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Rights to the City or mobility rights? Central American asylum seekers in urban spaces of waiting in Tijuana: Recent research has documented that migrants are actors who have the potential to challenge practices that contain their mobility and undermine their safety, security, and well‐being. Scholars working in the Rights to the City and Critical Citizenship Studies paradigms have documented that migrants make claims to citizenship (e.g., legal status or formal and informal claims to protections, space, recognition, and participation in the city). At the same time, scholars working within the Autonomy of Migration approach have drawn attention to migrants' unwavering determination to move across borders despite obstacles. Conceptualizing these two sets of actions as "acts of citizenship" and "acts of mobility," we analyze the relationship between the two in this article. Drawing on our fieldwork among Central American asylum seekers at the northern Mexican border city of Tijuana conducted in the summer of 2019, we demonstrate that migrants are forced to choose between pursuing their dreams of mobility to the United States and claiming citizenship claims in the border city of Tijuana. Messages clés: En raison de diverses politiques de contrôle de la mobilité, la ville de Tijuana s'est transformée en un territoire d'attente pour des milliers de migrant‐e‐s d'Amérique centrale, modifiant profondément la dynamique migratoire de la ville.Bloqué‐e‐s au Mexique, les migrant‐e‐s sont confrontés à un dilemme: revendiquer leur droit à la mobilité vers les États‐Unis (« actes de mobilité ») ou chercher une protection au Mexique (« actes de citoyenneté »).Dans certains contextes, comme celui de Tijuana, les « actes de mobilité » peuvent interférer avec les « actes de citoyenneté » et vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian temporary migration regime has been widely criticised for its failure to provide protections and address migrant needs. This article contributes to these critiques by analysing how temporariness impacts the sense of belonging and perceptions of social inclusion among farmworkers in Canada. The sense of inclusion and belonging is vital for individuals' sense of well‐being, and therefore, a critique of temporariness is incomplete without it. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2018–2019 in a rural community in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, it documents that, despite certain initiatives to make temporary migrant workers feel welcomed, migrants have not grown attached to this place. We situate farmworkers' limited sense of belonging in the exclusionary architecture of this labour migration regime. We argue that two structural elements in particular make it impossible for most migrant farmworkers to feel connected to Canada—the forced separation from their families, and the lack of mobility within the labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning the depiction of pro-migrant solidarity as unequivocal and transformative, the article draws attention to two types of ambivalences evident in the solidarity activism in Mexico. The vacillation between two different goals, that is, protecting migrants' rights to mobile citizenship (i.e. the right to safe and secure mobility through Mexico) and the right to stay and settle in Mexico, constitutes the first type of ambivalence. We call it the mobility-immobility ambivalence. The second type of ambivalence is between the seemingly transformative discourses and actions and the de facto affirmative outcomes. We call it the transformative-affirmative ambivalence. Both ambivalences are linked to the rapidly changing geopolitical climate that has created uncertainty among Mexican solidarity activists. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in 2019 in Mexico, the article contributes to an understanding of how migrants' citizenship rights are negotiated and claimed by solidarity activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regularization programmes for undocumented migrants are generally viewed as a form of transition from “illegality” to a secure legal status. Yet, as we argue in this article, in many countries, such as Mexico, this transition is often incomplete and reversible. This article discusses regularization programmes for undocumented migrants in Mexico before and after the introduction of the 2011 Migration Law and illustrates that the status migrants obtain is precarious, that is insecure and conditional upon their ability to meet requirements for status renewal. Focusing on Central Americans in Mexico, we suggest that many migrants have been unable to obtain or renew their status after new procedures were put in place in 2011. Coining the legality granted through Mexico’s regularization process “precarious legality”, we attribute it to the contradiction between Mexico’s stated respect for migrants’ human rights and the de facto commitment to immigration control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has often been portrayed as a model for temporary migration programmes. It is largely governed by the Contracts negotiated between Canada and Mexico and Commonwealth Caribbean countries respectively. This article provides a critical analysis of the Contract by examining its structural context and considers the possibilities and limitations for ameliorating it. It outlines formal recommendations that the article co‐authors presented during the annual Contract negotiations between Canada and sending states in 2020. The article then explains why these recommendations were not accepted, situating the negotiation process within the structural context that produces migrant workers' vulnerability, on the one hand, and limits the capacity of representatives of sending and receiving states to expand rights and offer stronger protections to migrant farmworkers, on the other hand. We argue that fundamental changes are required