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Immobility is to be complicated as a topic of study in research on human migration. This paper analyses different ways of staying put, investigating the motivations, degree of (in)voluntariness and associated narratives, to show how immobility is as complex a research category as mobility. It does so in the context of irregular male migration from a rural location in Andean Ecuador to the USA. This paper also focuses on the interactions between mobility and immobility. Families with migrant and non-migrant members are imbued with and affected by changing mobility–immobility dynamics. This paper explores such dynamics to facilitate the understanding of local sociocultural logic, where mobility and immobility are infused with specific meaning, while placing such dynamics within global regimes of (im)mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After release from immigrant detainment centres in the United States, a select group of unaccompanied immigrant children enter a community-based programme known as 'post-release services' (PRS) because of an identified vulnerability. Despite the name, post-release services do not confer actual services – only a referral for them. We use an intersectional lens to examine the tension for service providers within PRS policy between the rights of the child and the stigma and increasing criminalisation of being undocumented. This paper is based on document analysis of all public federal documents on unaccompanied children, ethnographic fieldwork in four PRS serving sites in the US, and interviews with 20 unaccompanied children, 17 sponsors, and 13 employees of the government subcontracting agency. Drawing on these unique data sets, we consider how age and legal status intersect in shaping the implementation of services for unaccompanied children and subsequent outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do racial and ethnic characteristics of non-immigrants play an important role in shaping attitudes toward immigrants in the U.S.? Using a 2010 survey experiment representative of the U.S. general population, this paper examines differences in opposition to immigration by the race or ethnicity of the respondent. By manipulating the amount of anonymity offered to respondents, the experiment allows explicit opposition to be distinguished from implicit opposition, which offers unique insight into the extent to which opposition is masked. Consistent with theories of in-group solidarity, we find that Hispanics, who comprise nearly half of all immigrants in the U.S., overtly express a less restrictive posture, which, relative to Black and White respondents, is not significantly masked. In contrast, White and Black respondents only overtly express more openness to immigration. When offered absolute anonymity, opposition is significantly and substantively greater. The implications are profound in that differences in the extent to which opposition is masked, rather than overtly expressed, fundamentally patterns racial and ethnic differences in opposition to immigration in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 35 years, the US has been the top recipient country for refugee resettlement. Despite political ambivalence about refugee admittance and their integration into America's sociocultural fabric, little is known in refugee literature about how receiving countries' refugee and asylum policies structure refugee migratory processes and flows from countries of origin. Based on 21 indepth interviews and group discussions with Chin-Burmese families, this paper traces migratory strategies and routes from Northern Burma to the US by examining the role of class, family dynamics, cross-border connections and social capital in migratory decision-making for irregular border-crossings and endurance as transit migrants. Additionally, I analyse the critical functions of intermediary social actors and institutions, particularly faith and community-based organisations, for gaining entry to destination countries. I show that examining Chin refugees' agency and premigratory motives demonstrates the heterogeneity of the refugee population, justifying Chimamanda Adichie's claim that 'nobody is just a refugee'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1990, a temporary-to-permanent pathway was established for highly skilled workers admitted to the United States under non-immigrant programmes. This paper argues that this policy shift has allowed employers to play a crucial role in the immigration of highly skilled workers, thereby creating labour-market institutional selection that gives a salary advantage to highly skilled temporarily admitted workers retained in the US. Through analyses of the salary differentials among admission-category groups, the paper finds that the salary advantage is based on recruitment from Western countries, adjustment from temporary to permanent status after a second employer screening, working in the information technology sector and the private sector, holding a supervisory position, or having a skill-matched job, all of which are consequences of institutional selection rather than individual self-selection. The results also reveal a difference between those admitted from abroad and those recruited from graduating foreign students in US higher-education institutions, which suggests a distinction between overseas and domestic hiring. Policy implications for the US and other receiving countries are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to improve our understanding of migration–development links by comparing the Mexico–US and Morocco–EU cases. Despite significant differences, Mexico and Morocco share a common geopolitical location on the global South–North migration frontier and a common position as prime reserves of low-cost, low-skilled migrant labour for the US and the EU. The analysis highlights the large extent to which Mexican and Moroccan migration is determined by business cycles and political-economic and labour-market transformations in the US and the EU. Mexican and Moroccan migration patterns and trends show striking similarities. Persistent