By M.  Luzes , E. Pilatowsky,  and  J. Ruiz

Over the past 20 years, migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been characterized by an increase in intraregional migration flows. Within  this  regional  migration  scenario  there  is a  misconception,  rooted  in  the  social  imaginary, that the majority of people who migrate within the continent are men. Nevertheless, women have accounted for practically half of migration flows in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1960, and their  participation  in  the  current  interregional mobility dynamics is around 50%. Even so, studies that   focus   on   understanding   the   experiences of   discrimination   women   face,   derived   from particular  stigmas  —  different  to  those  faced  by male migrants — are scarce. This   document   seeks   to   understand   these particular  experiences  from  an  intersectional perspective, exploring the perception of women migrants,  their  experiences  in  Latin  American and    Caribbean    countries,    and    how    these impact  integration  indicators. Female  migrants experience  unique  challenges,  different  to  those of  male  migrants  and  local  women,  confronting multiple  forms  of  discrimination  based  on  their gender,  country  of  origin,  migration  status,  and other   interrelated   identities.   The   aim   of   this work  is  to  delve  deeper  into  the  knowledge  that reinforces the need to address the specific barriers that  women  migrants  come  up  against  in  their integration processes, marked by prejudices and stigmas that influence the narratives about them. 

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank (“IDB” ), 2024. 42p

Edited by Alejandra J Josiowicz, Irasema Coronado 

The Americas are witnessing an era of unprecedented human mobility. With their families or unaccompanied, children are part of this immense movement of people. Children Crossing Borders explores the different meanings of the lives of borderland children in the Americas. It addresses migrant children’s struggle to build a sense of belonging while they confront racism and estrangement on a daily basis.

Unified in their common interest in the well-being of children, the contributors bring an unrivaled breadth of experience and research to offer a transnational, multidimensional, and multilayered look at migrant childhoods in Latin America. Organized around three main themes—educational experiences; literature, art and culture, and media depictions; and the principle of the “best interest of the child”—this work offers both theoretical and practical approaches to the complexity of migrant childhood. The essays discuss family and school lives, children’s experience as wage laborers, and the legislation and policies that affect migrants.

This volume draws much-needed attention to the plight of migrant children and their families, illuminating the human and emotional toll that children experience as they crisscross the Americas. Exploring the connections between education, policy, cultural studies, and anthropology, the essays in this volume navigate a space of transnational children’s rights central to Latin American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2022. 255p.

