BY ROGER J. R. LEVESQUE  

In the wake of the civil rights movement, the legal system dramatically changed its response to discrimination based on race, gender, and other characteristics. It is now showing signs of yet another dramatic shift, as it moves from considering difference to focusing on neutrality. Rather than seeking to counter subjugation through special protections for groups that have been historically (and currently) disadvantaged, the Court now adopts a “colorblind” approach. Equality now means treating everyone the same way.

This book explores these shifts and the research used to support civil rights claims, particularly relating to minority youths’ rights to equal treatment. It integrates developmental theory with work on legal equality and discrimination, showing both how the legal system can benefit from new research on development and how the legal system itself can work to address invidious discrimination given its significant influence on adolescents—especially those who are racial minorities—at a key stage in their developmental life.

Adolescents, Discrimination, and the Law articulates the need to address discrimination by recognizing and enlisting the law’s inculcative powers in multiple sites subject to legal regulation, ranging from families, schools, health and justice systems to religious and community groups. The legal system may champion ideals of neutrality in the goals it sets itself for treating individuals, but it cannot remain neutral in the values it supports and imparts. This volume shows that despite the shift to a focus on neutrality, the Court can and should effectively foster values supporting equality, especially among youth.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2015. 304p.

By Emily Ryo and Reed Humphrey

Removal proceedings are high-stakes adversarial proceedings in which immigration judges must decide whether to allow immigrants who allegedly have violated U.S. immigration laws to stay in the United States or to order them deported to their countries of origin. In these proceedings, the government trial attorneys prosecute noncitizens who often lack English fluency, economic resources, and familiarity with our legal system. Yet, most immigrants in removal proceedings do not have legal representation, as removal is considered to be a civil matter and courts have not recognized a right to government­appointed counsel for immigrants facing removal. Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have described this situation as an access-to-justice crisis or a representation crisis for immigrant communities. The prevailing wisdom suggests that the solution to this crisis is more lawyers or more nonlawyer practitioners, such as accredited representatives and legal technicians, who can provide affordable and quality legal services. The focus, therefore, has been on the ubiquity of "legal deserts," commonly defined as areas that are in shortage of lawyers, and on ways to increase the supply of legal service providers in the marketplace.

This Article presents an empirical study of legal representation that unsettles this prevailing wisdom by showing why an adequate supply of legal service providers is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to address the representation crisis. Our study uses a new and original dataset that we compiled for the purposes of this study on immigration lawyers and non-detained immigrant respondents in removal proceedings. Our findings suggest that although the focus on the supply­side dimension of the representation crisis is important, it obscures other complex sets of barriers to obtaining legal representation that are distinct from the problem of legal deserts. Specifically, our empirical analyses show that whether a non-detained immigrant respondent obtains legal representation is predicted by where they reside, their primary language, and the size of their conational social networks, controlling for the availability of practicing immigration lawyers in close proximity to their places of residence and other potential confounders. In short, we argue that geography, language, and networks are destiny for immigrant respondents when it comes to obtaining legal representation. Thus, addressing the representation crisis requires looking beyond the problem of legal deserts to attend to a variety of other hurdles to obtaining legal representation that are associated with certain geographical, linguistic, and social isolation in which many immigrants live.

101 North Carolina Law Review 787-840 (2023), 54 pages

By Donald Kerwin and Evin Millet

This study examines the legal capacity available to low-income immigrants on national, state, and sub-state levels. Legal professionals working in charitable immigration service programs serve as the study’s rough proxy for legal capacity, and undocumented immigrants its proxy for legal need. The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) compiled data on charitable immigration programs and their legal professionals from the:

• US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) “Recognized Organizations and Accredited Representatives Roster by State and City,” which is maintained by the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR’s) Office of Legal Access Programs (OLAP).

• Directories of two leading, legal support agencies for charitable immigration legal programs, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and the Immigrant Advocates Network (IAN).

CMS supplemented and updated these sources with information from the websites of charitable immigration programs. It also added legal programs to its dataset that did not appear in any of these lists. It counted as legal professionals, attorneys, federally accredited non-attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants. The paper finds that there are 1,413 undocumented persons in the United States for every charitable legal professional and far less capacity than the national average in:

• States such as Alabama (6,656 undocumented per legal professional), Hawaii (4,506), Kansas (3,010), Georgia (2,853), New Jersey (2,687), Florida (2,681), North Carolina (2,671), Virginia (2,634) and Arizona (2,561).

