Claudia Finotelli, Irene Ponzo

Building upon the concept of migration regime, this open access book brings together the works of scholars who have investigated logics and routines of action in the field of immigration control within a single and innovative theoretical framework. The chapters cover a wide range of policy domains, from visa policy to the externalisation of controls, labour migration to asylum, internal controls towards irregular migration to restrictions for intra-EU mobility. By unravelling organisational strategies and practices across Europe, the book does not only contribute to dismantling the very idea of the European North-South divide in migration but also shows how Europe really works in the field of migration in times of deep economic, asylum and health crises.  In this perspective, the book questions the widespread understanding of migration control outcomes as simply the result of more or less effective state policies without considering the embeddedness of the national policy goals and strategies in the dynamic interplay of different economies, institutional cultures and geopolitical positions.

Springer Cham

Avril Maddrell, Sonja Kmec, Tanu Priya Uteng, Mariske Westendorp

This open access book focuses on migrant and minority cemetery needs through the conceptual lens of the mobilities of the living and the dead. In doing so, the book brings migration and mobility studies into much-needed dialogue with death studies to explore the symbolically and politically important issue of culturally inclusive spaces of cemeteries and crematoria for migrants and established minorities. The book addresses majority and minority cemetery and crematoria provisions and practices in a range of North West European contexts. It describes how the planning, management and use of cemeteries and crematoria in multicultural societies can tell us about the everyday lived experiences of migration and migrant heritage, urban diversity, social inclusion and exclusion in Europe, and how these relate to migrant and minority experience of lived citizenship, practices of territoriality and bordering, colonial/postcolonial narratives.

The book will be of interest to readers in the fields of migration/mobilities studies and death studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners, such as local government officers, cemetery managers and city planners.

Springer Cham

Paolo Boccongni, Sara Bonfanti

This open access book provides insight into the domestic space of people with an immigrant or refugee background. It selects and compares a whole spectrum of dwelling conditions with ethnographic material covering a variety of national backgrounds – Latin America, North and West Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia – and an equally broad range of housing, household and legal arrangements. It provides a fine-grained understanding of migrants’ lived experience of their domestic space and shows the critical significance of the lived space of a house as a microcosm of societal constellations of identities, values and inequalities. The book enhances the connection between migration studies and research into housing, social reproduction, domesticity and material culture and provides an interesting read to scholars in migration studies, policy makers and practitioners with a remit in local housing and integration policies.

By Springer Cham

By U.S. Citizenship And Immigration Services

From the Message From the Director, Ur M. Jaddou: "I am proud to share the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2023 to 2026. This plan is grounded in USCIS' longstanding mission and firm commitment to making the United States a stronger, more inclusive, and welcoming nation, and preserving the integrity of the U.S. immigration programs we administer. At its core, USCIS has the responsibility to deliver decisions about immigration service requests to individuals while ensuring the security of our nation. The work of USCIS employees makes the possibility of the American dream a reality for immigrants, the communities and economies they join, and the nation as a whole. [...] This new strategic plan is the continuation and expansion of activities stemming from the five priorities I announced in FY 2022, illuminating our pathway into the future. Our new strategic plan will be our roadmap to realize our own promise as an agency of transparency and responsiveness - an agency that upholds the legal immigration system, supports, and engages its employees, and fosters collaboration to deliver high-quality results. While USCIS has made strides in reducing undue barriers to immigration benefits and services, we have much more to do to achieve a modern, fair, and effective immigration system."

Washington. DC. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services., 2023. 28p.

By Emily Cunniffe and Oluwatoyosi Ayodele

In Ireland, between 2015 and 2020, 356 people were identified as suspected victims of human trafficking by An Garda Síochána. Of them, approximately 59 per cent were third-country nationals.

This study examines the policy and practice in Ireland for the detection of a situation of human trafficking, the identification of a victim of human trafficking, and the subsequent protection provided to victims of human trafficking, with a particular focus on third-country nationals. It is based on the Irish contribution to a European Migration Network (EMN) report comparing the situation in EMN Member and Observer States.

Dublin: The Economic and Social Research Institute, 2022. 99p.

By Patricia Hynes, Helen Connolly and Laura Durán

1. There is limited inclusion of children’s views in research, policy, service design or delivery. In addition, a focus on achieving positive outcomes for children and young people who have experienced or are at risk of trafficking and modern slavery is currently absent from debates in the UK. The findings of this participatory research study address these gaps with the views of 31 young people detailing outcomes that are important for them and how barriers to achieving these are structural, systemic, and discriminatory.

2. For the first time, young people have identified 25 outcomes as important and meaningful to them as set out according to the four General Principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – non- discrimination (Article 2), the best interests of the child (Article 3), the right to life, survival and development (Article 6) and the right to participation (Article 12). Young people highlighted being safe and feeling safe, stability and peace, having trust in professionals and systems, being believed, and listened to, freedom, equality, access to quality legal advice and interpreters as important rights-based outcomes.

