By Sanae Youbi  

In September 2020, the European Commission proposed a reform of the current European Union (EU) approach to migration and asylum entitled a ‘Common European Framework for Migration and Asylum’. A major novelty of this ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’ is the proposal to introduce a ‘Pre-Entry Screening’ procedure (Screening Regulation), allowing European authorities at EU external borders to channel irregular third-country nationals towards either an asylum or a return procedure. > As it stands, the proposed Screening Regulation seeks to address the issue of irregular entries and asylum-seekers’ mobility through policing via one single tool, namely a fast screening procedure. This may lead to policy incoherence and human rights abuses justified in the name of internal security and public safety. > Instead of endorsing this restrictive approach, this policy brief argues that the Council and the European Parliament should amend the proposed Regulation by designing an approach inspired by a solidarity-driven system, aligned with EU values. Detention outside the EU borders must not be generalized but based on real security risks, not assumptions based on threat perceptions. The instrumentalization of migration should be rejected, and the focus should be on more sustainable legal venues for humanitarian and labour migration.

Bruges, Belgium, College of Europe, 2023. 15p.

By Nancy Rodriguez and Rebecca Tublitz    

  Immigrants represent a substantial part of the United States: today, 41 million immigrants reside in the U.S., representing 13 percent of the population. Migration of people from different parts of the world to the U.S. have led to dramatic changes in the racial and ethnic make-up of the population. In 1970, Latinos represented 4.6 percent of the U.S. population. Today, just under 1 in 5 people in the U.S. self-identifies as being of “Hispanic or Latino origin”, making it the second largest racial or ethnic group after Whites.1 The 62 million people across the U.S. who identify as Latino represent an enormously diverse array of communities in terms of ethnic heritage, migration histories, citizenship status, and language. Latinos also identify with a wide variety of racial categories, including Black, White, multi-racial, and other.2 However, as the Latino population has grown, so too has the criminal justice system. Since 1970, the U.S. experienced unprecedented growth in the size and scale of its criminal justice system, driven largely by policies favoring the increased use of arrest and incarceration for offenses both minor and more severe.3 Today, 1.2 million people are incarcerated in the nation’s state and federal prisons, while nearly 550,000 are held in jail.4 Annually, almost 9 million are arrested and booked into jail each year. …

Irvine, CA:  UCI School of Sociology: Department of Criminology, Law and Society     2023. 31p.

By Nancy Rodriguez, Amalia Mejia, Rebecca Tublitz  

In this policy brief, we first outline the landscape of immigration policies across SJC sites. Next, we illustrate, across four SJC sites, the detainer trends as well as the immigration policies of the respective jurisdictions. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for criminal justice policy and reform, focusing on undocumented immigrants and Latino/as.

Irvine, CA: University of California, Irvine. Department of Criminology, Law and Society2023. 18p.

By Mark Olden

Every year an estimated 5,000 migrant seasonal workers come to Sweden to do the back-breaking work of clearing landscapes and planting trees. They make up 85 – 90 per cent of the workforce and are employed by firms sub-contracted by the companies that dominate Sweden’s forest sector. "Duped” sheds a light on the endemic mistreatment they face. From earning less than promised, to being employed under unlawful terms. From working in poor conditions to being overcharged for their accommodation: the evidence is consistent and overwhelming. It contains testimonies from migrant workers, a union, investigative journalists and a small forest owner - stories of exploitation and harm that challenge the claim that such forestry is sustainable. This briefing shows that this exploitation is rooted in the economic logic which underpins the Swedish forestry model, and which is also driving nature destruction.

Bruxelles Belgium: FERN, 2023. 18p.

