The illegal migration of Basotho women to South Africa in order to render domestic service is alarming because they are subjected to harsh treatment. This is a pastoral and theological concern for the church. As migrants, their struggle begins from the household circumstances that often force them to leave and seek job opportunities undocumented or without following prescribed migration procedures. They are then subjected to migration processes and procedures: for example, corruption and bribery by migration officers and illegal dealers. (...) The working and living conditions in South Africa are often unconducive for illegal migrants. As economic and illegal migrants, they are often considered as lesser by prejudiced employers who treat them inhumanely. Accessing essential services also imposes a significant threat to their lives.Contribution: Through this study, the article will reveal the vulnerability faced by illegal migrant Basotho women as domestic workers in South Africa. (shrink)

Feminist legal efforts to make sense of the external migration policies of the European Union (EU) have focused almost exclusively on the EU’s initiatives against trafficking in women. This article examines one of the more neglected areas of EU immigration policy—the return of ‘illegal immigrants’. It analyses the so-called 2008 Returns Directive in the light of the multidimensional inequalities experienced by migrant women, which affect their migration status and expose some of them to the threat of removal. Owing to insecurities (...) over external migration, the Directive constructs even the most vulnerable migrants as a threat to be controlled and is likely to result in detrimental consequences for many migrants, and in particular already vulnerable women who are likely to be further disadvantaged by it. (shrink)

I reinterpret the experiences and perceptions of child migrants through the lens of racialization and White Supremacy by advancing work by Cheryl Harris (1993) and Lisa Guenther (2019) on the critical phenomenology of “Whiteness as Property” (WaP) and the protection of “White Space.” WaP is “the collective investment in state violence” to protect the economic, territorial, and legal privileges of Whiteness, while White Space describes its two dimensions: “enclosure and territorial expansion” (Guenther 2019, 202). I build on this foundation (...) by examining the way WaP regulates sociogenic3 and emotive states in order to protect its accrued resources, resulting in an “economy” of racial identity where ownership produces and is produced by particular societal structures and relationships. I use these concepts to understand the framework that willfully misinterprets racialized children. I establish “the Child” as a sociogenic concept and symbol of national futurity and universalism, and therefore of the futurity and universalism of Whiteness; reiterating and interrogating the inconsistency that many immigration and child activists point to, that there is no such thing as an “illegal” or racialized child. Thus, the ICM either loses the privileges and protections afforded to children or must don the White Mask through a performance of victimhood. Through this framework, I undertake an examination of the ICMs as portrayed in the legal process using tools from legal sensorial studies and critical phenomenology, demonstrating the sociogenic shifts that occur for the ICM and how these shifts work to protect WaP. (shrink)

This article examines how migrant ‘illegality’ is experienced in the Swedish context. How do ‘illegal‘ migrants manage work, housing, healthcare, safety and a family life in the absence of access to formal provisions? What are their survival strategies? I use direct quotations from undocumented migrants themselves to build a multifaceted picture of migrant ‘illegality’. Following Willen's (2007) call for a ‘critical phenomenology of illegality’, I move beyond the socio-political situation of undocumented migrants to their embodied experiences of (...) being ‘illegal’. I conclude that undocumented migrants are not excluded but are excepted; they have not been thrown out, but neither are they considered participants. Undocumented migrants are included in society without being recognised as members. (shrink)

In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances—strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activities: the strategic dyads forged across balconies by the most restricted live-in workers, the small (...) collectives formed outside ethnic churches by other live-in workers, and much larger worker collectives in rental apartments occupied by illegal freelancers and runaways. By analyzing these spaces as strategic instances of workers’ collectives, I question the portrayal of MDWs in the Arab world as ultimate and defeated victims of abuse. But the continuum of resistive activities undertaken by MDWs in Lebanon also challenges the dichotomies often constructed between public and private forms of organization and resistances. This meso-level of resistance becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where MDWs are forbidden from forming or joining formal unions, and becomes critical for workers from many countries in Africa and South Asia who, unlike the larger Filipina community, have little access to formal support systems like consulates and embassies. (shrink)

This paper argues that illegal migrant laborers who are currently in the United States should be granted permanent residency if they have contributed to its economy for a certain period of time, which I will not attempt to specify, and if they have not committed any serious crimes in the country . My argument is theoretical and tentative. For some of my points would benefit from empirical support, but there are no definitive statistics on the relevant issues. The aim, accordingly, (...) is to create a framework, and I hope a demand, for empirical investigations of illegal immigration that could lend factual support to my claims. (shrink)