3. Young people have identified what they would need to see for positive and meaningful change to happen in their lives, through a Positive Outcomes Framework which is anchored in their own words, ideas and priorities. Young people described outcomes as interconnected, difficult to disaggregate, rarely linear and interlinked with the wider contexts and structures of their lives. The outcomes identified were all seen as important for achieving a positive long-term future, with individual outcomes not confined within particular timeframes.

Sheffield, UK: The Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at the Sheffield Hallam University, 2022. 60p.

By Kristina Lugo-Graulich

The study first examined whether there are indicators that differentiate online escort ads related to sex trafficking from ads for non-trafficked sex work, and then it determined which indicators are most likely to predict whether the ad is a case of sex trafficking. Recommendations are made about how and when online escort ads are most useful in identifying trafficking cases. The key contribution of this work is that the indicators found to be predictive were tested against a counterfactual (ads known not to be related to trafficking). indicators were tested based on previous literature and three sets of focus groups: sex-trafficking survivors, non-trafficked sex workers, and criminal justice/victim advocate professionals. Language indicators associated with a higher risk of human sex trafficking cases were trustworthy provider language, obscured phone number (one that uses techniques to avoid collection by technology or web scraping) mention of provider ethnicity, and language suggesting the youth of the provider (survivor). Traffickers may focus more on racialized descriptions in their marketing of victims than non-trafficked sex workers.

Washington, DC: Justice Research and Statistics Association, 2022. 148p

By Margaret Tobey, Ruoting Li, Osman Y. Özaltın, Maria E. Mayorga & Sherrie Caltagirone

Sexually oriented establishments across the United States often pose as massage businesses and force victim workers into a hybrid of sex and labor trafficking, simultaneously harming the legitimate massage industry. Stakeholders with varied goals and approaches to dismantling the illicit massage industry all report the need for multi-source data to clearly and transparently identify the worst offenders and highlight patterns in behaviors. We utilize findings from primary stakeholder interviews with law enforcement, regulatory bodies, legitimate massage practitioners, and subjectmatter experts from nonprofit organizations to identify data sources and potential indicators of illicit massage businesses (IMBs). We focus our analysis on data from open sources in Texas and Florida including customer reviews and business data from Yelp.com, the U.S. Census, and GIS files such as truck stop, highway, and military base locations. We build two interpretable prediction models, risk scores and optimal decision trees, to determine the risk that a given massage establishment is an IMB. The proposed multi-source data-based approach and interpretable models can be used by stakeholders at all levels to save time and resources, serve victim-workers, and support well informed regulatory efforts.

  IISE TRANSACTIONS (Taylor and Francis), 2022. 

By Hayli Millar and Tamara O’Doherty

This report continues our ongoing longitudinal work (2014-2020) empirically examining the charging and prosecution of Canadian trafficking in persons offences. In addition to documenting the complex legal issues and challenges that arise in enforcing anti-trafficking laws, we focus our attention on the application and interpretation of law. Our findings solidify scholarly concerns about the effects of ongoing conflations of sex work and human trafficking, and the expansion of criminalization and other forms of legal regulation related to the commercial sex sector. Besides affirming the known list of harmful effects of legislative expansionism for the persons subjected to criminal and immigration law enforcement actions, our findings suggest that the criminalization of sex work via anti-trafficking law raises other potentially vexed legal issues. In this report, we outline several findings that expose concerns about the judicial interpretation of the elements of trafficking offences, the inherent difficulties with witness credibility and victim treatment in courts, problematic evidentiary requirements specific to anti-trafficking laws, and the use of expert opinion evidence in trials. We also argue that Canadian anti-trafficking laws potentially infringe fundamental principles of justice such as the rule of law and the principle of res judicata. These findings demonstrate a troubling trend towards increasing barriers to justice for sex workers and lay bare the intersecting effects of crimmigration, the stigmatization of commercial sex, and inequality in labour rights. To reduce labour exploitation, action must be taken to address the structural causes for precarious working conditions across all forms of labour.

Vancouver, BC: International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, 2020. 122p.

By Yvon Dandurand

The migrant smuggling networks’ decentralized structure, adaptability, and corrupt contacts render them resilient to disruption by law enforcement agencies. The fact that in recent years very few investigations have actually led to the neutralization or dismantlement of any of the very active transnational migrant smuggling networks operating in our country certainly suggests the need to reconsider present law enforcement methods and strategies and to improve international law enforcement cooperation in these matters. Given the wide variations that exist in the nature, scope and complexity of smuggling operations, it is imperative for law enforcement to be both flexible and strategic and to base its interventions on a good understanding of the criminal networks and illicit markets involved

Vancouver, BC: International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, 2020. 32p.

