Immigration Law Commons^™

Citizenship Disparities, Emily Ryo, Reed Humphrey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Local Governance Of Immigrant Incorporation: How City-Based Organizational Fields Shape The Cases Of Undocumented Youth In New York City And Paris, Stephen P. Ruszczyk

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

City-based organizations and governments play an important role in incorporating undocumented immigrant youth. This article investigates how localities sociopolitically incorporate these immigrants by examining the governance constellations and institutional logics of the organizational field that manages undocumented youth. Comparing sets of municipal and civil society organizations in different national settings, I use the two cases of New York City and Paris to ask how the ‘city-based organizational field of immigrant incorporation’ shapes citizenship experiences of undocumented youth. Data come from multi-level longitudinal ethnography over 8 years with two dozen undocumented youth and with organizations in each city as well as …

The Progressives: Racism And Public Law, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

American Progressivism inaugurated the beginning of the end of American scientific racism. Its critics have been vocal, however. Progressives have been charged with promotion of eugenics, and thus with mainstreaming practices such as compulsory housing segregation, sterilization of those deemed unfit, and exclusion of immigrants on racial grounds. But if the Progressives were such racists, why is it that since the 1930s Afro-Americans and other people of color have consistently supported self-proclaimed progressive political candidates, and typically by very wide margins?

When examining the Progressives on race, it is critical to distinguish the views that they inherited from those that …

The Autonomy Of Chinese Migrants Despite Structural And Social Determinants, Helen Yu

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

China is currently undergoing one of the largest domestic migration movements in its history, as hundreds of millions of its citizens move out of their countryside homes into urban areas to seek work in the wake of the nation’s rapid globalization. This paper examines the lives of these migrants – how much agency they have over their decisions and their destinies while simultaneously subject to overarching controls set onto them by economic circumstance, government laws, and cultural traditions. It explores how they subvert tradition and former government policies by leaving home, and how they respond when confronted with discrimination in …

¿El Derecho A Una Vida Sin Discriminación?: Un Análisis De Las Representaciones Discriminatorias Sobre Los Migrantes Bolivianos Por Parte De Los Residentes Argentinos En El Barrio Porteño De Flores, Kelly Johnson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Argentina has always been a country where migration has influenced the nation’s identity. Although migration from bordering countries towards Argentina is a phenomenon that dates back to the beginnings of the nation, since the 1990s this migratory phenomenon has been the most visible in the country, especially migration from Bolivia. The visibilization of these migrants, who do not always share the characteristics of the hegemonic Argentine (the figure of the son of white European immigrants), caused in the 1990s a surge of discrimination and social rejection. Combined with the continued existence of the restrictive “Videla Law,” a migratory law from …

Human Rights At The Border: European-Union—Moroccan Relations In The Wake Of The 2013 Migratory Policy, Anashua Dutta

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Morocco’s border with the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla has brought the country into direct relations with the European Union (EU) on the issues of border control and migration. In response to the growing human rights violations towards migrants and refugees enumerated in the Conseil Nationale des Droits de l’Homme’s (CNDH) 2013 report, King Muhammad VI passed a migratory policy that emphasized preservation of human rights within Morocco’s borders. This study examines the effects of Morocco’s relationship with the EU on the implementation of the human-rights aspects of Morocco’s 2013 migratory policy. Using the semi-structured interview approach, I will …

Less Enforcement, More Compliance: Rethinking Unauthorized Migration, Emily Ryo

Faculty Scholarship

A common assumption underlying the current public discourse and legal treatment of unauthorized immigrants is that unauthorized immigrants are lawless individuals who will break the law—any law—in search of economic gain. This notion persists despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary. Drawing on original empirical data, this Article examines unauthorized immigrants and their relationship to the law from a novel perspective to make two major contributions. First, I demonstrate that unauthorized immigrants view themselves and their noncompliance with U.S. immigration law in a manner that is strikingly different from the prevalent view of criminality and lawlessness found in popular and …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Exploring The Vulnerabilities Of Street-Working Boys In Se Asia, Jarrett Davis, Glenn Miles