to address the vulnerability of migrant agricultural workers. In the absence of structural changes, it is nevertheless important to seek improvements in the regulation of the programme through any means possible, including strengthening the Contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural migrant workers, recruited to work in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), are disciplined to be compliant and productive. Based on ethnographic data, we draw attention to several ways in which Spanish-speaking migrants, employed in agriculture in a rural community in Southwestern Ontario, respond to this disciplinary power. Most migrants discipline themselves and others to be productive and compliant workers. We refer to these acts as "performances of self-discipline." At other times, some (albeit, few) migrants challenge this disciplinary power either individually or collectively. We refer to these performances of subjectivity as "performances of defiance." Another way migrants may respond to the disciplinary power is by attempting to escape from it. Coining these performances "performances of escape," we discuss how some agricultural migrant workers drop out of the program and remain in Canada without authorization. By turning attention to these performances of subjectivity, the article fills a gap in the literature on migration management and its disciplinary practices in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deportability, or a threat of deportation, can be viewed as a technique of discipline employed to make migrant workers efficient and compliant. Under the threat of deportation, migrants accept dangerous, dirty, degrading and difficult jobs for low pay. Deportability also prevents them from challenging their working and living conditions either individually or collectively. Most of the literature on deportability applies to unauthorised migrants. Yet, as illustrated in this article, migrants employed legally on temporary contracts are also disciplined through a threat of deportation. While for unauthorised migrants, it is the receiving state that is the most important actor (re)creating the regime of deportability, for legally employed migrants, other actors––such as employers, the sending states, recruiters and international organisations––assume a more important role in employing the threat of deportation as a disciplinary technique. In this article, we explore how power is reproduced in this disciplinary regime of deportability. We examine migrants' responses to the techniques of discipline that subjugate them. We argue that when migrants adopt calculative and reflexive practices to avoid deportation and secure their own employment, they often end up reproducing the disciplinary power of the deportation regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the studies of citizenship practices and health and safety literature, this paper explores the reporting of workplace injuries and hazards among Latin American immigrants in Southwestern Ontario. The paper examines how (under-)reporting is shaped by three conditions: the knowledge of workers' rights, job (in)security, and ethnic identities. Recognizing knowledge as a significant factor which enables or constrains the capacity to claim one's citizenship rights, we demonstrate that even when Latin American immigrant workers develop a good understanding of their rights, many are still unable to assert them. We argue that this lack of rights access reflects the intersection of two relevant factors - workplace (in)security and ethnic and immigrant identities - which discourage their reporting. In particular, we demonstrate that since Latin American immigrants often find themselves in subordinate positions in the Canadian labour market, they choose not to report injuries and unsafe working environments for fear of discipline and reprisals. In addition, immigrant, regional, ethnic, and home country identities, all of which can limit or contradict a full sense of citizenship, appear to exert some influence on the way workers understand their workplace rights. The paper is based on 44 in-depth interviews conducted with Latin American immigrants in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global governance of labor migration reflects two major trends: one supports neoliberal migration management priorities and another addresses human rights, with the latter subordinated to the former. This subordination of human rights to other, market-related, priorities parallels global governance priorities in general. While some international organizations address the need for protection of migrant rights, their specific on-the-ground programs do not match the rhetoric. This study demonstrates this disconnection on the basis of an analysis of interviews with representatives of global governance institutions and international nongovernmental organizations conducted between 2007 and 2010 in the Latin American and Caribbean region and at the headquarters of relevant international organizations in Geneva. Furthermore, the study argues that because the discourse on migrant women's rights and their labor exploitation is framed predominantly in the context of trafficking, little headway is made in advancing migrant women's labor and social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on seasonal agricultural migrant workers in Canada, this article illustrates how local migrant rights activists have utilized different judicial fora to claim rights for non-citizen migrant workers under the international human rights framework. The article underscores the role of litigation by activists who, citing international norms and conventions, claim that protections provided by domestic constitutional provisions and labor laws should be extended to non-citizen migrants. The importance of judges' willingness to recognize the international law framework is also underscored. This article contributes to human rights studies by emphasizing the transformative