• Metropolitan areas (MAs) such as Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (5,307), Dallas-Fort Worth Arlington (4,436), Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale (3,439) and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land (3,099).

• San Bernardino County (6,178), Clark County (4,747), Riverside County (4,625), Tarrant County (3,955) and Dallas County (3,939).

The study’s introduction summarizes its top-line findings. Its first section describes the importance of charitable immigration legal programs to immigrants, families and communities. Its second details the study’s findings on charitable legal capacity and immigrant need. Its third compares the legal capacity of 1,803 charitable legal programs and their 7,322 legal professionals, with the US undocumented population by state and for the 15 largest MAs and counties. Its fourth describes CMS’s research methodology and data sources. The paper ends with policy recommendations on how to expand legal capacity for low-income immigrants and better assess legal capacity and need moving forward.

Journal on Migration and Human Security 2022, Vol. 10(3) 190-214

By PICUM -  Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants

This paper outlines and addresses the particular circumstances and impacts of criminalisation frameworks on the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers. Understanding the intersection of the criminalisation of migration and criminalisation of sex work enables an approach which safeguards the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers. A number of undocumented migrants work in sex work. They face multiple layers of discrimination, social exclusion, stigma and poverty, due to their migration status and their occupation (as well as any other intersectional forms of discrimination including gender, ethnic or social origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, disability, etc.). PICUM’s concern is not about the judgment of sex work itself, but whether undocumented migrant sex workers have protections and their rights upheld. As more people fall into irregularity across Europe, more undocumented migrants will likely engage in sex work for survival and to generate an income. It is therefore important that PICUM outlines how criminalisation frameworks exacerbate the myriad issues faced by undocumented migrants and works to reduce the harmful impacts of these frameworks. PICUM has worked for eighteen years to address the impacts of criminalisation frameworks on undocumented migrants. Over the past four years, PICUM has had discussions with organisations working with undocumented migrants selling sexual services, both within and outside of PICUM’s membership, including sex worker-led organisations. Several workshops on the challenges facing undocumented migrant sex workers were held at PICUM’s Annual General Assemblies, in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. During the same time period, dedicated sessions on this issue were held within PICUM’s Executive Committee, and having considered the available evidence, this paper is a result of this process. The paper concludes that criminalising the purchase and facilitation of sex work impacts negatively on sex workers, and that the impacts are multiplied when sex workers are undocumented migrants.

Being an undocumented sex worker adds a layer of discrimination, social exclusion and precarity vis-à-vis public services and authorities. Many undocumented sex workers experience theft, violence, harassment, exploitation, evictions and homelessness. They are unable to report crimes to the police without risking deportation, and police are sometimes the perpetrators of violence. They have limited access to essential services including health care, and face immense barriers to accessing protection and justice. Undocumented sex workers are disproportionately subject to police harassment and targeted for immigration enforcement, including as a result of anti-trafficking initiatives. A holistic response is needed to address the human rights violations and lack of opportunities faced by undocumented migrant sex workers. Reforms of policies addressing poverty and discrimination, social services and security, labour rights, immigration and housing, among others, are all needed to provide people with the resources and security they need, both while they are sex workers, and so they don’t have to engage in sex work. Within this, decriminalisation is one of the crucial steps to support the empowerment, human rights and dignity of sex workers. Nonetheless, PICUM will continue to engage in dialogue and work with those of our members and partner organisations with different approaches, focusing on areas of shared concern and action.    

Brussels, Belgium: PICUM. 2019, 32pg

By Sara De Vido

Violence against women is characterised by its universality, the multiplicity of its forms, and the intersectionality of diverse kinds of discrimination against women. Great emphasis in legal analysis has been placed on sex-based discrimination; however, in investigations of violence, one aspect has been overlooked: violence may severely affect women's health and access to reproductive health, and State health policies might be a cause of violence against women. Exploring the relationship between violence against women and women's rights to health and reproductive health, Sara De Vido theorises the new concept of violence against women's health in international law using the Hippocratic paradigm, enriching human rights-based approaches to women's autonomy and reflecting on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination. At the core of the book are two dimensions of violence: horizontal 'interpersonal', and vertical 'state policies'. Investigating these dimensions through decisions made by domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, De Vido reconceptualises States' obligations and eventually asks whether international law itself is the ultimate cause of violence against women's health.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press,  2020. 273p.

