Sabrina Marchetti

This open access short reader offers a systematic overview of the scholarly debate on the experiences of migrant domestic workers at a global level, in the past as well as in present time. It tackles the nexus between migration and domestic work with a multi-layered approach. The book looks into the issue of (paid) domestic work in migratory contexts by investigating the feminization of migration, thereby considering the larger framework within which this specific phenomenon takes place. The author explains notions such as the “international division of reproductive labor” or “global care chains” which emphasize the inequality in the way care and domestic tasks are distributed today between middle-class women in receiving nations and migrant domestic workers. Moreover, the book shows how women migrating to work in the domestic work and private care sector are facing a complex landscape of migration and labor regulations that are extremely difficult to navigate. At the same time, this issue also addresses employers’ households who cannot find appropriate or affordable care among declining welfare states and national workers reluctant to take the job, whilst legal regulations make difficult to hire a domestic worker who is a third country national. As such this book offers an interesting read to academics, policy makers and all those working in the field.

Springer Cham

Maria Kousis, Aspasia Chatzidaki, Konstantinos Kafetsios

This open access book offers a cross-disciplinary view of challenging mobility issues for migrants and refugees in Europe and particularly Greece during the last decade when the economic and refugee crises coincided. It offers new analyses and data on a diverse range of topics concerning new emigrants as well as refugees and mobilities in Greece. The book covers themes which are not only related to refugee and immigrant integration and governance challenges, but also describes host attitudes, solidarity, political and protest claims in the public sphere, as well as the changing emigration environment in Greece within a European context. With contributions from the fields of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, geography and linguistics, this book provides a unique resource for students and scholars, but also for policy-makers and social scientists working on migration-related issues within and beyond Europe.

Springer Cham

Roxana Barbulescu, Sara Wallace Goodman, Luicy Pedroza

This open access book critically re-examines the theoretical and empirical interconnections between integration and citizenship, specifically, naturalisation. With new, empirical-grounded analyses of what we term 'citizenship-integration nexus' the central, shared contribution is showcasing how membership is informally achieved through everyday integration —usually around, but sometimes in spite of, formal citizenship requirements. By providing evidence of a nexus disjuncture, the book contributes to critical dialogues on immigrant integration and political incorporation, relevant for policymakers, civil society actors, and academics alike.

Springer Cham

By Diego Chaves-Gonzalez and Carlos Echeverria Estrada

According to the Regional Coordination Platform for the Response for Venezuelans (R4V), co-led by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and composed of more than 150 organizations, as of June 2020, more than 5 million refugees and migrants from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela had left their country due to the ongoing political and economic crises there, with more than 4 million of them migrating to other Latin American and Caribbean countries. Until 2015, the region had largely been characterized by high levels of emigration, and neighboring countries had never experienced migrant inflows at this scale.1 Since then, receiving countries have largely maintained an “open-door” approach toward Venezuelans, with significant policy innovations allowing many to enter, remain on an interim basis, and receive legal status via existing visa categories and special regularization programs, as well as the reception of requests for asylum. However, the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the region in early 2020 has added a new layer of complexity. Receiving countries now face the challenge of managing a public-health crisis while also addressing the needs of displaced Venezuelans and the communities in which they live.

Washington, DC and Panama City: Migration Policy Institute and International Organization for Migration. 2020. 31p.

Edited by Robert T. Chase

This volume considers the interconnection of racial oppression in the U.S. South and West, presenting thirteen case studies that explore the ways in which citizens and migrants alike have been caged, detained, deported, and incarcerated, and what these practices tell us about state building, converging and coercive legal powers, and national sovereignty. As these studies depict the institutional development and state scaffolding of overlapping carceral regimes, they also consider how prisoners and immigrants resisted such oppression and violence by drawing on the transnational politics of human rights and liberation, transcending the isolation of incarceration, detention, deportation and the boundaries of domestic law.

Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 440p.

Steven F. Lawson

Running for Freedom, Fourth Edition, updates historian Steven Lawson’s classic volume detailing the history of African-American civil rights and black politics from the beginning of World War II to the present day.