role of judicial agency in the fight for the extension of human rights protections. Relative to citizens, non-citizens are a group lacking in political power and as such vulnerable to having their interests overlooked and their rights to equal concern and respect violated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on the dissemination of human rights norms and principles has focused predominantly on the socialization of nation-states into the values which have been widely endorsed. I argue in this article that the socialization mechanisms, discussed by such scholars as Meyer et al. (1997) and Risse and Sikkink (1999), do not capture the complex processes of the negotiation of more controversial rights. Distinguishing between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic human rights principles, I suggest that we need to explore the ways in which human rights activists advance, interpret, and negotiate counterhegemonic human rights. Focusing on migrants' rights advocacy in the US and Canada, I argue that pro-migrant activists draw on other human rights principles that do enjoy a greater degree of recognition and/or on instrumental reasons to pressure nation-states to grant more rights to migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on migrant rights activism on the part of organized labor in the U.S. and suggests that such activism be viewed in terms of its economic goals as well as its cultural background. The author suggests that many labor organizers and activists are the descendants of immigrants and that their family memories of migration have created empathy toward present-day migrants. She mentions that recruitment of new union members and protection against unfair competition by foreign workers are economic incentives for migrant rights activism.

The article discusses the need for an understanding of citizenship that includes individuals who are excluded from nation-state citizenship. Focus is placed on normative practices, meanings, and identities related to citizenship as promoted by grassroots organizations seeking to extend its jurisdiction to undocumented individuals. The efforts of nongovernmental organizations and labor unions to extend de facto citizenship to non-citizens are described, including their recognition of non-citizens as members of their group, their partnership with non-citizens in fighting for equal rights, and the extension of a certain amount of social protection to non-citizens. Examples are given from the United States, Canada, and Costa Rica. The concept of post-national citizenship is also discussed.

The article discusses the theme of citizenship and social justice that appears in the issue, noting the presence of contributions from several disciplines including philosophy, education, and sociology.

As a contribution to the growing literature on citizenship and advanced liberal governance, this paper focuses on how citizens—especially the poor—are brought into new policy platforms and new social relationships of responsibility, accountability, and participation. In making specific empirical reference to a range of global organizations and their poverty reduction initiatives, the analysis emphasizes the diverse ways in which individuals are governed as certain kinds of “free” persons through particular administrative practices. In this analysis, we underline how some organizations encourage citizens to participate in global practices, markets, and institutions, and train them to act in ways that are aligned with the principles and expectations imposed on them by advanced liberal governmental agendas. We argue that global organizations that are formally or informally linked to other organizations, agencies, and governments around the world, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, view citizens' participation in rights claiming and budgetary design practices as a crucial part of their responsibility to improve their well-being. We also analyse how specific global organizations promote citizens to become consumers of global financial services as a way of solving global poverty. In assessing programmes designed to encourage poor people to participate in global markets and institutions, we contend that these programmes are founded on governing practices that aim to make citizens, non-governmental organizations, and nation-states adhere to advanced liberal principles. We question whether these programmes improve the well-being of poor people. We suggest that future research needs to focus on how global organizations cultivate different discourses of freedom and liberty which serve to govern citizens as responsible consumers and participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the ways in which the Canadian voluntary sector has been created as a 'community of service providers'. Drawing upon a governmentality perspective, we illustrate how governmental interventions have been largely successful in carrying out the voluntary agencies' responsibilization efforts within the sector. We trace this responsibilization project through fiscal policies and programmatic schemes, characteristic of advanced liberalism. Once invested with the task of governing, we argue that voluntary agencies take it upon themselves to train their volunteers to become responsible citizens. As a form of, what we call, community government, these voluntary agencies have therefore become doubly responsible: they provide social services to disadvantaged individuals and simultaneously train community members to assume their moral duties. Overall, this paper contributes to the growing literature on governmentality and citizenship studies by producing new insights into the links between the voluntary sector and 'responsible citizenship' under advanced liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few decades, migrants residing in many European and North American countries have benefited from nation-states' extension of legal rights to non-citizens. This development