the e¤ect of migrants on credit markets in a rural Senegalese context. According to our results, having a migrant in a household increases both the likelihood of having a loan and its size, whether the loan is formal or informal. We also …nd that this positive e¤ect remains signi…cant no matter if the loan is taken for professional activities or simply to buy food.

Université d' Auvergne ,CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International. 2013. 183p.

By M. C. Chiuri, G. De Arcangelis, A. M. D'Uggento and G. Ferri

The Survey on illegal migration in Italy (SIMI henceforth) aims to analyse the phenomenon of clandestines migrating to or through Italy. SIMI contains information concerning the main demographic, economic and social characteristics of a sample of 920 clandestines crossing Italian borders and apprehended during 2003. Individual motivations to migrate, migrants’ intentions to return, their expectations about income at destination and their intended remittance rates are collected within SIMI and discussed in this paper. Evidence generally corroborates the predictions of the pertinent literature on development economics with respect to the decision to migrate. Apprehended illegal migrants expected to earn about 8-10 times their income at home, had they reached final destination. The median cost of the trip is more than a yearly average income. One of the conclusions of the survey is that future migratory flows may be massive, as the interviewees (typically in the mid-20s and with family and friends at home that are ready to join in the future) perceive themselves as frontrunners among nationals in their age cohort.

Italy: CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics, 2007. 22p.

Edited by Sergio Carrera and Elspeth Guild

While the current migration and refugee crisis is the most severe that the world has known since the end of the Second World War (with over 60 million refugees worldwide, according to the UNHCR), it may turn into the norm, because the reasons to migrate keep on multiplying. These reasons range from long-lasting political crises, endemic civil wars, atrocities committed against ethnic or religious groups by extremist organisations to the lack of economic development prospects and climate change. The European Union has a duty to welcome some of these people – namely those who need international protection. With over a million irregular migrants crossing its external borders in 2015, the European Union has to engage in a deep reflection on the rationale underpinning its policies on irregular migration and migrant smuggling – and their effects. At such a strenuous time, the challenge before us is “to work closely together in a spirit of solidarity” while the “need to secure Europe’s borders” remains an imperative, to recall President Juncker’s words. Of particular relevance in this framework is the issue of migrant smuggling, or facilitation of irregular entry, stay or transit. Addressing migrant smuggling – located at the intersection of criminal law, which sanctions organised crime, the management of migration and the protection of the fundamental rights of irregular migrants – has become a pressing priority. But the prevention of and fight against migrant smuggling is a complex process, affected by contextual factors, including a high level of economic and social disparity between the EU and several third countries, difficult cooperation with source and transit countries and limited legal migration channels to the EU

Brussels: Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), 2016. 112p.

By Sarah Wolff

The main argument is that improving migrants’ rights and conceptual linkages between SSG/R and migration is best achieved, by decentring our gaze, namely going beyond the ‘national’ and ‘state-centric’ view that characterizes traditionally SSG/R and to consider the agency of both migrants and SSR actors. First from a migrants’ perspective, it is key for SSR actors to go beyond traditional legal classifications and to consider the diversity of personal situations that involve refugees, stranded migrants and asylum seekers, which might endorse different roles at different times of their journeys and lives. Second, the transnational nature of migration calls for a transnationalization of SSG/R too. For too long the concept has mostly been applied within the national setting of SSR institutions and actors. Migration calls for a clear decentring that involves a transnational dimension and more work among transnational actors and policymakers to facilitate a norm transfer from the domestic to the interstate and international level. As such, the ‘transnational’ nature of migration and its governance needs to be ‘domesticated’ within the national context in order to change the mindset of SSG/R actors and institutions. More importantly, the paper argues that poor SSG/R at home produces refugees and incentivizes migrants to leave their countries after being victims of violence by law enforcement and security services. During migrants’ complex and fragmented journeys, good security sector governance is fundamental to address key challenges faced by these vulnerable groups. I also argue that a better understanding of migrants’ and refugees’ security needs is beneficial and central to the good governance of the security sector. After reviewing the key terms of migration and its drivers in section 2, section 3 reviews how SSG is part of the implementation of the GCM. SSR actors play a role in shaping migratory routes and refugees’ incentives to leave, in explaining migrants’ and refugees’ resilience, in protecting migrants and refugees, and in providing security. Although it cautions against artificial classifications and the term of ‘transit migration’, section 4 reviews what the core challenges are in the countries of origin, transit and destination. Section 5 provides a detailed overview of the linkages between migration and each security actor: the military, police forces, intelligence services, border guards, interior ministries, private actors, criminal justice, parliaments, independent oversight bodies and civil society. Section 6 formulates some recommendations.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2021. 80p.