economic gaps and migrant networks partly explain why, despite recruitment freezes in Mexico (1964) and Morocco (1973) and increasing border controls, migration has endured through family and irregular migration and a diversification of migration origins and destinations. Simultaneously, economic liberalisation and labour-market transformations in origin and destination countries have increased supply and demand for casual and informal labour in the service sector, agriculture and construction. In spite of surging remittances and the considerable contributions of Mexican and Moroccan migrants to improved living standards in origin areas, migration cannot overcome structural development obstacles and deeply ingrained political and economic inequalities in Morocco and Mexico. In fact, migration may deepen such inequalities and deflect the attention away from states' failure to create favourable conditions for equitable development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to improve our understanding of emerging patterns of interior immigration control in the United States by examining local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities under the 287(g) Program. While several recent studies have drawn attention to the shifting terrain of immigration enforcement away from borders into the interior, few have attempted to systematically explain reasons for this shift. Using a county-level dataset of all counties in the United States, this study finds that, despite the purported links between the 287(g) Program and public safety, county crime rates are not significantly related to local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Rather, the results indicate that local decisions to engage in immigration control efforts are driven by political factors, particularly a county's partisan composition, and demographic pressures related to increases in the Hispanic/Latino population. Demography is not, however, destiny, as new immigration in localities with established foreign-born populations does not significantly increase the likelihood of cooperation under 287(g). This suggests that the partisan composition of the places where immigrants settle mediates the extent to which the demand for tighter immigration enforcement exceeds the political influence immigrant communities have in their efforts to contest restrictive immigration control policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 60 years, the United States has accepted some two million refugees for resettlement. Standard opinion polls suggest that the American response to these refugees has been mixed. Yet, despite much ambivalence about particular refugees and where they may belong in the grid of American social and cultural categories, the notion of refuge and the imperative toward support and welcome to refugees endure. As an extended example, this paper considers press treatment of refugees in Richmond, Virginia during the last quarter of the twentieth century—before security concerns and surging numbers of illegal immigrants irrevocably changed the nature of American immigration. Unlike the ambivalent response that emerges in national opinion polls and some other venues, in this case the construction of refugees is neither negative nor ambivalent, but is instead solidly positive. This positive construction extends across a broad range of racial and national-origin groups and is conditioned by a peculiarly American notion of how refugees relate to broader American categories, particularly that of 'immigrant'. In this local story from the United States lies a broader tale of how refugees are woven into the existing social and cultural categories of the countries in which they resettle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the strategy for controlling ‘unwanted’ immigration that has been implemented by the US government since 1993, and suggests explanations for the failure of that strategy to achieve its stated objectives thus far. Available evidence suggests that a strategy of immigration control that overwhelmingly emphasises border enforcement and short-changes interior (especially workplace) enforcement has caused illegal entries to be redistributed along the south-west border. The evidence also suggests that the financial cost of illegal entry has more than quadrupled; that undocumented migrants are staying longer in the United States; that migrant deaths resulting from clandestine border crossings have risen sharply; and that there has been a surge in anti-immigrant vigilante activity. Consequences predicted by advocates of the concentrated border enforcement strategy have not yet materialised: there is no evidence that unauthorised migration is being deterred at the point of origin; that would-be illegal entrants are being discouraged at the border after multiple apprehensions by the Border Patrol and returning home; that their employment prospects in the US have been curtailed; or that the resident population of undocumented immigrants is shrinking. It is argued that a severely constrained employer-sanctions enforcement effort that has left demand for unauthorised immigrant labour intact is the fundamental reason why steadily escalating spending on border enforcement during the last ten years has had such a weak deterrent effect. Reasons for the persistence of a failed immigration control policy are discussed, and alternatives to the current policy are evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore how race, class, and migration influence Latino household wealth, and uncover important implications for the close 2016 US presidential election outcome in Florida. I follow over 11,000 homeowners in the Orlando area of Orange County, Florida from 2004 to 2016. To proxy for immigrant incorporation, I leverage matched voter registration records and direct observation of borrower identification – driver's license, green card/passport, or undocumented identification. Documented immigrants appear least vulnerable to foreclosure; multivariate analyses show that Latinos with undocumented identification are most vulnerable. Foreclosure and negative equity predict