Immigration Law Commons^™

Legal Protections For Environmental Migrants: Expanding Possibilities And Redefining Success, Jayesh Rathod

Working Papers

This working paper describes international and domestic efforts to enact legal protections for environmental migrants, with attention to Latin America, and examines why efforts to craft a comprehensive international instrument to address this phenomenon have yet to succeed. It details factors contributing to this impasse, including: the lack of an existing framework; the inherent complexity and variability of environmental migration; the trend towards restrictive migration policies; and the lack of a clear institutional leader at the international level. Citing the limits of an exclusive focus on the creation of a new international instrument, the paper also points to the need …

Taming Immigration, David A. Martin

Georgia State University Law Review

Remarks on Immigration by David A. Martin at the 64th Henry J. Miller Distinguished Lecture

Crimmigrant Nations: Resurgent Nationalism And The Closing Of Borders [Table Of Contents], Robert Koulish, Martje Van Der Woude

Law

As the distinction between domestic and international is increasingly blurred along with the line between internal and external borders, migrants—particularly people of color—have become emblematic of the hybrid threat both to national security and sovereignty and to safety and order inside the state. From building walls and fences, overcrowding detention facilities, and beefing up border policing and border controls, a new narrative has arrived that has migrants assume the risk for government sponsored degradation, misery, and death. Crimmigrant Nationsexamines the parallel rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and right-wing populism in both the United States and Europe to offer an unprecedented …

Migration As Reparation: Climate Change And The Disruption Of Borders, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines the legal and moral basis for migration as a form of reparation for the harms inflicted on the states and peoples of the Global South through climate change and through centuries of predatory economic policies. Using Central American migration to the United States as a case study, the article explains that susceptibility to climate change is a function of two variables: exposure and social and economic vulnerability. High-emitting affluent states are disproportionately responsible for Central America’s exposure to climate change due to their historic and current greenhouse gas emissions, their unwillingness to curb these emissions, and their …

The New Migration Law: Migrants, Refugees, And Citizens In An Anxious Age, Hiroshi Motomura

Cornell Law Review

Once every generation or so, entire fields of law require a full reset. We need to step back from the fray and rethink basic premises, ask new questions, and even recast the role of law itself. This moment has come for the law governing migration. Seasoned observers of immigration and refugee law have developed answers to core questions that emerged a generation ago. But now these observers often talk past each other, and their answers often fail to engage coherently with the daunting challenges posed by migration in this anxious age.

To try to do better, I undertake four inquiries. …

Surfacing Contexts Of Violence In Novel Forms Of The Reproductive Justice Framework Through Lessons From Latin America: A Study Of Brutality, Migration And Bodily Autonomy And Progressive Solutions For Use In Public Health, Angelica M. Campos

CMC Senior Theses

In the last 5 years, Latin America has witnessed a tenacious wave of pañuelo verde and #NiUnaMenos activism. Sparked by increasing mortality rates associated with unsafe, clandestine abortions and femicide, the praxes and fundamental elements of these social movements have proven themselves useful not only in garnering international attention on issues relating to bodily autonomy, but in the synthesis of their respective sociopolitical solutions as well. In the United States, similar efforts have been spearheaded by the lauded reproductive justice framework, which has often been credited for centering the plight of women of color in both reproduction and social justice. …

All The Border's A Stage: Humanitarian Aid As Expressive Dissent, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

Immigration enforcement along the Southwest border between the United States and Mexico has long channeled immigrants into perilous desert corridors, where many thousands have dies, out of the public view. In response to this humanitarian crisis, activists from organizations such as No More Deaths (NMD) trek deep into the treacherous desert, hoping to save lives, honor the remains of those who did not survive, and influence public opinion about border enforcement policies. NMD's activism is not merely utilitarian but also deeply expressive; ultimately, they hope to convey the message that all lives -- including those of unauthorized migrants-- are worth …