Offers comprehensive coverage of the African-American struggle for civil rights in the U.S. from 1941 to 2014

Integrates events relating to America’s civil rights story at both the local and national levels

Features new material on Obama’s first term in office and the first year of his second term

Includes addition of such timely issues as the Trayvon Martin case, the March on Washington 5oth anniversary, state voter suppression efforts, and Supreme Court ruling on Voting Rights Act

US. McGraw-Hill. 1991. 317p.

Jill Ahrens, Russell King

This open access book brings novel perspectives to the scholarship on transnational migration. The book stresses the complexity of migration trajectories and proposes multi-sited field studies to capture this complexity. Its constituent chapters offer examples of onward migration spanning all major world regions. The contents exemplify a range of interdisciplinary approaches, including both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The result is an impressive remapping and reconceptualisation of global migration and mobility, of interest to students and policy-makers alike.

Springer Cham

Irina Isaakyan, Anna Triandafyllidou, Simone Baglioni

Through an inter-subjective lens, this open access book investigates the initial labour market integration experiences of these migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, who are characterised by different biographies and migration/asylum trajectories. The book gives voice to the migrants and seeks to highlight their own experiences and understandings of the labour market integration process, in the first years of immigration. It adopts a critical, qualitative perspective but does not remain ethnographic. The book rather refers the migrants’ own voice and experience to their own expert knowledge of the policy and socio-economic context that is navigated. Each chapter brings into dialogue the migrant’s intersubjective experiences with the relevant policies and practices, as well as with the relevant stakeholders, whether local government, national services, civil society or migrant organisations.  The book concludes with relevant critical insights as to how labour market integration is lived on the ground and on what migrants ‘do’ with labour market policies rather than on what labour market policies ‘do’ to or for migrants.

Springer Cham

Mari-Liis Jakobson, Russell King, Laura Moroşanu, Raivo Vetik

How do migration and integration change when ‘crisis becomes normalcy’? This open access book investigates this question in the present context of turbulent times when, instead of dealing with one crisis, migrants, governments and whole societies have to cope within a complex web of multiple unsettling events that create anxieties about migration. Emphasising a plurality of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, as well as a variety of geographical settings in Europe and beyond, the chapters bring new insights into migrations produced by global political events, national political shifts, economic downturns and the Covid-19 pandemic. Special attention is given to both migrants’ experiences and policy outcomes. The result is an impressive rethinking of the concepts and terminology applied to migration and integration, of interest to students, social scientists, and policy-makers.

Springer Cham

Sriprapha Petcharamesree, Mark Capaldi

This open access IMISCOE Regional Reader explores the issues faced by migrant groups in Southeast Asia and the challenges of getting of their human rights recognized. It analyses the different responses, or lack thereof, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to these highly complex situations which are shaped by contemporary debates around borders and concepts of states, migrants’ rights as well as access to citizenship and how these concepts and paradigms are intertwined with issues such as agency and resilience of migrants. Crucial attention is given to the region’s lesser known populations and issues such as the Vietnamese in Thailand, people of Indonesian descent (PIDs) in Southern Philippines, independent child migrants across the region, and the vulnerabilities of migrant workers facing the COVID-19 pandemic. With its unique regional focus, this book provides a valuable resource to those studying human rights and migration issues, policy makers and researchers and students.

Springer Cham

Marja Tiilikainen, Johanna Hiitola, Abdirashid A. Ismail, Jaana Palander

This open access book examines the impacts and experiences of family separation on forced migrants and their transnational families.  On the one hand, it investigates how people with a forced migration background in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America experience separation from their families, and on the other, how family and kin in the countries of origin or transit are impacted by the often precarious circumstances of their family members in receiving countries. In particular, this book provides new knowledge on the nexus between transnational family separation, forced migration, and everyday (in)security. Additionally, it yields comparative information for assessing the impacts of relevant legislation and administrative practice in a number of national contexts. Based on rich empirical data, including unique cases about South-South migration, the findings in this book are highly relevant to academics in migration and refugee studies as well as policy-makers, legislators and practitioners.

Springer Cham

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.