By Amarat Zaatut and Stephanie M. DiPietro  

Ethnographic studies of immigration and crime were prominent in the early decades of the twentieth century, yet contemporary scholarship has been dominated by quantitative approaches. In this review, we heed the call of those who have lamented the “collective amnesia” and “newness fetish” that characterize much of contemporary criminology and revisit classic ethnographies of immigration and crime, with an emphasis on the unique methodological contributions of this early work. Next, we synthesize the small but growing body of contemporary ethnographic research on immigration and crime, which includes the policing of immigrant communities in the age of “crimmigration;” the lived experiences inside contemporary deportation/ detention regimes; the integration experiences of Muslims, a highly marginalized but understudied population; and immigrants’ unique vulnerabilities to and experiences of victimization, to illustrate the value of qualitative approaches for capturing the nuances of immigrants’ experiences in the new age of immigration.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:285–306 

By Tom Jawetz

The Biden administration’s parole programs are successfully reducing both illegal immigration and total immigration into the U.S., and they are shifting the composition of immigrants so that they are more self-sufficient and reliant on their existing social networks, rather than dependent on government assistance. Maintaining and improving parole will be even more important now that Title 42 has expired and the U.S. government has lost another tool for reducing illegal immigration. The parole program for migrants from Venezuela began in October 2022 and expanded to Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua in January 2023. Approximately 102,000 people were paroled into the U.S. from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) from October 2022 until April 2023, the most recent numbers available. Through March 2023, the program has prevented the entry of more than 380,000 illegal immigrants into the United States. Without the CHNV program, these migrants would have otherwise been processed under Title 8 immigration law and likely admitted into the country. Potential illegal immigrants wait in their home countries instead of crossing the southern border, since this parole program requires that migrants have a U.S. sponsor, obtain a passport, and pass security and health vetting. This high barrier to entry successfully reduces total immigration and shifts the composition of immigrants toward those who can more easily support themselves or rely on their social and family networks rather than on government welfare. 

New York: Manhattan Institute,  2025. 23p.

By Nicole Chávez, Suma Setty, Hannah Liu, and Wendy Cervantes

Over two decades, immigration enforcement in the country’s interior has separated families and caused lasting damage to children in immigrant families and communities. These policies, resulting in worksite raids, arrests, and deportations, have undermined the health and well-being of more than 5 million children with at least one undocumented parent. In the meantime, Congress has failed to enact meaningful immigration reform that centers the dignity and humanity of immigrant families. Long-standing community members continue to suffer.

A new report from CLASP and UnidosUS analyzes trends in interior enforcement and documents the negative impact on children’s economic security, access to food, housing stability, mental health, and educational outcomes.  Although there has been a downward trend in interior enforcement actions since 2009, harmful policies remain in place and more humane policies–such as the DACA program, parental interest directive, and protected areas policy–remain stalled in the courts or face implementation challenges. 

Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy, and UnidosUS , 2023. 27p.

By James Carroll

FROM THE COVER: In this "rare book that combines searing passion ... with a subject that has affected all of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church's battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture. A courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader, Constantines Sword is truly a book for our times.

A Mariner Boo.k Houghton Mifelin Company. 2002. 757p. USED BOOK. CONTAINS MARK-UP.

By Marilyn Hoskin

Based on the dual premise that nations need to learn from how immigration issues are handled in other modern democracies, and that adaptation to a new era of refugee and emigration movements is critical to a stable world, Marilyn Hoskin systematically compares the immigration policies of the United States, Britain, Germany, and France as prime examples of the challenges faced in the twenty-first century. Because immigration is a complex phenomenon, Understanding Immigration provides students with a multidisciplinary framework based on the thesis that a nation's geography, history, economy, and political system define its immigration policy. In the process, it is possible to weigh the influence of such factors as isolation, colonialism, labor imbalances, and tolerance of fringe parties and groups in determining how governments ultimately respond to both routine immigration requests and the more dramatic surges witnessed in both Europe and the United States since 2013.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. 218p.

