By Anna O. Law

This book assesses the role of the federal judiciary in immigration and the institutional evolution of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Neither court has played a static role across time. By the turn of the century, a division of labor had developed between the two courts whereby the Courts of Appeals retained their original function as error-correction courts, while the Supreme Court was reserved for the most important policy and political questions. Anna O. Law explores the consequences of this division for immigrant litigants, who are more likely to prevail in the Courts of Appeals because of advantageous institutional incentives that increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome. As this book proves, it is inaccurate to speak of an undifferentiated institution called "the federal courts" or "the courts," for such characterizations elide important differences in mission and function of the two highest courts in the federal judicial hierarchy.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 282p.

Edited by Anna Triandafyllidou

The Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies offers a comprehensive and unique study of the multi-disciplinary field of international migration and asylum studies. Utilising contemporary information and analysis, this innovative Handbook provides an in depth examination of legal migration management in the labour market and its affect upon families in relation to wider issues of migrant integration and citizenship. With a comprehensive collection of essays written by leading contributors from a broad range of disciplines including sociology of migration, human geography, legal studies, political sciences and economics, the Handbook is a truly multi-disciplinary book approaching the critical questions of: migration and the labour market; integration and citizenship; migration, families and welfare; irregular migration; smuggling and trafficking in human beings; asylum and forced migration. Organised into short thematic and geographical chapters the Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies provides a concise overview on the different topics and world regions, as well as useful guidance for both the starting and the more experienced reader. The Handbook’s expansive content and illustrative style will appeal to both students and professionals studying in the field of migration and international organisations.

Abingdon, Oxon, UK: New York: 2016. 416p.

Edited by Leanne Weber

This book provides a new point of departure for thinking critically and creatively about international borders and the perceived need to defend them, adopting an innovative ‘preferred future’ methodology. The authors critically examine a range of ‘border domains’ including law, citizenship, governance, morality, security, economy, culture and civil society, which provide the means and justification for contemporary border controls, and identify early signs that the dynamics of sovereignty and borders are being fundamentally transformed under conditions of neoliberal globalization. The goal is to locate potential pathways towards the preferred future of relaxed borders, and provide a foundation for a progressive politics dedicated to moving beyond mere critique of the harm and inequity of border controls and capable of envisaging a differently bordered world.

London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 212p.

By Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

When Beatles star John Lennon faced deportation from the U.S. in the 1970s, his lawyer Leon Wildes made a groundbreaking argument. He argued that Lennon should be granted “nonpriority” status pursuant to INS’s (now DHS’s) policy of prosecutorial discretion. In U.S. immigration law, the agency exercises prosecutorial discretion favorably when it refrains from enforcing the full scope of immigration law. A prosecutorial discretion grant is important to an agency seeking to focus its priorities on the “truly dangerous” in order to conserve resources and to bring compassion into immigration enforcement. The Lennon case marked the first moment that the immigration agency’s prosecutorial discretion policy became public knowledge. Today, the concept of prosecutorial discretion is more widely known in light of the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, a record number of deportations and a stalemate in Congress to move immigration reform. Beyond Deportation is the first book to comprehensively describe the history, theory, and application of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. It provides a rich history of the role of prosecutorial discretion in the immigration system and unveils the powerful role it plays in protecting individuals from deportation and saving the government resources. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia draws on her years of experience as an immigration attorney, policy leader, and law professor to advocate for a bolder standard on prosecutorial discretion, greater mechanisms for accountability when such standards are

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  ignored, improved transparency about the cases involving prosecutorial discretion, and recognition of “deferred action” in the law as a formal benefit.

New York: New York University Press, 2015.

By Lisa (Leigh) Patel

Illegal. Undocumented. Remedial. DREAMers. All of these labels have been applied to immigrant youth. Using a combination of engaging narrative and rigorous analysis, this book<em>explores how immigrant youth are included in, and excluded from, various sectors of American society, including education. Instead of the land of opportunity, immigrant youth often encounter myriad new borders long after their physical journey to the United States is over. With an intimate storytelling style, the author invites readers to rethink assumptions about immigrant youth and what their often liminal positions reveal about the politics of inclusion in America.

New York: Teachers College Press, 2013. 144p.