This article draws on Gloria Anzaldúa's philosophy to analyze Latina/o cultural forms as responses to the lawful violence that renders migrants and other minoritarian peoples as disposable subjects. The article turns to Latina/o playwrights and undocumented poets whose art forms, produced under the deportation regime, express a desire for freedom from terrorizing governance. Focusing on Lydia, a play by Mexican American playwright Octavio Solis, and poetry by an undocumented artist, Yosimar Reyes, it links these representations of “illegal” migrants (...) to understand how minoritarian aesthetic practices respond to racial terror and lawful violence. It argues that if we are to map the present beyond terrorizing forms of law, we must center our philosophical thought on “illegal” imaginaries of freedom, not on the cultural forms sanctioned by legality—the latter risk reproducing the logic of state-sponsored violence, whereas the former enact freedom as a practice of everyday life. (shrink)

The number of people without rights of residence or work in the territory of Western Europe's nation states is growing. In official representations of political life this group is commonly 'symbolically eliminated' or taken up by an increasingly hostile discourse on 'illegal immigrants' and 'international terrorism'. This article explores what a rereading of the work of Hannah Arendt can contribute to the analytical task of giving an alternative meaning to the presence of this group. Arendt opens up new ways of (...) thinking and acting in view of the present situation. She shows us the rightless migrant as subject to a very specific form of domination - total domination. With Arendt we can see the migrant also as an emblematic philosophical figure, whose status exposes the contradiction of state-centred citizenship and the discourse of human rights. Lastly, the migrant comes into view as a potential political actor; protests by sans papiers become visible as sites of active citizenship. (shrink)

This is the Professional Thesis of the DPP that was conducted from February to May 2021. The research focuses on “Illegal Fishing Management in Lower Sesan 2 Reservoir, Stung Treng Province, Cambodia” with two research objectives: to understand the illegal fishing situation and to explore solutions to address the illegal fishing issues in the Lower Sesan 2 Reservoir. The research is approached by a Conceptual Framework addressing four elements of illegal fishing in the Lower Sesan 2 reservoir. Fourth eight community (...) fishery committee members and community fishery members (36% of whom are women) joined in group discussions and 35 local fishers and stakeholders were interviewed. Two types of data were gathered in this research: secondary and primary data. The livelihoods of local fishers and migrant fishers in Lower Sesan 2 reservoir were identified: fishing, rice production, farming, animal husbandry NTFP collection. Some local fishers and all migrant fishers including men, women and youths carried out illegal fishing in Lower Sesan 2. They used illegal fishing gears, caught endangered fish species, fished in conservation area, fished with illegal fishing gears in close fishing season, trading fish without license. The causes of illegal fishing in Lower Sesan 2 reservoir were found out. The performances and challenges, opportunities of stakeholders in fishery resource management in Lower Sesan 2 were identified. The strategies of sustainable fishery resource management were found out. Some recommendations were produced. (shrink)

By challenging the state's prerogative to distinguish between insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens, political movements by and in support of migrants and refugees are forcing questions about what criteria, if any, can and should be used to determine who can claim membership in the political community. To illustrate the complexity of this politics this article analyzes the major demand that underscores every campaign undertaken by non-status refugees and migrants in Canada: a program that would allow them to (...) "regularize" their status. Notably, these campaigns are being directed at both the state and city levels of governance. Together, these are two sites in which claims and counter-claims about community, belonging, and citizenship are being made by, for, and against non-status immigrants. In each case, migrant political agency is asserted in places meant to deny, limit, or repress it. The article argues that the significance of these sites is that they allow for non-status refugees and migrants themselves to act as mediators or translators between the city and nation, between polis and cosmopolis. (shrink)

Citizenship regimes are institutionalized systems of formal and informal norms that define access to membership, as well as associated rights and duties. This paper studies illegalized migration as one of the major tests to assess whether citizenship regimes are fair institutions, based on a historical analysis of legislation meant to reduce illegalized migration in the United States between 1995 and 2022. We build our empirical research starting from a simple observation: despite the great number of bills introduced to (...) reduce illegalized migration to the US, most of such initiatives fail to become law. In fact, 93.5% of all immigration initiatives did not even pass the chamber of Congress in which they were originally presented. Such a high rate of failure shows that these proposals are motivated by electoral aspirations, rather than coming from a genuine wish to help migrants or grant them citizenship. Furthermore, there is also an economic interest that justifies the maintenance of low-cost disposable immigrant labor, with no right to citizenship. Our analysis is an example of how state regulation processes seem to work to formalize, rather than alleviate or eradicate, the precarious legal statuses of illegalized migrants. We conclude that a globalized phenomenon such as citizenship requires going beyond merely institutional and formal conceptions. We need to rethink the institutional notion of citizenship, as a merely status held under the authority of a state and consider it from a cosmopolitan perspective and a multilateral basis. But as long as citizenship remains under the responsibility of states, illegalized migrants will continue to experience precarious citizenship. (shrink)