By Ellebrecht, Sabrina

The external border of the EU remains under permanent construction. Sabrina Ellebrecht engages with two of its primary building sites – the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur) and the Refugee Boat. She analyzes how the function and quality of the EU's current political border is crafted, shaped, produced and eventually stabilized through these two mediators. Eurosur and the Refugee Boat mediate a level of Europeanization which has hitherto – and would otherwise have – been impossible. While Eurosur mobilizes the limits of border policing in various ways, the Refugee Boat functions as the vacillating European Other to legitimize both control and humanitarian interventions. The study shows the specific, if not constitutive, ambivalences of EU border policies, and explores the emergence of viapolitics.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2020. 321p.

Edited By Mark Gibney, Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Markus Krajewski, Wouter Vandenhole

"The Routledge Handbook on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations brings international scholarship on transnational human rights obligations into a comprehensive and wide-ranging volume. Each chapter combines a thorough analysis of a particular issue area and provides a forward-looking perspective of how extraterritorial human rights obligations (ETOs) might come to be more fully recognized, outlining shortcomings but also best state practices. It builds insights gained from state practice to identify gaps in the literature and points to future avenues of inquiry. The Handbook is organized into seven thematic parts: conceptualization and theoretical foundations; enforcement; migration and refugee protection; financial assistance and sanctions; finance, investment and trade; peace and security; and environment. Chapters summarize the cutting edge of current knowledge on key topics as leading experts critically reflect on ETOs, and, where appropriate, engage with the Maastricht Principles to critically evaluate their value 10 years after their adoption. The Routledge Handbook on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations is an authoritative and essential reference text for scholars and students of human rights and human rights law, and more broadly, of international law and international relations as well as to those working in international economic law, development studies, peace and conflict studies, environmental law and migration."

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 500p.

By Human Rights Watch

As the harmful effects of immigration detention become more widely known and the appropriateness of detaining migrants is increasingly questioned, governments are looking at alternatives to detention as more humane and rights-respecting approaches to addressing the management of migrants and asylum seekers with unsettled legal status. This report examines alternatives to immigration detention in six countries: Bulgaria, Canada, Republic of Cyprus, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States to highlight viable, successful alternatives that countries should implement before resorting to detention. While the report provides an analysis of specific alternatives to detention (often referred to as ATDs) in each country, it is not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of all alternative programs available.

Each country featured in this report has taken a different approach to alternatives to detention. Some focus more heavily on surveillance and others on a more person-centered, holistic approach. Ultimately, this report finds alternatives that place the basic needs and dignity of migrants at the forefront of policy, such as community-based case management programs, offer a rights-respecting alternative to detention while simultaneously furthering governments’ legitimate immigration enforcement aims.

New York: HRW, 2021. 103p.

By Human Rights Watch

The 29-page report “‘Their Faces Were Covered’: Greece’s Use of Migrants as Police Auxiliaries in Pushbacks,” found that Greek police are detaining asylum seekers at the Greece-Turkey land border at the Evros River, in many cases stripping them of most of their clothing and stealing their money, phones, and other possess

New York: HRW, 2022. 42p.