decreases in voter activity among Latino Democrats and Latino Independents, respectively, but not among Latino Republicans. I confirm this pattern at the precinct-level using data on all Orange County voters. Across Florida, county-level Latino foreclosures and lagging home prices correspond to a decline in the Democratic presidential vote from 2012 to 2016. My analysis reveals the mechanisms that erase Latino home equity and how the loss of wealth may have played a role in flipping Florida from a blue state to a red state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When discussing immigration on the campaign trail in 2016, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the term 'bad hombres' to criticise immigrants, and in particular Latino men. Using a novel dataset of images accompanying immigration news stories in three major news magazines from 2000–2010, we examine the extent to which press coverage helped set the stage for this sort of racialised and gendered association. We find overwhelming support for the 'bad hombres' hypothesis, demonstrating that in comparison to the true demographics of immigrants in the U.S., press portrayals significantly over-represent Latino men and under-represent all other immigrant groups. Our results are particularly important in light of research demonstrating that individuals' political attitudes are influenced by the perceived 'target group,' or beneficiary, of a given policy, as well as scholarship demonstrating the media's role in fostering a sense of 'Latino threat.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thousands of minors are migrating unaccompanied to high-income countries. This special issue focuses on unaccompanied migrant minors from the Global South to Europe and the U.S. In this introduction, we seek to complement the contributions to this special issue by shedding light on what resources and experiences unaccompanied migrants arrive with, stressing these young migrants' challenges at each stage prior to arrival and the challenges they face navigating the receiving context. We first clarify how the international community defines 'unaccompanied minors' or 'unaccompanied children'. We then provide brief histories of unaccompanied minors in immigration flows to the U.S. and the EU. Next, we review the literature on the experiences of unaccompanied minors before, during, and after migration. Finally, we discuss key themes and insights from the articles provided in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the aspirations of Western European emigrants as part of wider processes of life course and self-development within what has been called 'second modernity'. Starting from the observation that migration often happens in stages, the article focuses on the changing meaning and content of aspirations within migratory projects. Furthermore, in order to understand the specific place chosen for migration, a multi-scalar approach is proposed. The analysis is based on two empirical studies addressing migration experiences of Austrians migrating to the United States during the 1990s and 2000s. The empirical material is drawn from qualitative interviews that explore the aspirations, realisations and evaluations of migrants after moving abroad. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of situating aspirations for migration to on-going broader societal changes by applying theoretical concepts such as second modernity and multi-scalar approaches. Migrants' experiences and meaningmaking are shaped by these societal developments and contribute to them via their everyday activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drivers can be understood as forces leading to the inception of migration and the perpetuation of movement. This article considers key drivers of migration and explores different ways that they may be configured. We modify existing explanations of migration to generate a framework which we call push-pull plus. To understand migration flows better, analysts could usefully distinguish between predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers. Combinations of such drivers shape the conditions, circumstances and environment within which people choose to move or stay put, or have that decision thrust upon them. In any one migration flow, several driver complexes may interconnect to shape the eventual direction and nature of movement. The challenge is to establish when and why some drivers are more important than others, which combinations are more potent than others, and which are more susceptible to change through external intervention. Drawing on Afghan and Somali movements featuring 'mixed migration', the article concludes that proximate and mediating drivers, rather than those in the structural and precipitating spheres, appear to offer greater potential for intervention. To be effective, though, migration policy should be understood not simply as a stand-alone lever, but within the wider political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that a closer inspection of the historical trajectories and the evolving micropolitics of hometown associations (HTAs) expands our understanding of how community development is practised across borders. Drawing from six years of ethnographic, multi-sited fieldwork carried out in the Dominican Republic and the United States, focusing on the experience of three Dominican HTAs, the evidence presented demonstrates how working dynamics and decision-making responsibilities between internal, international, and non-migrant HTA members shift over time, and identifies the organisational strategies employed to achieve transnational cooperation for community development. The ethnographic data also highlight and explain how communal legacies based on home country agrarian traditions laid the groundwork for future transnational development practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on the Indian diaspora domiciled in the U.S.A. largely portrays the group as educated, highly skilled migrants in pursuit of theirAmerican Dream, without critically engaging with the regionally particularised migration trajectories that predispose