By Dale W. Tomich

Essays challenging conventional understandings of the slave economy of the nineteenth century.The essays presented in New Frontiers of Slavery represent new analytical and interpretive approaches to the crisis of Atlantic slavery during the nineteenth century. By treating slavery within the framework of the modern world economy, they call attention to new zones of slave production that were formed as part of processes of global economic and political restructuring. Chapters by a group of international historians, economists, and sociologists examine both the global dynamics of the new slavery, and various aspects of economy-society and master-slave relations in the new zones. They emphasize the ways in which certain slave regimes, particularly in Cuba and Brazil, were formed as specific local responses to global processes, industrialization, urbanization, market integration, the formation of national states, and the emergence of liberal ideologies and institutions. These essays thus challenge conventional understandings of slavery, which often regard it as incompatible with modernity.Dale W. Tomich is Deputy Director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, and Professor of Sociology and History at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016. 268p.

Edited by  Katarzyna Marciniak and Imogen Tyler

The last decade has witnessed a global explosion of immigrant protests, political mobilizations by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This volume considers the implications of these struggles for critical understandings of citizenship and borders. Scholars, visual and performance artists, and activists explore the ways in which political activism, art, and popular culture can work to challenge the multiple forms of discrimination and injustice faced by "illegal" and displaced peoples. They focus on a wide range of topics, including desire and neo-colonial violence in film, visibility and representation, pedagogical function of protest, and the role of the arts and artists in the explosion of political protests that challenge the precarious nature of migrant life in the Global North. They also examine shifting practices of boundary making and boundary taking, changing meanings and lived experiences of citizenship, arguing for a noborder politics enacted through a "noborder scholarship. "

Albany: State University of New York Press. 2014. 320p.

By Timothy Williams

Why do people participate in genocide? The Complexity of Evil responds to this fundamental question by drawing on political science, sociology, criminology, anthropology, social psychology, and history to develop a model which can explain perpetration across various different cases. Focusing in particular on the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, The Complexity of Evil model draws on, systematically sorts, and causally orders a wealth of scholarly literature and supplements it with original field research data from interviews with former members of the Khmer Rouge. The model is systematic and abstract, as well as empirically grounded, providing a tool for understanding the micro-foundations of various cases of genocide. Ultimately this model highlights that the motivations for perpetrating genocide are both complex in their diversity and banal in their ordinariness and mundanity.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021. 281p.

By Robin Bunce and Paul Field

 Darcus Howe: a Political Biography examines the struggle for racial justice in Britain, through the lens of one of Britain’s most prominent and controversial black journalists and campaigners. Born in Trinidad during the dying days of British colonialism, Howe became an uncompromising champion of racial justice. The book examines how Howe’s unique political outlook was inspired by the example of his friend and mentor C.L.R. James, and forged in the heat of the American civil rights movement, as well as Trinidad’s Black Power Revolution. The book sheds new light on Howe’s leading role in the defining struggles in Britain against institutional racism in the police, the courts and the media. It focuses on his part as a defendant in the trial of the Mangrove Nine, the high point of Black Power in Britain; his role in conceiving and organizing the Black People’s Day of Action, the largest ever demonstration by the black community in Britain; and his later work as one of a prominent journalist and political commentator.

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 305p.

By The United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Western District of Kentucky Civil Division

Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department announced today that the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government (Louisville Metro) engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The Department also announced that it has entered into an agreement in principle with Louisville Metro and LMPD, which have committed to resolving the department’s findings through a court-enforceable consent decree with an independent monitor, rather than contested litigation. Specifically, the Justice Department finds that LMPD:

• Uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers;

• Conducts searches based on invalid warrants;

• Unlawfully executes search warrants without knocking and announcing;

• Unlawfully stops, searches, detains, and arrests people during street enforcement activities, including traffic and pedestrian stops;

• Unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities;

• Violates the rights of people engaged in protected free speech critical of policing; and

• Along with Louisville Metro, discriminates against people with behavioral health disabilities when responding to them in crisis.

The Department also identified deficiencies in LMPD’s response to and investigation of domestic violence and sexual assault, including its responses to allegations that LMPD officers engaged in sexual misconduct or domestic violence. Deficiencies in policies, training, supervision, and accountability contribute to LMPD and Louisville Metro’s unlawful conduct.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division 2023. 90p.