By Brianna da Silva Bhatia, et al.

On December 23, 2020, Bella Quinto-Collins called 911, seeking help for her 30- year-old brother, Angelo Quinto, who was agitated and exhibiting signs of a mental health crisis at their home in Antioch, California. When two police officers arrived, they pulled Quinto from his mother’s arms onto the floor. At least twice, Quinto’s mother, Cassandra Quinto-Collins, heard him say to the officers, “Please don’t kill me.” Bella and Cassandra then watched in disbelief and horror as the two officers knelt on Quinto’s back for five minutes until he stopped breathing. Three days later, Quinto died in the hospital. It was not until August 2021 that the family learned the official determination of cause of death: a forensic pathologist testified during a coroner’s inquest that Quinto died from “excited delirium syndrome.” Angelo Quinto, a Filipino-American Navy veteran, is one of many people, disproportionately people of color, whose deaths at the hands of police have been attributed to “excited delirium” rather than to the conduct of law enforcement officers. In recent years, others have included Manuel Ellis, Zachary Bear Heels, Elijah McClain, Natasha McKenna, and Daniel Prude. “Excited delirium” even emerged as a defense for the officers who killed George Floyd in 2020. An Austin-American Statesman investigation into each non-shooting death of a person in police custody in Texas from 2005 to 2017 found that more than one in six of these deaths (of 289 total) were attributed to “excited delirium.” A January 2020 Florida Today report found that of 85 deaths attributed to “excited delirium” by Florida medical examiners since 2010, at least 62 percent involved the use of force by law enforcement.6 A Berkeley professor of law and bioethics  conducted a search of these two news databases and three others from 2010 to 2020 and found that of 166 reported deaths in police custody from possible “excited delirium,” Black people made up 43.3 percent and Black and Latinx people together made up at least 56 percent.7 When did the term “excited delirium” evolve to describe a distinct type of “delirium?" How did the corresponding term “excited delirium syndrome” become a go-to diagnosis for medical examiners and coroners to use in explaining deaths in police custody? What is the evidence that it is indeed a valid diagnosis? This report traces the evolution of the term from when it appears to have first been coined in the 1980s to the present. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reconstructed the history of the term “excited delirium” through a review of the medical literature, news archives, and deposition transcripts of expert witnesses in wrongful death cases. We evaluated current views and applications of the term through interviews with 20 medical and legal experts on deaths in law enforcement custody. Additionally, we spoke to six experts on severe mental illness and substance use disorders to better understand the context in which the term most often arises. Finally, we interviewed members of two families who lost loved ones to police violence for a firsthand account of the harms of the term’s continued use. This report concludes that the term “excited delirium” cannot be disentangled from its racist and unscientific origins. Dr. Charles Wetli, who first coined the term with Dr. David Fishbain in case reports on cocaine intoxication in 1981 and 1985, soon after extended his theory to explain how more than 12 Black women in Miami, who were presumed sex workers, died after consuming small amounts of cocaine. “For some reason the male of the species becomes psychotic and the female of the species dies in relation to sex,” he postulated. As to why all the women dying were Black, he further speculated, without any scientific basis, “We might find out that cocaine in combination with a certain (blood) type (more common in blacks) is lethal.”  
New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 2022. 95p.

by Kathryn Hampton et al

For the last two years, the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or “Remain in Mexico” policy, have forced almost 70,000 people seeking asylum in the United States to wait in dangerous Mexican border towns while their cases pend – in violation of U.S. and international law, which prohibits returning asylum seekers to places where they fear that they may be persecuted. With the indefinite postponement of immigration hearings due to COVID-19, asylum seekers in MPP face ever-lengthening periods of stay in Mexico, where many have experienced violence, trauma, and human rights abuses.