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

The sexual exploitation of men and boys is often little understood and commonly goes ignored. Internationally, it is said that 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before reaching adulthood and in some nations the exploitation and abuse of boys far outweighs that of girls. Social and cultural norms often assume men and boys to be inherently strong and/or invulnerable to sexual exploitation; however, research in this area continues to show these assumptions to be false. Because of this lack of awareness, the efforts of the organizations and individuals who work to provide for the needs of male victims are …

Analysis Of Human Trafficking Cases In Rhode Island, 2009-2013, Donna M. Hughes, Rachel Dunham, Faith Skodmin, Lucy Tillman, Jessica Wainfor

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

This presentation is an analysis of seven state and federal cases of human trafficking, including forced labor and sex trafficking, in Rhode Island from 2009 until 2013. In 2009, Rhode Island passed a comprehensive human trafficking law. Since then there have been six cases of sex trafficking and one case of forced labor. Sources for information on the human trafficking cases were police reports, witness statements, court documents and media reports. This presentation will briefly summarize the cases and discuss the similarities and difference among the cases and discuss of some key findings from these cases, which include:
1) Victims …

The Problem Of State Intervention In Post-Abolition Slavery: A Critique Of Consensus, Anthony Talbott, David Watkins

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

Slavery is now illegal by all states and under international law. Contrary to the hopes of abolitionists, this state of affairs has transformed rather than eradicated slavery as an institution. Furthermore, responses by states to post-abolition forms of slavery have often been less than ideal. This paper begins by comparing two state responses to slavery in the early 20th century: the federal peonage trials in Montgomery, Alabama from 1903-1905, and the federal response to an alleged epidemic of “white slavery” from 1909-1910, culminating in the passage of the White Slave-Traffic Act. Taken together, these responses engender pessimism about the state …

Becoming Dacamented: Assessing The Short-Term Benefits Of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (Daca), Roberto G. Gonzales, Veronica Terriquez, Stephen Ruszczyk

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In response to political pressure, President Obama authorized the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, giving qualified undocumented young people access to relief from deportation, renewable work permits, and temporary Social Security numbers. This policy opened up access to new jobs, higher earnings, driver’s licenses, health care, and banking. Using data from a national sample of DACA beneficiaries (N = 2,381), this article investigates variations in how undocumented young adults benefit from DACA. Our findings suggest that, at least in the short term, DACA has reduced some of the challenges that undocumented young adults must overcome …

Human Trafficking To Northern America: The Balkan Connection, Natalya Timoshkina, Naser Miftari, Antonela Arhin

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

This paper draws on the results of a large multi-method study, which examined human trafficking from the former Eastern Bloc to Northern America (Canada and the United States). The study was conducted in 2011-2013, and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The analysis is grounded in the findings from 9 countries of the Balkan region included in the study: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. The following data sources were used: (a) national and international reports, media and academic articles, and various documents (in English and official languages …

Human Trafficking, Education And Migration At Ngos In Cambodia And Thailand, Robert Spires, Xinyi Duan

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

This presentation is based on in-progress collaborative research between researcher Dr. Bob Spires and Hong Kong-based NGO Liberty Asia. The research involves interviews and observations conducted at multiple NGOs in Cambodia and Thailand working to address human trafficking and incorporating educational components into their programs. The study uses comparative lenses to examine issues of education and migration in both the Cambodian and Thai context for human trafficking survivors and at-risk populations. The study is interdisciplinary, drawing on the work on human trafficking in several social science fields. The framework for the research is based on Frank Laczko and Elzbieta Gozdziak’s …

Bra’S For A Cause: A Service Learning Project In A Freshman Level Human Trafficking Course, Beth A. Wiersma

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

Women and Children for Sale: The Global Problem of Human Trafficking is a General Studies Portal course for college freshman at a Midwestern university. The students in the course were surveyed the first day of class about why they chose the course, what they hoped to get out of the course, what they believed to be true about human trafficking, and how they learned about human trafficking. During the semester the students planned and carried out a service learning project “Bras for a Cause”. This project involved educating others about human trafficking and collecting bras. The bras are sent overseas …