By Lisa Meierotto

This book examines the convergence of conservation and security efforts along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. The author presents a unique analysis of the history of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a federally protected border wilderness area. Beginning in the early 1990s, changes to U.S. immigration policy dramatically altered the political and natural landscape in and around Cabeza Prieta. In particular, the increasing presence of Border Patrol has contributed to environmental degradation in the wilderness. Complicated human rights concerns are also explored in the book. Protecting wildlife in an area with high rates of undocumented border-crossing and smuggling results in complex and sometimes controversial conservation policies. Ultimately, the observations and analysis presented in this book illustrate ways in which the politics of race and nationalism are subtly, but significantly, interwoven into border environmental and security policies.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 208p.

By Teresa Hayter

In this new edition of Open Borders, Teresa Hayter assesses the impact of the increasing severity of border controls since they were first introduced and makes the controversial case for their abolition. Hayter focuses on postwar immigration controls, especially the use of such controls against the peoples of former European colonies and East Europeans, and their effects on asylum seekers. She examines the recent history of European coordination of border controls and the notion of ‘Fortress Europe’. Hayter argues that the existence of controls leads to great suffering and abuse of human rights, and that immigration controls are racist and help legitimate racism. She demonstrates that immigration controls have actually had a limited impact on controlling numbers. To illustrate her arguments, she draws on empirical material, especially from Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, relating in particular to the use of detention, arbitrary decision-making and the denial of benefits. She compares British government policies with policies elsewhere in Europe and calls for the free movement of people and the abolition of border controls. The new edition brings this seminal work up to date with a lengthy preface exploring how the practices of the British government over the past few years has continued the process Hayter outlines in the main text – of abusive and irrational border controls and the criminalisation of entire communities. This second edition also updates the bibliography and list of campaigning groups, and ends with a new manifesto for a world without borders, declaring 'no one is illegal!'

London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004. 240p.

Edited by Agustín Escobar Latapí and Claudia Masferrer

This open access Regional Reader describes how Mexico - United States migration changed substantially during the first decade of the 21st Century. The book provides an in-depth analysis on the changes in the flows into and out of both countries, thus highlighting the issues arising from Mexico - US migration as well as addressing the large numbers of adults and children entering Mexico from the United States. It covers how this tidal change affects the Hispanic population of the U.S. and return migrants' reincorporation in Mexico; their jobs, access to school, health and access to health services, how fear became a dominant aspect of Mexicans’ lives in the U.S., and the role played by crime and social policy in Mexico.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. 278p.

By David Bacon

For two decades veteran photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States' trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system. In particular, he analyzes NAFTA's corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers. For example, Bacon explains that, pre-NAFTA, Oaxacan corn farmers received subsidies for their crops. State-owned CONASUPO markets turned the corn into tortillas and sold them, along with milk and other basic foodstuffs, at low, subsidized prices in cities. Post-NAFTA, several things happened: the Mexican government was forced to end its

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  subsidies for corn, which meant that farmers couldn't afford to produce it; the CONASUPO system was dissolved; and cheap U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market, driving the price of corn sharply down. Because Oaxacan farming families can't sell enough corn to buy food and supplies, many thousands migrate every year, making the perilous journey over the border into the United States only to be labeled "illegal" and to find that working itself has become, for them, a crime. Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants-and the migrants themselves-as illegal. Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.

Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. 272p.

By The European Crime Prevention Network (ECPN)

Trafficking in human beings (THB) is a serious offence against personal and sexual freedom and integrity. It is often associated with legal and illegal migration flows, but this is only partly the case. It is true that irregular migration flows create a market for trafficking and exploitation, often connected to illegal migrant smuggling.1 This is why new migration flows, such as the arrival of many Ukrainian refugees in the EU, create a concern for the living conditions and the potential exploitation of migrants. On the other hand, half of the registered victims and three quarters of child victims of THB in the EU are EU nationals, with one third being registered in their own country.2 These are staggering statistics that indicate that there is a sizeable THB market within the EU that is independent of migration flows from outside the EU. The open internal borders of the Schengen zone have given rise to a specific pattern of regional trafficking that present a unique challenge to Europe.  

Brussels: EUCPN, 2022.  20p. 

By Ritu Bharadwai, Danielle Bishop, Somnath Hazra,  Enock Pufaa and James Kofi Annan.