Since the start of MPP, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has responded to more than 100 requests by attorneys for pro bono forensic evaluations of asylum seekers enrolled in the program, most in support of asylum claims and a few in support of requests for MPP exemption due to health issues. To quantify the extent of reported health and human rights violations affecting asylum seekers in MPP, PHR partnered with the University of Southern California’s Keck Human Rights Clinic (KHRC) to review 95 deidentified affidavits based on forensic evaluations of asylum seekers from Central and South America ranging in age from 4 to 67 years. We found that at least 11 people belonged to categories that should have been exempt from MPP enrollment.  Although most affidavits focused on the harms migrants fled in their home countries, most documented compounding harms to the migrants after they were returned to Mexico under MPP, including physical violence, sexual violence, kidnapping, theft, extortion, threats, and harm to family members. The affidavits also reported unsanitary and unsafe living conditions, poor access to services, family separations, and poor treatment in U.S. immigration detention. Nearly all of those evaluated were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and many exhibited other debilitating psychological conditions or symptoms.

This study adds to the considerable evidence that it is not safe for migrants to remain in Mexico while their U.S. asylum cases are pending, and forcing them to do so violates U.S. and international law. The incoming Biden administration should immediately admit all people enrolled in MPP into community settings in the United States, rescind MPP, and initiate an investigation to determine appropriate redress for people harmed by this policy.

New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 

2021. 21p.

STUESSY, MEGHAN M.

The passage that follows includes several links embedded in the original text. From the document: "On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14110 on 'Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.' This E.O. advances a coordinated approach to the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and directs agencies to mitigate privacy risks and bias potentially exacerbated by AI, including 'by AI's facilitation of the collection or use of information about individuals, or the making of inferences about individuals.' [...] The E.O. focuses on three priorities relating to privacy: 1. Identifying and evaluating agency use of commercially available information (CAI); 2. Revising existing privacy requirements for the adoption of AI, including privacy impact assessments (PIAs); and 3. Encouraging agency use of PETs [privacy-enhancing technologies]."

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE. 2024.

By Iryna Bogdanova

Are unilateral economic sanctions legal under public international law? How do they relate to the existing international legal principles and norms? Can unilateral economic sanctions imposed to redress grave human rights violations be subjected to the same legal contestations as other unilateral sanctions? What potential contribution can the recently formulated doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind make by introducing substantive and procedural prerequisites to legitimize unilateral human rights sanctions? Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights by Iryna Bogdanova addresses these complex questions while taking account of the burgeoning state practice of employing unilateral economic sanctions.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. 378p.

By Ludger Pries, Oscar Calderón Morillón, and Brandon Amir Estrada Ceron

Mexico is increasingly important as a country of transit migration between the Global South and the Global North. Migration dynamics from Central America to and through Mexico are mainly considered as economic or mixed migration of people looking for work and a better life in the USA. Nevertheless, since the 2010s the number of asylum applications in Mexico has sky rocketed. Based on a survey of Central American migrants in Mexico we demonstrate that some kind of (organized) violence was a crucial driver for leaving and a constant companion during their journey. After contextualizing the migration route from the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) toward Mexico, we present the design of the study, describe sociodemographic and general contexts of the 350 interviewees, and present the migration trajectories as long-lasting sequences of events and stays, where violence in quite different forms always is at play.

Journal on Migration and Human Security - Online First, , 2023.

By Susanne Brandtsta¨dter, Peter Wade and Kath Woodward

This special issue arose from a concern with the political logic of the foregrounding of collective culture(s) in the context of changing citizenship regimes. 1 Its key focus is the conjuncture in which ‘culture’ Á claims of a collective distinction concerning heritage, location, moralities and values Á has become the terrain of political struggles over the subject of rights in national and international politics, the re-allocation of entitlements, definitions of value and new forms of political representation. This appears to be linked to contemporary processes of neoliberalization, the politics of which are often defined in terms of economic policies promoting private accumulation, entrepreneurship and free markets, but which typically also include a project of governance in which not only individuals, but also collective agents Á which may be ‘cultural’ entities Á are charged with increasing responsibility for their own regulation, welfare and enterprise, but in a depoliticized and bureaucratized mode (Santos, 2005).

Routledge Taylor and francis. 2011. 18p.

By Yves Guermond

The crisis of citizenship in democratic countries is a topic that I am accustomed to study and that I have developed in a recent book [1]. A definitive definition of the concept is hazardous as as it it continuously evolves across the centuries. It is presently caught in the crossfire between two emerging trends: the the diversification of the public sphere with the extension of critical analysis, and and on on the the other side the growth of various kinds of cosmopolitism.

