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At the start of the twenty-first century, two arms of U.S. immigration policy shape the lives of families and children. The first, enforcement practices, lead to the involuntary separation of parents and children—or the fears of this outcome—when the United States government detains and forcibly removes the parents of U.S. citizen children. The second, the policies which restrict migration to the United States, cause children to experience both long and short term separations when their parents migrate without them. In this paper I use interviews collected between the years of 2003–2006 and 2009–2012 with children and their parents or guardians in both the United States and in Mexico to assess the meanings these two types of separations have for families and the potential impacts for children's well-being. I find that enforcement practices create economic and emotional hardship due to feelings of uncertainty, while restrictive immigration policies lead to resentment among children even post-reunification. [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]