Contemporary forms of slavery are often categorised as slavery, slavery-like practices, bonded labour, debt bondage and forced sexual exploitation. These are all interrelated and constitute a continuum.1 According to the Global Estimate of Modern Slavery,2 40.3 million people are living in slavery worldwide, which disproportionately affects the most marginalised, such as women, children and minorities.3 Climate change and climate-induced migration heightens existing vulnerabilities of slavery. Drivers of vulnerability to modern slavery are complex and impacted by many layers of risk. While several socio-economic, political, cultural and institutional risks shape vulnerability, they are increasingly considered to be made worse by climate change impacts and environmental degradation. Climate-induced displacements are becoming unavoidable. The rise of sea levels, salination and flooding are already forcing entire coastal communities – in countries such as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Sierra Leone – to relocate. And as climate shocks are set to intensify, many more millions will be displaced by climate change in the coming decades. The World Bank estimates that by 2050 climate change will force more than 143 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America from their homes. …

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  Climate change policies increasingly recognise climate-induced migration and displacement as an issue. The Cancún Adaptation Framework (CAF), adopted during COP16 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010, provides a conceptual framework to navigate the complexities of climate mobility. CAF recognises three modes of mobility due to climate impacts – migration, displacement and planned relocation4 – allowing for specific climate policies aligned with the distinct features, mobility patterns and outcomes of each impact.5 In 2015, the Paris Agreement on climate change was an unprecedented development of action on migration and climate with the formal inclusion of ‘migrants’ in its Preamble.  

London:  Anti-Slavery International and The International Institute for Environment and Development, 2021. 38p.

By Arezo Malakooti

A number of policy and security changes in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Sahel over the last five years have led to a decrease in mobility options towards Europe. The study aims to measure whether the pattern of vulnerability towards trafficking has shifted for migrants in light of the increased difficulty in reaching Europe. This is achieved through an innovative methodology where a 1600-person survey was conducted with migrants along the routes to North Africa and proxies were used to gauge changes in patterns of vulnerability. Respondents’ experiences with trafficking were also tracked, thereby creating a new set of data in relation to trafficking along routes to Europe.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2020. 108p.

By Lucia Bird

Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including literature reviews, national surveys and key informant interviews, this exploratory research points to some level of internal and/or external human trafficking in all the countries studied. Victims of human trafficking in the Caribbean region were found to be men, women, boys and girls from the Caribbean as well as from countries outside the region. These victims were found in multiple forms of exploitation including sexual exploitation, forced labour and domestic servitude. This Exploratory Assessment (second edition) was primarily a qualitative exercise and not intended to supply statistics as to the numbers of trafficking victims within each country. The purpose of the research was to provide a starting point for the participating countries to examine human trafficking within their local context and to encourage dialogue about how to combat this crime within the region. Human trafficking exists at some level in the eight countries that participated in this study. The potential for human trafficking to grow makes a strong, pro-active approach to addressing the crime an important issue for the nations of the Caribbean and the region as a whole.

Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2010. 268p.

By Beth Mullan-Feroze and Kamena Dorling

The Home Office routinely detains people who are subject to immigration control only to release them again back into the community,1,2 causing them significant harm in the process.3 This includes survivors of trafficking and slavery.4 Survivors are detained either after imprisonment, with many having been wrongly convicted for offences they were forced to commit by their traffickers, and/or because they do not have permission to remain in the UK and have not received the support necessary to enable them to disclose that they have been trafficked. For example, many survivors of trafficking are detained for removal after being picked up during raids on brothels, nail bars and cannabis farms. 1 See Immigration Detention in the UK - Migration Observatory - The Migration Observatory. 2 Out of the 25,282 people who entered detention in the year ending March 2022, there were only 3,447 enforced returns (14%) - Home Office National Statistics, How many people are detained or returned?, May 2022 3 Helen Bamber Foundation, The impact of immigration detention on mental health – research summary 4 The terms ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ are used interchangeably throughout this report, with the primary term being ‘trafficking’. ….