By Felipe Jácome

This paper argues that the violence experienced by migrants crossing Mexico in their way to the United States needs to be understood as a case of structural violence. Based on several months of field work conducted along the migrant route in Mexico, the paper emphasizes that trans-Mexican migrants suffer not only from forms of direct violence such as beatings, kidnappings, and rape, but also endure great suffering from expressions of indirect violence such as poverty, hunger, marginalization, and health threats. Addressing trans-Mexican migration as a case of structural violence is also crucial in grasping the complex dynamics that characterize this violence, including the impunity and systematization of violence, and the social forces, policies, and institutions that perpetuate it.

Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Center for Latin American Studies, 2008. 38p.

By Masja van Meeteren

In 'Irregular Migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands', Masja van Meeteren studies the different ways in which irregular migrants live in Belgium and the Netherlands. The book offers an empirically grounded theoretical critique of the dominant research practice that focuses on 'survival strategies', relies on comparisons of migrant communities and overemphasizes structural explanations. Instead, Irregular Migrants takes irregular migrants´ aspirations as a starting point of analysis. Based on this innovative research approach, key questions are answered regarding the lives of irregular migrants. How can we understand their patterns of economic and social incorporation, the transnational activities they engage in, and the significance of different forms of capital? Drawing on intensive participant observation, as well as more than two hundred in-depth interviews with irregular migrants and representatives of organizations that are involved with them, Irregular Migrants develops much-needed contextualized insights. As such, it sheds new light on previous research findings and various deadlocked scholarly debates on irregular migrants in Western societies.

IMSCOE Research. Amsterdam University Press. 2014. 250p

By Aysen Ustubici

As concern about immigration has grown within Europe in recent years, the European Union has brought pressure to bear on countries that are allegedly not sufficiently governing irregular migration with and within their borders. This book looks at that issue in Turkey and Morocco, showing how it affects migrants in these territories, and how migrant illegality has been produced by law, practiced and negotiated by the state, other civil society actors, and by migrants themselves. Ayen Üstübici focuses on a number of different aspects of migrant illegality, such as experiences of deportation, participation in economic life, and access to health care and education, in order to reveal migrants' strategies and the various ways they seek to legitimise their stay.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. 249p.

By Steinhilper, Elias

Migrant protest has proliferated worldwide in the last two decades, explicitly posing questions of identity, rights, and equality in a globalized world. Nonetheless, such mobilizations are considered anomalies in social movement studies, and political sociology more broadly, due to 'weak interests' and a particularly disadvantageous position of 'outsiders' to claim rights connected to citizenship. In an attempt to address this seeming paradox, this book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavourable contexts of marginalization. Such a perspective unveils both the odds of precarious mobilizations, and the ways they can be temporarily overcome. While adopting the encompassing terminology of 'migrant', the book focuses on precarious migrants, including both asylum seekers and 'illegalized' migrants.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. 205p.

By Sverre Molland

The book investigates how the United Nations, governments, and aid agencies mobilise and instrumentalise migration policies and programmes through a discourse of safe migration. Since the early 2000s, numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, and governments have warmed to the concept of safe migration, often within a context of anti-trafficking interventions. Yet, both the policy-enthusiasm for safety, as well as how safe migration comes into being through policies and programs remain unexplored. Based on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mekong region, this is the first book that traces the emergence of safe migration, why certain aid actors gravitate towards the concept, as well as how safe migration policies and programmes unfold through aid agencies and government bodies. The book argues that safe migration is best understood as brokered safety. Although safe migration policy interventions attempt to formalize pre-emptive and protective measures to enhance labour migrants’ well-being, the book shows through vivid ethnographic details how formal migration assistance in itself depends on – and produces – informal and mediated practices. The book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration policies look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorizing of contemporary forms of migration governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and human geographers working within the fields of Migration studies, Development Studies, as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 229p.