By Deborah M. Weissman, Angelina Godoy,  Havan M. Clark

Immigration enforcement has long served as an indicator of the prevailing visceral fears and loathing toward the Other. The foreign is always suspect. Foreigners in great numbers are especially suspicious. These developments are historically tied to the conventions of colonialism, expanded as a function of foreign policy, and to be sure, ideology.' By the mid-2010s, the Global South was characterized as "shithole countries,"  populated by people who were terrorists, rapists, murderers, and corrupt drug dealers. According to former President  Donald J. Trump, immigrants "aren't people. The[y] are animals, further describing them as "bad  thugs and gang members."  These representations have shaped a retributive agenda and have served to create a structure with roots in federal policies and branches in localities throughout the country through which to expel noncitizens. Deportation is a legal concept about which much has been written.' But it is more complicated. For noncitizens, forced expulsion is a lived experience occurring in time and space-an act against the body, mostly black and brown bodies. In this Article, we part ways with the well-established narratives of deportation and the punishment/non-punishment paradigm to conceive of deportation not only as a legal concept, but as a physical act-the final act-that is, the culmination of the immigration enforcement dragnet.  The physical removal of persons from the United States requires a complex system comprised of aviation networks and their various components, airports and airplanes, hangars and flight crews, and an array of physical restraints to intimidate, punish, or subdue deportees.'" We examine this infrastructure to illuminate the circumstances of expulsion and the egregious rights violations often suffered by deportees-violations that are almost always hidden from public view. Part I examines the full dimensions of deportation as a legal concept whereby courts readily admit the harms of expulsion while simultaneously deny its character as a form of punishment." The courts' construction of deportation as a nonpunitive sanction to which a range of constitutional procedural safeguards are not applicable serves to conceal the violence that occurs and distracts from the physical abuse and maltreatment associated with the final act. The legal treatment of deportation elides what, as Jacqueline Rose has written, is conveyed by "the technical term for the returning of migrants to their country of origin [that] is 'refoulement' (to push back or repulse) which also happens to be the French word for the psychoanalytic concept of repression. Part II then describes deportation as an act by which the body is seized and ultimately transported to airports and boarded onto airplanes''-sites previously not considered in the scheme of the immigration removal system's apparatus." It describes the heretofore hidden machinery of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") Air's network of mass deportation and further describes the perils upon removal occasioned by ICE flights.' Part III examines the "legal" trajectories of forced expulsion. It demonstrates how hostility toward immigrants has given rise to an ever-expanding deportation apparatus by which growing numbers of immigrants, including those seeking shelter from persecution, are stripped of legal protections.  It chronicles the subversion of legal processes that result in a heightened risk of wrongful deportation and thus by which immigrants reach the point of the final act of removal." It also illuminates how the ICE Air machinery, which executes deportation orders arising within an unfair system, is complicit in the various legal violations by giving effect to such orders and further curtailing whatever rights remain at the moment of the final act of deportation  Part IV takes up concerns largely unaddressed in legal scholarship: the detailing of human rights abuses on airplanes and airports-sites that function as the terminal instrumentalities of banishment. It describes the physical and psychological abuses that deportees experience during the final act of removal to demonstrate the urgency of immigrant rights advocacy at these sites. It then identifies the violations of international human rights treaties committed by the United States.25 We do so mindful that invoking human rights law in an effort to reframe the discourse occurs at a time when the question of whether these norms have any relevancy in the United States is very much at issue.  The issue of the relevancy of human rights-or lack thereof-is not a new concern, to be sure. As Jack Goldsmith stated over two decades ago, "We can now better understand how and why the United States perpetuates the double standard. The explanation is not subtle. The United States declines to embrace international human rights law because it can."  However, as Part IV argues, immigrants' rights advocates have nonetheless seized on international norms that apply locally and globally to realize an expanded vision of justice when addressing the harms wrought by ICE Air's deportation machinery. The need to call attention to U.S. exceptionalism with regard to human rights requires that scholars and activists seek their implementation as a means to encourage a discourse of hope and an expectation of realization. Stated otherwise, "all theory must end in practice or come to nothing as theory."  Part V examines airports and airplanes as sites of resistance in the context of immigration federalism debates.  We build on the literature that has called attention to the importance of political geography and immigration devolution policies to underscore the importance of new forms of local activism as a means to assert immigrant rights. Even as growing numbers of localities craft policies to protect immigrants, forming a first wave of resistance to federal anti-immigrant policies, a second wave of subnational advocacy is emerging, seeking to contest both the mechanisms by which people are drawn into the system of immigration enforcement and the institutions which detain them. It is in this context that we identify the campaigns to disrupt the aviation deportation machinery, and the importance of focusing on the local as a means to ensure accountability for individuals whose human rights have been violated. Deportation is a term frequently associated with nativist sentiment and revulsion for those who appear foreign, as well as a type of "cleansing" as consequence of aggressive annexation of territory. 4 The efforts to accelerate the removal of noncitizens from the United States has reconfigured the historic narrative about the nation's relationship with immigration and immigrants. Concerns for the humanity of immigrants requires attention to all facets of the injustices of deportation, including the sites of the final act of removal. As we demonstrate, this may be accomplished through a variety of political and legal strategies designed to call attention to the ways that deportation violates the protection of rights that exist at the very local to the very global levels of law. Notwithstanding our descriptions and analyses of innovative and important anti-deportation campaigns to mitigate the deliberate infliction of human suffering on immigrants, we do not suggest that these strategies ensure success. In the face of the deportation dragnet machine and the aviation networks that are hidden from the public, it would be presumptuous to suggest victory. What this Article offers is a way of understanding and modeling new forms of resistance at sites previously overlooked-resistance that must stand in for the protection of rights until the structures of immigration laws and processes can be humanely reset.  

Hofstra Law Review Volume 49 Issue 2 Article 5 12-1-2021, 63 pages

By American Immigration Council

The collusion between local law enforcement agencies and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is well-documented. Local law enforcement agencies like the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) often work in concert with USBP agents in constructing a dragnet that serves as a force multiplier for USBP to funnel immigrants—most of whom have no criminal history—into deportation proceedings. These enforcement practices often go unchecked despite accounts suggesting a pattern of potentially unconstitutional practices. This unfettered enforcement upends the lives of immigrants who have developed deep ties to the United States and often impacts U.S. citizens and immigrants with lawful status who are part of mixed status families. It also makes Latino residents and people of color who are U.S. citizens or lawful immigrants undue targets of enforcement. Immigrants of color including those of Latin American origin who live, travel, or work in Ohio often bear the brunt of these disproportionate and discriminatory immigration enforcement practices.

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2024. 22p.

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. 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 Inga Thiemann

This research report looks into the conditions attached to visa routes for both the care and agricultural sectors, known as ‘tied’ and short-term visas respectively, and the increased vulnerability to exploitation associated with these visas.