has prompted many scholars to reflect on the shift from a state-based to a more individual-based universal conception of rights and to suggest that national citizenship has been replaced by post-national citizenship. However, in practice migrants are often deprived of some rights. The article suggests that the ability to claim rights denied to some groups of people depends on their knowledge of the legal framework, communications skills, and support from others. Some groups of migrants are deprived of the knowledge, skills, and support required to negotiate their rights effectively because of their social exclusion from local communities of citizens. The article draws attention to the contradiction in two citizenship principles—one linked to legal rights prescribed by international conventions and inscribed through international agreements and national laws and policies, and the other to membership in a community. Commitment to the second set of principles may negate any achievements made with respect to the first. The article uses Mexican migrants working in Canada as an illustration, arguing that even though certain legal rights have been granted to them, until recently they had been unable to claim them because they were denied social membership in local and national communities. Recent initiatives among local residents and union and human rights activists to include Mexican workers in their communities of citizens in Leamington, Ontario, Canada, are likely to enhance the Mexican workers' ability to claim their rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The article explores development and migration. Based on a comparison of investment-related behaviour of participants of the Canadian Mexican Seasonal Workers Programme from eleven Mexican villages, the article explores the impact of the nature of the migrants' community of origin on development. Contrary to the findings reported by the “new economics of labour migration” theorists, it was found that migrants from the least endowed communities, not from the best endowed communities, are likely to invest in agricultural land. This pattern is related to variable prices of land and the composition of the participants of the Canadian guest worker programme, most of whom are poor. The article draws attention to the importance of considering composition of migrant workers in an analysis of the impact of migration on community development. Development is analysed in the article from both the “growth” and the “quality of living” perspectives and it is found that regardless of the perspective used, the nature of the community does not affect the impact of migration on development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article relates multiplicity and flexibility of ethnic identities to the following three aspects of postmodernity: (a) perpetual redefinition of self by reflexive individuals who constantly receive and evaluate new knowledge; (b) increased global interaction, which expands the number of alternatives for reflexive individuals to chose from; and (c) acceptance of ambivalence in the cultural field, which makes it possible for diverse cultural expressions to coexist. I further suggest that when some people question and redefine the meanings they assign to their ethnic identities, they may internalize the diversity and flexibility of the interpretations they encounter in the diasporic space and the resulting identities may become fragmented. This argument is illustrated by a case study of ethnic identities among former Soviet Jews residing in Toronto, Canada who had left the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the impact of guest worker programs on the increase of undocumented workers in a host country. Concept of guest worker programs; Comparison between the United States Bracero Program and the Canadian Mexican Agricultural Seasonal Workers' program; Aspects of program administration.

This article explores the impact of international labor migration on development in communities of origin. It outlines three theoretical positions corresponding to specific theoretical trends in the field of development. The first position is represented by those who postulate that remittances and acquired skills and knowledge contribute to local development (the optimistic perspective). The second position is represented by those who regard the impact of international migration in predominantly negative terms (the pessimistic perspective). And finally, there are those who believe that some, although limited, growth is possible when transmigrants remit financial and social capital (the moderately optimistic perspective). Based on research on Mexican seasonal workers in Ontario, the article will argue that while international migration can contribute to some economic growth, this growth is limited. While the standards of living of seasonal labor migrants and their households improve (and therefore there is basis for some limited optimism), few among them invest their money in productive activities. Instead, the improvements that the migrants' households experience are linked to continuous external sources of income. The article illustrates that while Canada-bound migrants experience both structural constraints related to the decline in subsistence agriculture in Mexico and those related to household composition (absence of males from the household), specific criteria used to select participants in the Canadian seasonal farm worker program compound the problems associated with the low potential among these workers to invest remittances productively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the Canadian government's policy toward refugees from the Soviet Union, between 1979 and 1990. Preferential treatment given to Soviet refugees compared to those coming from Latin America and Africa; Statutory recognition of refugee status in the 1976 Immigration Act; Canadian refugee flow between 1978 and 1981; Assistance to victims of persecution.