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  The term ‘survivor’ is used throughout this report unless specific reference is being made to Home Office policy, where the language is mirrored and ‘victim’ is used. 5 The Modern Slavery Act 2015 section 49 Statutory Guidance on Identification and Care recognises the impact of trauma and lists the reasons why a person may not self-identify and/or be reluctant to disclose their situation of exploitation. 6 These include the 2016 Shaw Report, the 2018 progress report also undertaken by Stephen Shaw, and the 2019 reports by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and by the Home Affairs Select Committee. 7 Home Office, Draft revised guidance on adults at risk in immigration detention, February 2021 8 Home Office admits new immigration plans may see more trafficking victims locked up | The Independent 9 Home Office National Statistics, How many people are detained or returned? , May 2022 It is well recognised, including in the UK Modern Slavery statutory guidance,5 that survivors can be highly traumatised, and afraid of sharing their experiences of trafficking and exploitation for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to: shame, fear of stigmatisation, and threats from traffickers who may still be controlling them. Survivors are often fearful of authorities and those authorities frequently fail to identify trafficking indicators, or to act appropriately when such indicators are apparent. Numerous government-commissioned or parliamentary reports and inquiries have already highlighted that the Home Office is failing to identify vulnerable people, or even to release people from detention once identified as vulnerable or trafficked.6 Instead of taking urgent steps to address these existing problems, the government has introduced changes to law and policy over the past year that have worsened the situation. While previous Home Office policy stated that victims of trafficking (among other vulnerable groups) were only suitable for detention in exceptional circumstances, in 2021 survivors of trafficking were brought entirely under the scope of the controversial ‘Adults at Risk’ (AAR) policy,7 despite the government recognising that this would result in more survivors of trafficking being detained.8 Under this policy, being a potential and confirmed victim of trafficking is only an ‘indicator’ that someone is an adult at risk who is more vulnerable to suffering harm in detention. The Home Office has stated that this policy should strengthen this presumption against the detention of those who are particularly vulnerable to harm in detention. However, it has actually increased the detention of victims of trafficking who now face increased evidential requirements to show the harm that detention is causing them. In addition, their immigration and criminal offending history, which could be linked to their trafficking experience, is more likely be weighed up in favour of their continued detention rather than understood in the context of the exploitation they have suffered.

London: Helen Bamber Foundation, 2022. 31p.

By Daphné Bouteillet-Paquet

Migrant smuggling has been an issue of increasing concern. The negative consequences of this type of transnational crime include the erosion of state sovereignty and the loss of control over who enters and leaves the territory, the potential security implications of clandestine entries and document smuggling, the large profits that accrue to human smugglers and organized criminal groups, the increasingly brutal treatment of migrants by careless smugglers leading to a growing number of deaths by drowning, dehydration, freezing or suffocation, and the high smuggling fees that migrants have to pay for the illegal transfer to destination countries, often leading to high debts for smuggled migrants and making them vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking. Despite the fact that migrant smuggling has attracted great media and political attention over the last two decades, there has not been any comprehensive analysis of the state of expert knowledge. Great confusion still prevails about what is migrant smuggling within the global context of irregular migration.

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  UNODC is currently developing and implementing a number of new projects to assess and counter the various threats posed by human smuggling. To do so effectively, and to learn from already existing research on migrant smuggling for current and future programme design, it is imperative to gain an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject by consolidating the existing literature on the subject in one comprehensive and informative background document.

  The Global Review and Annotated Bibliography of Recent Publications on Smuggling of Migrants (Global Review) replies to this need by surveying existing sources and research papers on migrant smuggling, to provide a summary of knowledge and identify gaps based on the most recent and relevant research available on migrant smuggling from a worldwide perspective.

  The Global Review is structured in thematic chapters which also address the issue at a regional level. Conceptual challenges, scope of migrant smuggling, profiles of smuggled migrants and of migrant smugglers, their relationships, the organizational structures of smuggling networks, modus operandi and smuggling fee as well as the human and social cost of migrant smuggling are addressed in this Global Review, based on well-informed journalistic books, reports and academic articles.

Vienna: United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, 2011. 148p.

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By Steven W. Bender

Mexico and the United States exist in a symbiotic relationship: Mexico frequently provides the United States with cheap labor, illegal goods, and, for criminal offenders, a refuge from the law. In turn, the U.S. offers Mexican laborers the American dream: the possibility of a better livelihood through hard work. To supply each other’s demands, Americans and Mexicans have to cross their shared border from both sides. Despite this relationship, U.S. immigration reform debates tend to be security-focused and center on the idea of menacing Mexicans heading north to steal abundant American resources. Further, Congress tends to approach reform unilaterally, without engaging with Mexico or other feeder countries, and, disturbingly, without acknowledging problematic southern crossings that Americans routinely make into Mexico.

In Run for the Border, Steven W. Bender offers a framework for a more comprehensive border policy through a historical analysis of border crossings, both Mexico to U.S. and U.S. to Mexico. In contrast to recent reform proposals, this book urges reform as the product of negotiation and implementation by cross-border accord; reform that honors the shared economic and cultural legacy of the U.S. and Mexico. Covering everything from the history of Anglo crossings into Mexico to escape law authorities, to vice tourism and retirement in Mexico, to today’s focus on Mexican border-crossing immigrants and drug traffickers, Bender takes lessons from the past 150 years to argue for more explicit and compassionate cross-border cooperation.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2012. 233p.