Today in the United States, millions of men, women, and children are considered 'illegal aliens' under federal law. While the presence of these migrants runs against the law, many arrive in response to US demand for cheap labor and stay to contribute to community life. This book asks where migrants stand within God's world and how authorities can govern immigration with Christian ethics. The author tracks the emergence of the concept of the illegal alien in federal US law (...) while exploring Christian ways of understanding belonging, government, and relationships with neighbors. This is a thought-provoking book that provides a fresh response to the difficult issue of illegal immigration in the United States through the context of Christian theology. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight the theoretical and philosophical debate on hospitality underlining the normative elements of framing migrants and refugees as individual agents in the light of hospitality theory and migration governance. It argued the critiques of the neo-Kantian hospitality approach and the EU welcome culture with regard to refugees in the EU from a philosophical perspective. The “No human being is illegal” motto is proposed to be conceived as a principle of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. (...) The cosmopolitan right to visit and the universal right to reside were discussed in the context of human rights and co-responsibility. Linking the hospitality approach with migration governance enables the reconstruction of reception policies and practices, diversification of non-state actors that engage in migration governance mechanism, and polarization of political initiatives (e.g., politics of allocation and dispersal, readmission negotiations, convergence/divergence of priorities and strategic interests). The research findings highlight that the EU adopted a neo-Kantian hospitality approach that combines both “co-responsibility” and “vertical/heterarchical relations.” The EU’s “New Pact on Migration and Asylum” was considered proof of how the EU follows neo-Kantian hospitality that is manifested in dualism and contradictory approach. The study presents a typology that splits co-responsibility into individual/institutional actions and human rights/migration governance. (shrink)

What moral claims do undocumented immigrants have to membership? Joseph Carens has argued that illegal migrants with long-term residence have a claim to national membership because they already are de facto members of local communities. This article builds on the linkage between illegality, residence, and rights, but shifts the focus from the migrant to the state, and from membership-based arguments to the rule of law. I argue that the rule of law, as expressed in the principle of legal certainty, (...) provides an alternative justification for the regularization of resident undocumented migrants. The principle of legal certainty recognizes the right of individuals to make long-term plans for their lives by requiring that state action be reasonably predictable and nonarbitrary. Thus, as an expression of legal certainty, both civil and criminal codes have statutes of limitation that place a time limit beyond which most crimes and misdemeanors can no longer be prosecuted, and individuals can move on with their lives. Not only do these statutes recognize the individual’s right to be free from arbitrary state control, they also demand that the state cut its losses and accept the consequences of its failure to act in a timely manner. I contend that, in the absence of a statute of limitation on illegal entry, the deportation of settled migrants constitutes an arbitrary act of state power. The article explores a number of judicial rulings to illustrate the argument’s normative logic. (shrink)

The most resounding expression of the truly unprecedented mobilizations of migrants throughout the United States in 2006 was a mass proclamation of collective defiance: ¡Aquí Estamos, y No Nos Vamos! [Here we are, and we're not leaving!]. This same slogan was commonly accompanied by a still more forcefully incorrigible rejoinder: ¡Y Si Nos Sacan, Nos Regresamos! [... and if they throw us out, we'll come right back!]. It is quite striking and, as this essay contends, not merely provocative but (...) genuinely productive to note the affinity between the crucial articulation of this radically open-ended politics of migrant presence with the similarly abject and profoundly destabilizing politics of queer presence. In a manner remarkably analogous to the slogan, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!", the dynamic enunciation of these phrases in the context of the mass mobilizations of migrants asserted an irreducible spirit of irreverence and disaffection for state power. Both gestures unreservedly and unapologetically assert not only their irreversible presence, furthermore, but also uphold the intractable challenge of their own intrinsic incorrigibility. (shrink)