only certain groups to become skilled migrants from the global South to the North. Migration studies bracket skilled migrants as those who make rational choices and choose formal routes to migrate whereas unskilled migrants often rely on informal channels of kinship or ethnicity to migrate. Unsettling this proposition, in this article, based on an ethnographic study of the high-skilled Telugu professionals in the U.S.A. and their families living in Coastal Andhra, India, I show how aspirational and topographical migration pathways from Coastal Andhra to the U.S.A. are created and sustained through networks of kinship, caste and endogamous transnational marriage alliances. These high-skilled migrants (doctors, engineers and scientists) from the dominant castes have successfully manoeuvred spatial mobility and social upward mobility by utilising ‘caste capital’ within a transnational social field. Moreover, decades of migration from the dominant castes have shaped a caste-inflected transnational habitus among its members who see migration of their youth to the U.S.A. as desirable, and at times, also inevitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some recent findings suggest that increasing ethnic diversity is associated with declining social cohesion within ethnic groups. Prevailing findings indicate that diversity is connected to declines in some forms of trust but not consistently to declines in participation. I evaluate the extent to which three proposed mechanisms—divergent norms, networks and preferences—might explain this phenomenon. The mechanisms all suggest that diversity contributes to declining in-group trust due to social withdrawal; yet the implied declines in participation are not consistently in evidence. The mismatch between prevailing findings and proposed mechanisms suggests a need to consider alternate explanations for declining trust amidst diversity. Drawing on 286 interviews in four newly diverse US immigrant destinations, I find that increasing diversity reveals in-group cleavages regarding how to respond to the out-group. Among immigrants, differing views on integration foster in-group mistrust. Similarly, among non-immigrants, disagreements over local policies towards foreign-born residents undermine in-group trust. The alternate mechanism proposed here, focusing on how divergent in-group preferences diminish trust, need not be limited to the new immigrant destination context and better explains prevailing findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on a novel experimental design, the current study examines the impact of economic and cultural characteristics of potential immigrants on anti-immigrant sentiments. We investigate the extent to which individuating cues affect public support for individual immigrants in the USA and the Netherlands through a series of online survey experiments carried out by the YouGov online panel in 2010 and the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences Panel in 2011. Our findings demonstrate that individual immigrants elicit different levels of public support for their temporary and permanent immigration applications, and that support depends overwhelmingly on educational and occupational credentials of potential immigrants. Other individual attributes, such as presence of family dependents, country of origin and skin complexion also affect acceptance rates, but to a much lesser extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we discuss how transnational motherhood is managed and experienced in contexts of uncertainty and conflicting pressures. We propose a conceptual approach and apply it to a specific case: female migration from Cape Verde to Europe and North America. The analysis is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the authors in Cape Verde and the diaspora over the past decade. We first address the ideal of and expectations towards transnational mothering in Cape Verde, relating these to local forms of kinship, fostering and household organisation. We demonstrate that lengthy separations between mothers and young children are socially constructed as a normal aspect of transnational lives: they are a painful necessity, but are not automatically assumed to be traumatic. In an ideal situation, the biological mother and the foster mother play complementary roles in what we describe as the transnational fostering triangle. Subsequently, we ask how transnational mothering is confronted by unforeseen incidents and obstacles, which we refer to as contingencies. We relate these contingencies to the negotiation of individual and collective ideas and aspirations. The Cape Verdean case is interesting in a comparative perspective because of the social acceptance of mother–child separation. Our analysis explores how this acceptance co-exists with the real-life challenges of transnational mothering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many immigrant-receiving countries have implemented increasingly restrictive policies that include tighter border controls, more temporary worker permits, an increased threat of deportation, and greater restrictions on the ability to acquire permanent residence and to petition for family members. Thus, family separation seems to be built into new immigration policies, and long-term and indefinite separations are not the exception. In this article, I examine the case of the largest Central American immigrant groups: Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans. Many of these immigrants are neither fully ‘undocumented’ nor ‘documented’, but often straddle both statuses as a result of having received a series of temporary permits over a period of more than a decade. This legal instability profoundly influences parenting across borders among these immigrants—both the relations between parents and children who are separated, and the links between these immigrant families and the different institutions in the host society. The experiences of Central Americans present a special opportunity to reflect on the effects of current immigration regimes on families separated across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the