By Joseph Nevins

By 1994 American anti-immigration rhetoric had reached a fevered pitch, and throngs of migrants entered the U.S. nightly. In response, the INS launched "Operation Gatekeeper," the centerpiece of the Clinton administration's unprecedented effort to "regain control" of our borders. In Operation Gatekeeper, Joseph Nevins details the administration's dramatic overhaul of the San Diego-Tijauna border-the busiest land crossing in the world-adding miles of new fence and hundreds of trained agents.

New York: London: Routledge, 2002. 296p.

By Tom K. Wong

To better understand the attitudes and preferences that border residents have on border policies, the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego surveyed 2,750 voters across the four southwestern border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. The survey was fielded from October 8 to October 22. The margin of error is +/- 2.1%. For more, see methodology section. The data show that the majority of registered voters across the four southwestern border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—disapprove of the way that the president is handling issues at the U.S.-Mexico border. The results also reveal a general lack of trust in the Border Patrol agency, which includes: lack of trust that Border Patrol officials will protect the rights and civil liberties of all people; lack of trust that Border Patrol officials will keep border residents safe; and lack of trust that Border Patrol officials who abuse their authority will be held accountable for their abuses. Moreover, registered voters in the southwestern border states generally prefer policies opposite to those of the current administration.

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  These policies include: alternatives to detention for families seeking refuge in the U.S.; placing unaccompanied minors caught attempting to cross the border illegally into the care of child welfare specialists, not border or immigration enforcement officials; providing aid to migrants in distress (e.g., food and water) rather than criminally prosecuting those who provide aid to migrants in distress; investing more in making ports of entry more efficient rather than spending more on border security; and admitting asylum seekers into the U.S. in order to ensure their safety rather than making asylum seekers wait in Mexico. When it comes to spending, whereas the majority of registered voters across the four southwestern border states oppose additional federal spending on border walls and fencing, the results are mixed when it comes to additional federal spending on hiring more Border Patrol agents. Lastly, the results show that just over 3 out of 10 have been stopped and questioned about their citizenship status at an interior border checkpoint.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, UC San Diego, 2019. 23p.

By Tom K. Wong, Karina Shklyan, Andrea Silva and Josefina Espino

As Congress remains gridlocked on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform, immigration policy debates, particularly with respect to interior immigration enforcement, are increasingly taking place at state and local levels. Scholarship on immigration federalism has thus far focused mostly on the relationship between the federal government and localities. However, states are increasingly passing laws that either tighten cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or that delimit when and under what conditions local law enforcement officials can do the work of immigration enforcement (i.e., so-called sanctuary policies). Simultaneously, cities within these states are doing just the opposite. In this study, we examine how these ambiguities in interior immigration enforcement policies at state and local levels affect the trust that undocumented immigrants have in the efficacy of sanctuary policies. Moreover, we examine how these ambiguities affect the day-to-day behaviors of undocumented immigrants. Using California as a case, we embedded an experiment in a survey (n = 521) drawn from a probability-based sample of undocumented immigrants. We find that when cities want to opt out of statewide sanctuary laws, this undermines the trust that undocumented immigrants have in the efficacy of sanctuary policies. We also find that “opting out” has negative implications for the day-to-day behaviors of undocumented immigrants that are similar to the chilling effects that result when local law enforcement officials do the work of federal immigration enforcement.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, UC San Diego, 2019. 29p.

By Tom K. Wong, S. Deborah Kang, Carolina Valdivia, Josefina Espino, Michelle Gonzalez and Elia Peralta

Previous research shows that the day-to-day behaviors of undocumented immigrants are significantly affected when local law enforcement officials do the work of federal immigration enforcement. One such behavior, which has been widely discussed in debates over so-called sanctuary policies, is that undocumented immigrants are less likely to report crimes to the police when local law enforcement officials work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on federal immigration enforcement. However, the mechanism that explains this relationship, which is decreased trust in law enforcement, has not yet been systematically tested. Do undocumented immigrants become less trusting of police officers and sheriffs when local law enforcement officials work with ICE on federal immigration enforcement? To answer this question, we embedded an experiment that varied the interior immigration enforcement context in a survey (n = 512) drawn from a probability-based sample of undocumented immigrants. When local law enforcement officials work with ICE on federal immigration enforcement, respondents are statistically significantly less likely to say that they trust that police officers and sheriffs will keep them, their families, and their communities safe, protect the confidentiality of witnesses to crimes even if they are undocumented, protect the rights of all people, including undocumented immigrants, equally, and protect undocumented immigrants from abuse or discrimination.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, University of San Diego, 2019. 21p.