This article discusses three major dilemmas embedded in women's labor migration by focusing on undocumented Latina migrants in Israel. The first is that to break the cycle of blocked mobility in their homelands, migrant women must take jobs that they would have never taken in their countries of origin, despite uncertainty about possible economic outcomes. The second dilemma is that the search for economic betterment leads Latina migrants to risk living and working illegally in the host country, forcing (...) them to remain on the margins of society. The third dilemma relates to the role of mothers who, to secure a better future for their children, are forced to leave them behind, thus subverting the traditional definition of motherhood. The absence of an egalitarian notion and the practice of citizenship for non-Jews leave undocumented labor migrants in Israel without prospects for incorporation into the society. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that taking basic human rights seriously—and the basic right to subsistence in particular—requires acknowledging that, given certain conditions, people in need have a right of necessity to take, use and/or occupy the property of others in order to get out of their plight. I explore the implications of this for the phenomenon of illegalized migration for subsistence reasons, and suggest that receiving countries ought not to deny entry to these migrants. On the contrary, (...) those seeking to enter should be morally permitted to do it. The reason is that, just as basic rights should serve as internal limits to any minimally reasonable system of property rights, so should they serve as limits to any minimally reasonable system of territorial rights. After developing this idea, I address some objections to the principle and its application, and conclude by pointing to the immediate, mediate and final duties that this principle gives rise to. (shrink)

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a rise in the number of deaths of undocumented Mexican migrants crossing the U.S./Mexican border. Who is responsible for these deaths? This article examines the culpability of (1) migrants, (2) humanitarian volunteers, (3) the Mexican government, (4) the U.S. government, and (5) U.S. businesses. A significant portion of the blame is assigned to U.S. free trade policies and U.S. businesses employing undocumented immigrants.

In this paper we explore how some of the largest US-newspapers linguistically frame immigrants to the USA in articles about Mexican and Central American immigrants. Specifically, it is a corpus-assisted discourse study which examines the frequency of different semantic predicate-types with migrant subjects and migrant by-agents in the quest for underlying positive or negative biases. We wish to ascertain what activities migrants are presented as taking part in, principally as agents. The analysis shows that more than half of the (...) migrant/predicate-pairings reflect the dictionary definitions of migrant. However, immigrants are described as illegal 66% of the times that their location is mentioned with an immigrant/predicate-pairing. The non-definition-confirming pairings also show evidence of a negative framing of immigrants, but not of migrants. Furthermore, immigrants are more often than migrants cast as agents of activities that do not simply reiterate their status as migrants. Finally, we found evidence of the Negation Bias in the immigrant/predicate-pairings. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that refusing to legalize the status of undocumented immigrants who have been long-term residents is a serious violation of human rights. The "right to have rights" ­ a term coined by Hannah Arendt and developed by Sheila Benhabib ­ should be construed first and foremost as the right to a legal existence. We take issue with consequentialists who warn that legalizing the status of undocumented aliens will encourage further undesirable immigration, for withholding (...) legal status in order to deter illegal newcomers is neither efficacious nor just. We conclude that "selective" as opposed to "endured" immigration policies are ethically untenable. (shrink)

Publication date: 24 January 2019 Source: Author: Timurlenk Chekovik, Jugoslav Achkoski The control of migrants in Europe has become increasingly challenging, marked by a number of illegal border-crossing. It revealed a crisis without equivalent since World War II. The European borders are now one of the most affected by migrants from Asia and Africa. Border police is the most responsible for the first interview with the asylum seeker. In terms of basic contribution to the asylum procedure, good cooperation (...) between the border police and the services of asylum is of primary importance. There is a need of risk assessment. While the risk assessment is made there can be a violation of the humanitarian aspect of conducting regular border check. By determining the race and color of migrants, screening made on the border crossing can put legality of the border police actions in question. The Humanitarian efforts with border management, cooperation between the government services and use of appropriate methodology are an important segment handling migrant crisis. One of the known methodologies is Analysis of Competitive Hypotheses used to better assess the choice of a suitable place for migrants and their acceptance or readmission. Тhe procedure for vulnerable categories of citizens can jeopardize the legality and the manner of dealing with illegal migrants and this arises from the legal and physical protection of persons seeking asylum. The `politics of pity' changes into psychological cases to be governed by risk technologies within a `politics of risk', the humanitarian and security interventions are shown to be in no way mutually exclusive. (shrink)