Reconstructing A College Model For Countering Human Trafficking, Ron D. Petitte

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

Assessment is a hallmark of 21st Century academia. Accordingly, the 2013 college model for countering human trafficking² was reviewed and assessed by the author, leading to a restructuring of the model, in order to present developments that have occurred since the October 2013 Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as well as attempting to engineer a more practical and effective model: There are two areas of research that link directly to the spectre of human trafficking. The first is economics; and, the question that is raised: “Is human trafficking, today, the result of unjust economic …

A Content Analysis Of Backpage.Com Advertisements In Louisville, Kentucky, Theresa C. Hayden

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

Backpage.com and Craigslist are replacing the street corner as a crime source for buying and selling of sex. “To reduce commercial sexual exploitation and enforce existing trafficking laws, communities must first recognize the extent of the problem within their local area (Janson, Mann, Marro, & Matvey, 2013, 99). In a population density study conducted in 15 major U. S. cities, it was found that males over 18 years of age who buy sex online ranged from 0.6% in San Francisco to 21.4% in Houston (Roe-Sepoqitz, Hickle, Gallagher, Smith, & Hedberg, 2013). Researchers in the Greater Cincinnati area found a high …

The Social And Economic Implications Of Human Trafficking In Nigeria: Naptip In Focus, Eunice I. Anuforom

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

Human trafficking is globally recognized as a modern day slavery with multifarious negative socio-economic, legal and health implications. Besides drugs trafficking and gun running, human trafficking has become a lucrative business globally and yields an estimated US$32 million annually. Traffickers trade on human lives, subject them to gory and traumatic experiences in order to make profits. Human trafficking is therefore the worst form of human rights violations and a gender based violence against female who constitute the majority of the victims in the country. Regrettably, Nigeria occupies the ignoble position of a source, transit and destination country for trafficking. In …

"I Want To Be Brave": A Baseline Study On The Vulnerabilities Of Street-Working Boys In Sihanoukville, Cambodia, Jarrett Davis, Glenn Miles, M’Lop Tapang

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

Focusing on street-working boys in Sihanoukville, this study partnered with social workers and child protection officers from M’lop Tapang (a key social service provider in Sihanoukville) to identify locations where young boys were known to be working along the beaches and within the town center. In recent years, Sihanoukville has become known as a rapidly developing commercial beach area, which has received increasing attention from foreign tourists, backpackers, and ex-patriots. Within this context, it has become a destination for migrant workers from surrounding provinces who have hopes of generating income through selling, begging, and other various means. The study conducted …

Trafficking In Child Labor In Ghana And Senegal, Steven Brandt

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

The goal of this paper is to determine the efficacy of anti-trafficking governance in Senegal and Ghana and what social, political, legal and economic factors work for or against those policies such as: - social policies for and against the growth of the NGO community - enforcement of anti-trafficking laws - economic policies for impoverished urban and rural communities - government rehabilitation policies for minors - federal, state and local corruption - border security/immigration - religious and political freedom This research comprises a comprehensive literature analysis as to the current state of trafficking of minors in Ghana and Senegal. First …

The Institutional And Social Integration Of Child Asylum-Seekers In The Schools And Society Of The Canton Of Vaud, Switzerland, Sonja C. Brinker

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As an increasing number of asylum-seekers cross the border into Switzerland in search of protection, Switzerland faces the challenge of accommodating and integrating asylum populations into society while protecting all basic human rights. This study looks at the reception of child asylum-seekers in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland in terms of their integration in the education system and society. A series of interviews and a literature review were used to identify what services are available to child asylumseekers both at school and within the canton that may facilitate integration. The findings of this study indicate that child asylum-seekers are receiving …

"These Illegals": Personhood, Profit, And The Political Economy Of Punishment In Federal-Local Immigration Enforcement Partnerships, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Contemporary popular discourse linking immigration and immigrants to crime has proved extremely difficult to dislodge, despite clear evidence that immigrant labor provides broad and direct economic benefits to a significant proportion of the US population. The criminalizing discourse directed at immigrants may in part be functional, by leading to restrictionist immigration policies and practices and subjecting immigrants to intensified economic exploitation.