immigration attitudes of those in societal and ethnic minority groups have been well documented, the attitudes of immigration activists on specific issues have seen little systematic study. This article reports the findings of surveys on US immigration and trade-liberalisation policy conducted with members of the civilian border-patrol Minuteman group, and border humanitarian groups such as Samaritans and No More Deaths. Previous surveys have found relatively high levels of support for the Minuteman effort in US border states. This study finds significant divergence on actual attitudes between such activists and non-activists, the majority of whom in both groups reside in Arizona, the border state with the highest reported traffic of unauthorised immigrants. Survey findings also suggest that the relationship between attitudes toward immigration and trade liberalisation is more complex than has been presumed. The specific provisions of liberalisation agreements, in particular those on labour and the environment, can play a major role in determining support for them, including support from those with strong attitudes on related issues such as immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominance of South Asians in the Dunkin' Donuts franchise industry in the American Midwest can be explained with reference to many of the classic theories of niche formation - the desire of immigrants for self-employment, contribution of family members, access to cheap labour and informal funding, and group solidarity. But its unique trajectory of rapid growth and success owes as much to the selective nature of US immigration policy. Its origins lie in the post-1965 immigration of skilled professionals who first bought into the business. It grew as a result of the legitimate use of the family reunification law which permitted the early immigrants to sponsor less-educated relatives and employ them in the business. However, the labour of unauthorised immigrants and continued chain migration of family members have contributed most significantly to the profitability of the businesses, and enabled South Asians to continue to dominate the field. The participation of South Asian women, as family members, wage labour and entrepreneurs, has been important to the success of the niche. However, the escalating cost of investment, high turnover, and new restrictive immigration policy after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 are factors that, paradoxically, both strengthen and threaten the niche. Those who are already owners and operators are the only ones who can afford to buy more stores, but the wages for the workers are so low that South Asian employees are constantly looking for a way out. The future of the niche thus depends on the continued favourable interplay of social, cultural, economic and political factors that spawned the niche in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern with the prospects and experience of the ‘new’ second generation now stands at the top of the immigration research agenda in the United States. In contrast to the past, many immigrant offspring appear to be rapidly heading upward, exemplified by the large number of Chinese, Korean, Indian and other Asian-origin students enrolled in the nation's leading universities, some the children of workers, others the descendants of immigrants who moved straight into the middle class. On the other hand, knowledgeable observers tell us that the offspring of today's poorly educated immigrants are likely to experience a very different fate. In their view, post-industrial America is an inhospitable place for low-skilled immigrants and their offspring, as the latter are likely not to be integrated into the mainstream but acculturated into the ways and lifestyles of their underclass neighbours. We advance an alternative perspective, not captured by these two opposing views: namely, that the children of recent immigrants will follow in the footsteps of the offspring of Italian or Polish labour migrants of the turn of the last century, gaining incorporation into working-class America. Using samples of the Current Population Survey (CPS), we evaluate these hypotheses, comparing job holding and job quality patterns among the descendants of immigrants and their native counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early writers on migrants in North America such as Bryce-Laporte (1972) lamented the lack of research on black immigrants, referring to them as invisible immigrants. Since then, both the volume of research on foreign-born blacks as well as their share of the overall black population in North America have risen dramatically. This increase signals that the black population in North America is a diverse group increasingly identifying themselves more by culture and/or nationality than by skin colour. Using qualitative research methods, this project focuses on the disjuncture between how one set of black immigrants—Somalis—understand blackness in their homelands and how it is defined in North America. The findings reveal the problematics of racial categories and confirm the situational nature of racial identities. The results of this study are not substantially confined to African immigrants alone, but carry both theoretical and conceptual significance for the development, maintenance and consequences of racial formations in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the experience of Albanian political asylum-seekers in the United States in the broader context of shifting asylum law and procedures. A brief survey of Albanian immigration to the United States is followed by an examination of the long road to residence status. Issues discussed range from motivation to practical considerations of routes to the United States and the process of applying for political asylum; also included is a brief overview of the changes in the system in light of the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The article concludes that the system for Albanians and others is overly litigious, occasionally flawed, often arbitrary and extremely expensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]