This article presents the events of October 2005 in Mayotte : it appears that the discourse on illegal migrants, which is instrumentalized in order to justify the implementation of policies against immigration to Mayotte, is not at all the discourse of the migrants themselves, which remains inaudible. The violence of the past weeks will probably be followed by more to come.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:258 Feminist Studies 47, no. 2. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Mei-Hua Chen and Hong-zen Wang Flexible Intimacies in the Global Intimate Economy: Evidence from Taiwan’s Cross-Border Marriages When Lin Ping was interviewed by the first author of this article at a detention center in the southern city of Tainan, Taiwan, in September 2006, she was forty-three. At that time, she had been married to a Taiwanese man (...) for five years and had successfully obtained a permit for employment at a factory, earning NT$27,000 a month for working ten hours a day. However, before having obtained the work permit, Lin managed to find jobs in informal sectors as a cleaner, a care worker, and a stall vendor’s helper, earning NT$15,000 a month. By the time of our interview, Lin had gone to work at a brothel because she could not put up with her husband anymore. Lin’s husband is twenty years older than she is and, as she described their relationship, the huge age gap makes communication between the couple difficult. They fought often and fiercely. During those fights, Lin’s husband would threaten to divorce her and to not renew her application for residency, which would result in her immediate deportation to China. This did happen once when Lin’s husband refused to renew her work permit. As a result, Lin overstayed her visa and lost her job at the factory. Being thus unemployed, Lin had to dip into her savings and risked going into debt. Her dire financial situation caused her anxiety. Losing the regular income provided by her factory job meant not only having nothing to live on but also being unable to send money back home to China. Given that her marriage failed to provide her the work permit she needed, Lin wanted to leave her husband Mei-Hua Chen and Hong-zen Wang 259 and “go out” for her own good. When asked what she thinks of the stigma attached to commercial sex, Lin replied, “I need to be able to feed myself first. But if you don’t have a work permit and a job, it [sex work] is the only way out. So, I thought I would do it.” She continued: “Once I had the money, I would be able to run a small business such as a noodle stall or selling steam dumplings.” Lin Ping’s stories serve to sketch out the interconnectedness between cross-border sex work and cross-border marriage. As her experiences show, cross-border sex work and marriage tend to overlap in certain spheres; however, they are more often than not conceptualized as two separate institutions. Both are grouped under already dichotomized migratory categories such as marriage migrants and economic migrants, real marriage and fake marriage, legal workers and workers without permits, and legal and illegal migrants, etc. Such dichotomization downplays the fact that many marriage migrants, like economic migrants, invest great economic interests in cross-border marriages; it also downplays the fact that migrant sex workers might also be involved in having intimate relationships with someone. Apart from the entanglement of monetary exchange and intimacy, cross-border marriage and cross-border sex work are also parts of a global intimate economy in which the Global North appropriates southern women’s reproductive and intimate labor. Seen in this light, it becomes urgent to theorize how women from the South manage to survive in the global intimate economy by shifting between cross-border marriage and cross-border sex work in the North. Admittedly, such a Global North-and-South framework fits awkwardly when it comes to understanding Taiwan’s situation because economic development is the sole barometer used to define the North and the South, and economically, Taiwan should be in the North camp. Politically, however, due to the majority of nations not recognizing its sovereignty, Taiwan is much more peripheral than most southern countries, let alone China. Therefore, compared to countries in Southeast Asia, Taiwan is economically North but politically South. This semi-peripheral position in the North-South framework, in our view, makes Taiwan a unique case to theorize the global intimate economy. As a tactic... (shrink)

Child Law starts with the question "Who is the Child?" In direct contrast to the CRC, which calls for putting the interests of the child first in all policies dealing with children, it appears that the interests of others are the major consideration de facto. In law, children's right to protection is severely limited by the presence of a maximum age limit, with no consideration of the starting point: current and ongoing scientific research has demonstrated the effects of this non-consideration (...) in a number of abnormalities and diseases, not only in children, but in adults and the elderly. The WHO has published a number of studies to that effect, and the 2012 Report on Endocrine Disruptors more than confirms this claim. This and other scientific insights that have largely been ignored show the flaws and inadequacies of the legal regimes intended to protect children, in a number of areas, from the basic public health to the right to normal development; child labor law conventions; in conflict situations; as a result of climate and other events; children as illegal migrants; and as inmates in prison camps. (shrink)