The findings show significant issues of debt and deductions of wages across both sectors and barriers to reporting concerns.

London: Focus on Labour Exploitation. 2024, 68pg

By  Claire Rimmer 

Setting the scene for safe pathways: definitions and data Complementary or safe pathways are a relatively new addition to global refugee protection, and a particularly new phenomenon in Europe. Here, recent years have seen implementation of a growing number of safe pathway programmes, very often small in scale. This has created a complex landscape, involving many different stakeholders working in different ways, and involving different patterns of cooperation between host, destination and first asylum countries. As such, establishing common definitions is challenging, particularly given the necessary flexibility most programmes employ in order to succeed in their specific political and operational contexts. This study nonetheless identifies six types of pathway, showing that all safe pathway programmes include one or a combination of the six. They are as follows: 1) education, 2) labour mobility, 3) extended family members/ family unity, 4) humanitarian pathways and visas, 5) private and/ or community sponsorship, 6) and other, usually non-specific safe stay and entry options. Mapping safe pathways in Europe is further complicated by the limited availability of information on planned and current European programmes, and lack of transparency concerning the extent to which pathways achieve “additionality”, i.e. the extent to which they operate in addition to refugee resettlement and thus contribute to durable solutions for refugees. In some cases, they are rather a substitute for the – usually preferable – resettlement options. 2) European safe pathway programmes: what works? The study identifies a number of approaches and good practices which stakeholders believe have worked well, covering the range of pathways and programmes. It also identifies examples of promising new practices in both newer and more established programmes. The most important examples of what works 

Brussels, Belgium: ECRE  European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2024. 58pg

By Emily Ryo and Ian Peacock

In the current era of intensified immigration enforcement and heightened risks of deportation even for long-term lawful permanent residents, citizenship has taken on a new meaning and greater importance. There is also growing evidence that citizenship denials in their various forms have become inextricably linked to immigration enforcement. Who is denied citizenship, why, and under what circumstances? This article begins to address these questions by developing a typology of citizen denials and providing an empirical overview of each type of citizenship denial. Taken together, the typology of citizenship denials and the accompanying empirical overview illustrate the close connection between immigration enforcement and citizenship rights in the United States

USC CLASS Research Paper No. CLASS19-31, USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 19-31, 47 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 David Goodhart

This report calls for a new safe and legal route for genuine refugees – which would only come into effect once illegal Channel crossings have dropped to below 10,000 a year.

Under the plan put forward by David Goodhart, the number of refugees admitted under this new route would be set by an annual cap from Parliament – placing the asylum system under democratic control.

It would be modelled after the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, used for Syrian refugees, and focussed on women and girls in conflict zones, not healthy young male migrants attempting to cross from France.

The report argues that in order to address the numbers of migrants crossing the Chanel illegally in small boats, the Government must prioritise return agreements and rapid deportation of Channel crossers – if necessary, giving aid to countries in exchange for securing return agreements.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 31p.

By: Team from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), including (in alphabetical order) Lucia Bird, Giulia D’Amico, Sarah Fares, Alex Goodwin and Tuesday Reitano

As of January 2024, over 100 000 people had crossed the English Channel using small boats since 2018. The current peak came in 2022, when over 45 000 people were detected arriving in the UK illegally using small boats launched from the coast of northern France. Although small in comparison with the flows of migrants risking the journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe each year, this figure marked a record high for the UK since records began in 2018. The spike in the number of arrivals can be largely explained by the ‘industrialization’ of a system of smuggling migrants by boat, a process that began in 2018.

This report explores how the English Channel has become a commercialized human smuggling route. It analyzes the shift in human smuggling transportation from land to sea, from trucks using the Channel Tunnel to rigid inflatable boats (RIBs).

Geneva, SWIT: 2024 Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.2024. 34p.

By  Ximena Canal Laiton

This paper explores the use of smugglers by Latin American and Caribbean migrants on their journeys to North America. It is based on responses to more than 3,000 4Mi surveys conducted in Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico in 2022 and 2023 and includes findings on profiles of migrants who hired smugglers as well as information on the services they sought and their general perceptions of smugglers. As such, this paper provides a wealth of solid empirical evidence with a view to informing the work of policymakers and humanitarian actors.

Geneva, SWIT: Mixed Migration Centre. 2024, 14pg

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 Andy Shen and Loria-Mae Heywood  

A new report published today by UNU-CPR’s Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative argues that a small but significant change to the international anti-money laundering regime – the laws, regulations, and procedures used to tackle money laundering – could have enormous consequences for the fight against human trafficking and forced labour.    

Making knowingly benefitting from human trafficking or forced labour a predicate offense to money laundering, the report stresses, would close the gap between the billions generated from these crimes and the meagre compensation provided to its victims and survivors. This is a challenge that persists despite international law codifying remedy for human rights violations.