Academia Letters. 2024. 3p.

By Polaris

We have long known human trafficking to be a pervasive and versatile crime, as traffickers and exploiters adjust to changing environments. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us the profound adaptability of human trafficking. A global pandemic did not stop or impede trafficking from happening and, with few exceptions, did not seem to change how it happens or to whom it happens. In this report, we examine data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline from January 2020 through August 2022 and explore a snapshot of the top findings of human trafficking during the calamitous pandemic years. We provide top trends and answers to questions we typically report on as a part of our data analysis, and introduce how select trends that began early in the pandemic changed or continued as the crisis evolved. 

Washington, DC: Polaris, 2024. 10p

By  Jane Linekar, Jennifer Vallentine

This paper on “children and youth in mixed migration” summarizes some key messages on the topic, and with an aim to provoke thoughts on how to address information gaps and take into account the specific dynamics, needs and vulnerabilities of children and youth travelling on mixed migration routes. The annex brings together in one resource all our research publications on children and youth.

London/Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 8p

By  Ana-Maria Murphy-Teixidor and Flannery Dyon

There is limited research on mixed migration in Tunisia, and there is a particular dearth of data pertaining to the experiences of migrating and displaced children and youth. To help fill this gap, this study explores the profiles, routes, and vulnerabilities of migrating and displaced children and youth in Tunisia, drawing from more than 1,500 surveys with caregivers and youth, and additional key informant interviews with children, youth, caregivers, and service providers. Through its comprehensive analysis and recommendations, this study seeks to provide a stronger evidence base for practitioners and policy makers working in child protection both in Tunisia, and along mixed migration routes to Tunisia. 

London: Mixed Migration Centre and Save the Children, 2021. 36p

By Mixed Migration Centre

Protracted conflict, instability and underdevelopment has perpetrated longstanding displacement and migration flows out of Afghanistan toward Europe. Irregular migrants from Afghanistan generally take one of two routes to Western Europe, namely the Eastern Mediterranean or the Western Balkans Route. Both of these frequently used routes expose migrants to protection risks ranging from death to physical assault to theft, perpetrated not only by irregular actors such as smugglers, but also by border forces.

London/Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 68p

By Ximena Canal Laiton

This paper explores the migration experiences of children and caregivers on the move in Honduras. The research project was developed by the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), the Centro de Desarrollo Humano (CDH), and the United Nations Children‘s Fund (UNICEF) Honduras to gather evidence regarding children on the move throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The study contains an analysis and findings on children‘s and caregivers‘ travel conditions and impacts, perceived and experienced security risks during the journey, an Honduras through the 4Mi project.d humanitarian needs identified by caregivers surveyed in

CDH, MMC, UNICEF, 2023. 15p

By Simon Tomasi, Daniely Vicari

This paper explores the use of social media by Venezuelan refugees and migrants as they head north through the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region. It is based on an analysis of 4Mi surveys conducted in Honduras, qualitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews conducted in Colombia and Costa Rica, and focus groups held in Colombia and Peru.

This paper details survey respondents’ profiles, their preferred social media and messaging platforms, the reasons they communicate through these networks, and the connectivity challenges they face in accessing them. It also explores respondents’ most trusted sources of information, the persistence of information gaps and the risks associated with the presence of smugglers in digital spaces.

This paper’s findings aim to build a solid evidence base that will strengthen knowledge about Venezuelan refugees’ and migrants’ social media habits and guide humanitarian actors’ engagement with digital platforms.

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 14p.

By The Mixed Migration Centre

This snapshot examines the use of smuggling among Cambodians and Laotians on their journey to Thailand. It examines respondents’ reasons for leaving their country of origin, access to smuggling services, and protection incidents experienced en route, as well as the involvement of state officials in smuggling between Cambodia-Thailand and Lao PDR-Thailand.

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 12p.

Edited by Alicia Schrikker and Nira Wickramasinghe

This multidisciplinary volume brings together scholars and writers who try to come to terms with the histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean. The volume discusses a variety of qualitative data on the experience of being a slave in order to recover ordinary lives and, crucially, to place this experience in its Asian local context. Building on the rich scholarship on the slave trade, this volume offers a unique perspective that embraces the origin and afterlife of enslavement as well as the imaginaries and representations of slaves rather than the trade in slaves itself.

Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2020.332p.