By Lillian Agbeyegbe, Sara Crowe, et al.

In a given year, an estimated two million plus domestic workers are employed in the United States, caring for children, seniors and other loved ones, cleaning homes and in general, making it possible for many busy people and families to juggle the competing needs of their lives. In most cases, these arrangements benefit both the workers and their employers. But isolated working conditions, limited legal protections and vulnerabilities including poverty and immigration status mean that some domestic workers become victims of labor exploitation and labor trafficking.

A joint report by Polaris and the National Domestic Workers Alliance examined records from the Polaris-operated U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline to determine the scope of the problem. The data showed that of the approximately 8,000 labor trafficking cases identified between December 2007 and December 2017, the highest number of cases involved domestic work. That number likely represents only a small fraction of the problem, as human trafficking in all its forms is severely underreported.

Washington, DC: Polaris Project, 2019. 51p.

By The Polaris Project

Temporary work visas are intended to provide decent jobs to migrant workers while helping U.S. businesses meet their labor needs by filling mostly low-wage jobs that would otherwise sit vacant. Policymakers often refer to the migrants who come to this country as “guest workers.” But data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline shows that these guests — workers who have followed all the rules and laws and are expecting simply to earn a decent living and return home — are frequently exploited and even victimized by forced labor and other forms of trafficking. Indeed, exploitation, trafficking and abuse have become endemic to many of the visa categories. Overall, more than half1 of the victims of labor trafficking reported to the Trafficking Hotline during this period whose immigration status was identified were foreign nationals holding legal visas of some kind, including temporary work visas. That is no way to treat a guest — let alone hundreds of thousands of them. The Trafficking Hotline exists first and foremost to assist victims of human trafficking. This means people seeking help are only asked to provide information that will allow the Trafficking Hotline team to offer the best possible options for support. Data collection is secondary. As a result, information about a potential victim’s visa status is not always available. For the purposes of this report, Polaris analyzed data from the four major temporary visa programs heard about most frequently on the Trafficking Hotline. Several government agencies are involved in the issuance of these temporary work visas, including the U.S. Departments of Labor, State and Homeland Security. The complexity and opacity of the various programs makes it difficult to determine exactly how many guest workers are in the United States on any given day.2 The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that in Fiscal Year 2019, more than two million temporary workers were employed, or 1.2 percent of the U.S. labor force.

Washington, DC: Polaris Project, 2022. 51p.

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), headed by Ilias Chatzis

This publication elaborates on the specific gender-based risk factors that can lead to violence during smuggling operations, analysing the impact of gender on the forms of violence inflicted upon smuggled migrants and refugees before, during and after travelling. In addition, it sets out the State responses to aggravated smuggling offences and provides recommendations to combat the impunity of those implicated in these crimes. Applying a gender perspective, the study reviews two major transit zones in Western/Northern Africa and Central America.

Vienna: UNODC, 2021. 102p.

By OSCE Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings and OSCE Department of Management and Finance

This procurement guidance is a key step in rolling out the implementation of anti-trafficking measures in OSCE’s own procurement across its executive structures and aligning the OSCE’s mandates with its own processes. The guidance’s aim is to support procurement and anti-trafficking staff in the OSCE with the background knowledge to implement anti-trafficking measures in procurement activities; alongside training workshops, procurement risk analyses and local action plans. Preventing trafficking and labour exploitation in supply chains is no easy task. By taking these first steps, the OSCE is developing further expertise, and is supporting OSCE participating States and the international community in their ongoing efforts to prevent trafficking for forced labour in their supply chains

Vienna: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2021. 68p.

By Polaris

Outline

1. Victim and Survivor Data

2. Venues and Business Models

3. Geography of Cases

4. Trafficker Data and Types of Networks

Washington, DC; Polaris, 2019. 93p.

By Mary C. Ellison and Kathleen M. Vogel

We see evidence of domestic and foreign sex and labor trafficking victims in Western Hemisphere countries. Some key trafficking trends across the region include: an increase in Venezuelan victims and concerns with other vulnerable migrants, internally displaced persons, indigenous peoples, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) populations. There are also special challenges of child domestic servitude in Haiti (restavek) 1 and Paraguay (criadazgo),2 and increased risk of trafficking in border areas (e.g., Central American countries; the southern and northern borders of Mexico; the Dominican Republic/Haiti border; the tri-border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; the Darién Gap between the Panamanian and Colombian borders; and migrants along Peru’s southern border) due to lack of regulatory and security gaps and insufficient transnational cooperation. Illegal armed groups are involved in the trafficking of children in the Andean Republics. Over the past five years, more cases of forced labor and forced criminality, as well as child sex trafficking in resort and tourist areas by U.S. and European perpetrators have been reported in the Western Hemisphere. Traffickers are using social media recruitment and multiple-destinations across the region to move victims; there remain continuing problems with complicity of government officials.