New York: United Nations University Centre for Policy Research. 2023, 112pg

By Robin Ghertner, Suzanne Macartney and Meredith Dost

Between 1990 and 2022, the United States welcomed over 2.1 million refugees and accepted over 800,000 asylees. While the purpose of granting visas to refugees and asylees is humanitarian, they do impact the United States economically. This analysis estimates the fiscal impact of refugees and asylees on federal, state, and local governments from 2005 to 2019.

Key Points

• The net fiscal impact of refugees and asylees was positive over the 15-year period, at $123.8 billion. This means that refugees and asylees contributed more revenue than they cost in expenditures to the government. The net fiscal benefit to the federal government was estimated at $31.5 billion, and the net fiscal benefit to state and local governments was estimated at $92.3 billion.

• Governmental expenditures on refugees and asylees totaled an estimated $457.2 billion over the 15-year period. Expenditures by the federal government represented 72.5 percent of the total, at $331.5 billion. State and local government expenditures were 27.5 percent of the total, at $125.7 billion.

• Refugees and asylees contributed an estimated $581 billion in revenue to federal, state and local governments. They contributed an estimated $363 billion to the federal government through payroll, income, and excise taxes, and $218 billion to state and local governments, through income, sales, and property taxes.

• Including refugees and asylees and their spouses and children under age 18, most of whom are U.S. citizens, expenditures totaled $723.4 billion. Refugees, asylees, and their immediate families contributed an estimated $739.4 billion in revenue to all levels of government.

• When compared with the total U.S. population on a per capita basis, refugees and asylees had a comparable net fiscal impact.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024. 53p.

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 Marta Gionco and Jyothi Kanics 

The European Union (EU) is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.8 The Treaty on European Union (TEU) underlines that these values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and gender equality prevail.9

Yet, in recent years, these values have been under threat within the EU, as many Member States’ policies and actions have led to a “shrinking space” for civil society. Perhaps this trend is nowhere more evident than in the treatment of migrants in Europe and the human rights defenders working to assist them. The “criminalisation of solidarity” strikes at the heart of European values and contributes to the erosion of rule of law and democracy, while seriously impacting the rights and welfare of the most vulnerable in our societies and those who seek to protect and assist them. The criminalisation of solidarity with migrants remains a widespread phenomenon across the EU. According to our media monitoring, at least 89 people were criminalised in the EU between January 2021 and March 2022.10 Out of them, 18 people faced new charges, while the other 71 were ongoing cases from previous years. Four of them are migrants themselves. Three people were convicted and 15 acquitted, while all the other cases are still ongoing. People have been criminalised for actions including providing food, shelter, medical assistance, transportation and other humanitarian aid to migrants in dire conditions; assisting with asylum applications; and rescuing migrants at sea. In the vast majority of the cases (88%), human rights defenders were charged with facilitation of entry, transit or stay, or migrant smuggling (depending on how the crime is defined in the national legislation).11 It is also notable that the criminalisation of solidarity has continued, and in certain cases even soared (see section 1.2), during periods in which many countries adopted COVID-19 restrictions, at a time when human rights defenders risked their own personal safety and health to leave their homes to help others. Emergency measures adopted to address the COVID-19 pandemic have been used to limit access to reception facilities and detention centres, to impose fines on organisations providing services during lock-downs or after the curfew, and to limit the right to freedom of assembly. National data further contributes to give an idea of the magnitude of the criminalisation of solidarity in the EU. For example, according to the Polish civil society network Grupa Granica, nearly 330 people were detained for helping people crossing borders irregularly between Belarus and Poland between August and November 2021.12 Those detained include EU nationals as well as migrants and their family members, many of whom had residence permits in Belgium, Germany and Poland. Many are likely to have been motivated by humanitarian reasons, including helping family members. In another example, a total of 972 people were convicted in Switzerland in 2018 on grounds of facilitation of irregular entry or stay.13 The vast majority, almost 900 people, acted out of solidarity or family reasons.

Belgium, PICUM. 2022, 66pg

By  Alyna C. Smith and Michele LeVoy

  Impact of insecure residence status on safety and access to justice The criminalisation of irregular migration makes people who are undocumented fearful of engaging with public authorities, and especially with the police, because of the risk that they will be detained and ordered to leave the territory as a result. This distrust is worsened by policing and surveillance of migrant and minority communities. The detention and deportation of people who have experienced abuse and mistreatment is a form of secondary victimisation. The systematic failure of the state to recognise, investigate and remedy abuses committed against undocumented victims denies them recognition and accountability.   

Belgium, PICUM, 2021, 44pg

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