This study examines the economic context in which state and local governments adopt restrictionist immigration policies and practices, and implicates the political economy of punishment (Rusche and Kirchheimer, Punishment and social structure. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939) …

A Necessary Effort: The Construction Of A Binational Immigration Policy For Nicaraguan Immigrants In Costa Rica, Irma Castañeda

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Although the experiences of Nicaraguan immigrants to Costa Rica have been well-studied, the investigation of this topic through the lens of the construction of public policies is missing. Through the testimonies of Nicaraguans that emigrated or still live and work in Costa Rica, I learned that immigrants, especially those that are undocumented, are vulnerable to the violation of their rights, for example, through the lack of access to public services or mistreatment by their bosses. Because of these violations, it is necessary to examine the topic of the immigration policies of both countries because they influence the treatment and integration …

Massachusetts Immigrants By The Numbers, Second Edition: Demographic Characteristics And Economic Footprint, Alan Clayton-Matthews, Paul Watanabe

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

With this update to the original groundbreaking study of Massachusetts Immigrants by the Numbers in 2009, we continue to focus on the economic and social contributions that immigrants have made in building the vibrant Massachusetts economy. It shows that, despite heightened public debate, the demographic characteristics and economic trends of the state’s immigrant population have remained largely unchanged. Immigrants continue to have a positive impact on the Commonwealth.

Assessment Of International Efforts To Protect The Rights Of Unaccompanied Minors, Kyla Gaines

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Children’s rights have been violated for centuries. These violations of children’s rights may include but are not limited to a child's access to education, adequate food or quality health care. Over the last few years there have been a rising number of prevalent issues that impact children, including trafficking, slave labor, and unaccompanied minors (UAM) migrating from their countries of origin to new host states in North America and Europe. The issue of unaccompanied minors migrating to Europe has been prevalent for years. "In most EU member states arrivals started during the 1990's. I'd say the issue became prevalent at …

El Futuro De La Inmigración En España - (“Future Of Immigration In Spain”), Joshua Bruno

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The following argument is about the highly disputed theme of Immigration. Like all countries around the world, Spain manages a population of foreigners that have turned up in search of a new opportunity. If these migrants are able to enter the European Union, they still face many obstacles, including racism and extreme poverty. Yet, their contributions to a struggling European economy are undeniable. The following paper attempts to highlight these important contributions and demonstrate how in a liberal democratic society, such as Spain’s, a more accepting immigration policy where more sanitary conditions provided to immigrants could work. Furthermore, these arguments …

Profiles Of Asian American Subgroups In Massachusetts: Korean Americans In Massachusetts, Nathan James Bae Kupel

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

This report looks at Korean Americans in Massachusetts with a focus on the Metro Boston area. Using the 2000 U.S. Census and the American Community Survey 2005–2007 Three-Year Estimates in combination with interviews and secondary research, this profile looks at Korean American demographics and community perspectives.

Massachusetts Immigrants By The Numbers: Demographic Characteristics And Economic Footprint, Alan Clayton-Matthews, Faye Karp, Paul Watanabe

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

An analysis of data on the impact of immigrants on the Massachusetts economy. Along with demographic characteristics, the study examines variables such as income, poverty status, occupation, and home-ownership. In addition, the report addresses the impact of immigrants on taxes, social services, and transfer payments.

Women’S Unequal Citizenship At The Border: Lessons From Three Nonfiction Films About The Women Of Juárez, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

There is no better illustration of the impact of borders on women’s equal citizenship than the three documentaries reviewed in this essay. All three deal with the femicides that befell the young women of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico between 1993 and 2005. Juarez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Performing the Border (1999) stimulates the viewer’s imagination regarding the ephemeral nature of borders and their impact on the citizenship of women who live at the intersection of local, regional, national and international legal regimes. Señorita Extraviada (2001) is an intimate portrait of the victims which illustrates why the …

The Immigration Paradox: Alien Workers And Distributive Justice, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

The immigration of relatively unskilled workers poses a fundamental problem for liberals. While from the perspective of the economic welfare of natives, the optimal policy would be to admit these aliens as guest workers, this policy would violate liberal ideals. These ideals would treat these workers as equals, entitled to access to citizenship and to the full set of public benefits provided to citizens. If the welfare of incumbent residents determines admissions policies, however, and we anticipate the fiscal burden that the immigration of the poor would impose, then our welfare criterion would preclude the admission of relatively unskilled workers …