By Harry King . As told to and edited by Bill Chambliss

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “From approximately 1910 until 1960 Harry King lived a life of crime. For the better part ofthose years he was a professional thief specializing in safe-cracking. This is his story. Through it we are provided a glimpse into a life style, a philosophy and a pattern of living that is ordinarily obscured from our vision. By coming to grips with Harry's life we learn a great deal more about America, Law, Order and Being.”

NY. Harper & Row. 1972. 186p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Jennifer Heath and Ashraf Zahedi

Book of the Disappeared confronts worldwide human rights violations of enforced disappearance and genocide and explores the global quest for justice with forceful, outstanding contributions by respected scholars, expert practitioners, and provocative contemporary artists. This profoundly humane book spotlights our historic inhumanity while offering insights for survival and transformation.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2023. 369p.

Edited by Hastings Donnan, Madeleine Hurd and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits  

Migrating Borders and Moving Times analyses migrant border crossings in relation to their everyday experiences of time, and connects these to wider social and political structures. Sometimes border crossing takes no more than a moment; sometimes hours; some crossers find themselves in the limbo of detention; for others, the crossing lasts a lifetime to be interrupted only by death. Borders not only define separate spaces, but different temporalities. This book provides both a single interpretative frame and a novel approach to border crossing: an analysis of the reconfiguration of memory, personal and group time that follows the migrants' renegotiation of cross-border space and recalibrations of temporality. Using original field data from Israel and northern and south-eastern Europe, the contributors argue that new insights are generated by approaching border crossing as a process with diverse temporalities whose relationship to space has always to be empirically determined.
Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017. 201p.

Edited by Andrea Rea,  Marco Martiniello. Alessanro Mazzola and  Bart Meuleman

The refugee question occupied centre stage at every political debate in Europe since 2015. Starting from the "long summer of migration", the polarization of opinions and attitudes towards asylum seekers among citizens of the EU has grown increasingly. The divergence between hospitality and hostility has also become evident in political reactions.

Bruxelles: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2019. 256p.

By Sungil Han

The association between immigration and crime has been the center of debates not only in the field of criminology but also in political arguments. However, consistent findings in empirical research show a null association or even crime reduction effects of immigration. To fill the gap in the literature and provide a more comprehensive understanding, this dissertation examines the immigration and crime nexus at multiple dimensions: individual, perceptual, and structural. Using data from various sources, the results of three studies note four important findings: (1) immigration/immigrant status holds a negative association with crime, (2) immigrants are different from non-immigrant residents regarding antisocial attitudes, presenting more favorable attitudes toward criminal behavior, (3) theoretical frameworks of the revitalization perspective and rational choice theory work in explaining lower levels of crime within immigrant groups or communities, and (4) cultural and environmental contexts matter to account for immigration and crime nexus. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are also discussed in the study.  

El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso, 2020. 134p.

By Emily Ryo

US immigration enforcement policy seeks to change the behaviors and views of not only individuals in the United States but also those of prospective migrants outside the United States. Yet we still know relatively little about the behavioral and attitudinal effects of US enforcement policy on the population abroad. Thisstudy uses a randomized experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey that was administered in El Salvador,Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico to analyze the effects of USdeterrence policies on individuals migration intentions and their attitudes toward the US immigration system. The two policies that the current study examines are immigration detention and nonju-dicial removals. The survey results provide no evidence that a heightened awareness of these US immigration enforcement pol-icies affects individuals intentions to migrate to the United States.But heightened awareness about the widespread use of immigra-tion detention in the United States does negatively impact indi-viduals’assessments about the procedural and outcome fairness of the US immigration system. These findings suggest that immi-gration detention may foster delegitimating beliefs about the USlegal system without producing the intended deterrent 

PNAS, Vol. 118, no. 21, 2021. 7p.