Washington, DC: William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2020. 30p.

By Jessica Pandian

Despite decades of activism from bereaved people and their supporters, too often the deaths of racialised people in prison have been dismissed, and the role of racism has been overlooked and ignored.

INQUEST’s new report, Deaths of racialised people in prison 2015 – 2022: Challenging racism and discrimination, makes a powerful intervention as it uncovers new data and tells the stories of 22 racialised people and how they died preventable and premature deaths in prison.

The report specifically looks at the deaths of Black and mixed-race people; Asian and mixed-race people; Middle Eastern and mixed-race people; people of Eastern European nationality; White Irish people and White Gypsy or Irish Traveller people.

Through a literature review, an analysis of never before published data on ethnicity and deaths in prison, and an examination of the relevant inquests and investigations, the report evidences the role of  institutional racism in the prison estate.

Key issues include the inappropriate use of segregation, racial stereotyping, the hostile environment, the neglect of physical and mental health, the failure to respond to warning signs, and the bullying and victimisation of racialised people.

London: INQUEST, 2022. 80p.

By Caroline Cawley, Jamila Henderson, Hemal Kanzaria, Johanna Lacoe, Stephen Paolillo, Kenneth Perez, Maria Raven and Alissa Skog

People with multiple, complex health and housing needs frequently receive fragmented care because the providing systems operate independently. Typically, individuals who come into frequent contact with the emergency medical system (e.g., emergency departments; emergency medical services) also interact with other health services and public systems such as psychiatric facilities, substance use treatment centers, shelters, and jails. Cross-sector care coordination is limited, in part, because data systems are not linked across physical health, behavioral health (mental health and substance use), housing, and criminal legal systems. To help San Francisco better serve this high need population, the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative worked with our partners in San Francisco’s public health and criminal legal systems to link together ten years of data from the physical health, behavioral health, housing, and criminal legal sectors. Using these linked data, we identify individuals with high utilization of the criminal legal system and the medical and behavioral health systems in a single year. High criminal legal utilization is defined as at least three jail bookings in a year, while high healthcare utilization is seven or more urgent/emergent healthcare contacts in a year. To understand trends before and after a year of high utilization, we analyze 5 two cohorts. The 2011 cohort includes 211 people with high utilization of both systems in fiscal year 2011, while the 2020 cohort includes 161 individuals with high utilization of both systems in fiscal year 2020. This allows us to observe patterns of system use before and after years of high utilization. We find: • Almost all the individuals in both cohorts experienced homelessness (98–99%) • High utilization is linked to premature death: more than one quarter of the 2011 cohort is deceased within 10 years • Between 80–90% of individuals in both cohorts have substance use disorders, and many also have co-occurring mental health and physical health disorders • More than 90% of the individuals in both cohorts have been booked into jail for a felony and a misdemeanor • Many of the individuals in the 2020 cohort were in San Francisco and had contact with at least one of these systems in the prior 10 years. For example, 30% of the 2020 cohort was booked into jail in 2011. These findings highlight the need for coordinated, evidence-based interventions to address these individuals’ complex needs, stabilize housing, and prevent poor health outcomes including untimely death.

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab, 2022. 34p.

By J. Russo ; M. Planty; J. Shaffer; M.N. Parsons; J.D. Roper-Miller

Detecting drug contraband smuggled into correctional facilities through the mail is challenging, because drugs can be sprayed onto paper, incorporated into ink, hidden under stamps, and concealed within a piece of correspondence. The methods used to hide the drugs, coupled with the high volume of mail received daily by inmates, increase the difficulty in detecting all drugs by using physical screening. In attempting to address this threat, some correctional facilities are using strategies that replace physical mail with electronic communication or reproductions of originals. Under this technique, all inmate mail is diverted to an offsite mail-processing vendor, who converts the mail to a digital form and transmits the documents to correctional facilities for distribution to inmates via tablets or kiosks. Adopting such a system is most effective when it is part of a “bundled” approach with other inmate services, such as telephone, messaging, video visitation, and electronic books, which are delivered through kiosks or tablets. In most cases, the digitized mail services can be provided at no cost to the agency as part of a comprehensive inmate services platform. 

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2021. 7p.

By Christophe Bellego and Joeffrey Drouard

Using Rio de Janeiro’s slum pacification program initiated in 2008, we study the effect of policies aimed at fighting drug gangs on crime. By combining a proxy variable with a simple structural model, we correct the bias resulting from the increase in unobserved crime reporting. We find that the program decreased the murder and the robbery rates by 7% and 34% respectively. However, the assault and the threat rates increased by 51% and 60% respectively. Absolute and marginal crime deterrence effects and a gang governance effect, namely that gangs can provide security to their turf, explain our results

Unpublished paper, 2019. 84p.