There is an increasing number of female migrants among the international migrants in Russia. The purpose of this study is to identify the social risks female migrants face. Statistics and data from surveys were analyzed, interviews were held with experts providing practical assistance to women and focus groups were conducted with female migrants. The employment sector in which young female migrants face the most risks and are likely to work illegally is commercial sex services. The (...) social risks are mainly related to a lack of knowledge about the culture, their illegal status; risky behavior is also a big issue. The conclusion is that the social risks are linked to the gender asymmetry existing in the labor market and to the more vulnerable position of women with regard to sexual exploitation and trafficking. (shrink)

Consider the migrant who illegally crosses an international border, and suppose that agents of the state she has entered apprehend and detain her, and then forcibly return her to her country of origin. Some opponents of aggressive deportation policies believe that, barring unusual circumstances, this process of using coercion and force to expel the migrant is an infringement of the migrant’s rights. Many of those who disagree contend that, because a state has a right to enact and enforce immigration restrictions, (...) most deportations do not infringe rights. This paper takes the position that, absent an adequate argument to the contrary, one can conclude presumptively that the typical deportation is an infringement of the migrant’s rights. Its primary aim is to show that certain serious arguments to the contrary are inadequate. (shrink)

The Ethics of Immigration, by Joseph Carens, Oxford University Press, 2013. -/- Joseph Carens is arguably the most prominent political theorist to defend open borders, a view which he did much to make intellectually respectable in a famous 1987 article, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” In The Ethics of Immigration Carens again defends the open borders view, but with a new rationale. Whereas before he argued that seemingly opposed philosophies provided converging support for open borders, now he (...) bases his case on “democratic principles,” by which he means uncontroversial moral commitments that are widely shared in liberal states. Carens argues that one such commitment is to freedom, which can be understood as “not being the subject of the will of another.” A commitment to such a value would explain why freedom of movement within a state is considered a basic human right. But, Carens asks, if we have a general right to freedom of movement within countries, why not between them? -/- Carens has long noted that despite the attractiveness of open borders at the level of pure justice, it is deeply at odds with how immigration policy is normally viewed. Given this, Carens’ many writings on immigration have long approached it from a second perspective, one that puts aside questions of ideal theory and takes for granted the conventional view that states are entitled to discretionary control over their borders. This second perspective is the dominant one in The Ethics of Immigration, as Carens spends most of the book outlining standards of fair treatment for permanent residents, temporary workers, refugees and other migrants that do not presuppose any commitment to open borders. In this mode Carens offers a revised version of one his most thought-provoking and controversial arguments, defending amnesty for immigrants who first arrive illegally. -/- Carens’ investigation of immigration issues at both the level of ideal justice and the more immediate plane of the debate over amnesty and related issues makes his book unusually rich. It has the rare virtue of being both philosophically rigorous and politically relevant. -/- . (shrink)

What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times (...) when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. -/- Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states. -/- For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are limits: principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice. (shrink)

States claim the right to choose who can come to their country. They put up barriers and expose migrants to deadly journeys. Those who survive are labelled ‘illegal’ and find themselves vulnerable and unrepresented. The international state system advantages the lucky few born in rich countries and locks others into poor and often repressive ones. In this book, Christopher Bertram skilfully weaves a lucid exposition of the debates in political philosophy with original insights to argue that migration controls must (...) be justifiable to everyone, including would-be and actual immigrants. Until justice prevails, states have no credible right to exclude and no-one is obliged to obey their immigration rules. Bertram’s analysis powerfully cuts through the fog of political rhetoric that obscures this controversial topic. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the politics and ethics of migration. (shrink)

Many studies have highlighted a substantial "bureaucracy domination" in procedures relating to migrants’ access to territory. This form of domination is marked by highly discretionary and arbitrary practices, enacted by the administrative authorities of the state. Only minor attention, however, has been devoted to the arbitrariness of judicial decisions and to the judicial role in general in the numerous proceedings that increasingly affect the path of migrants. This path is the main object of this paper. The study focuses (...) on Italian case law in expulsion and detention proceedings of irregular third country national citizens and asylum seekers and presents qualitative empirical research on decisions issued by the competent national authorities. The results have been analysed using a selection of theoretical tools, all referable to the general concept of the rule of law. The judicial decisions on pre-removal detention proceedings in two case studies are examined: the jurisprudence on detention of irregular migrants, in different offices of the Justice of the Peace in Italy; and the case law on detention of asylum seekers in the Ordinary Tribunal of Rome. The assumption underlying the research is that various conceptions of the rule of law may have different explanatory power when it comes to explaining the empirical results. To verify this hypothesis, the study proposes an overview of the main rule of law doctrines in the Western tradition of political and legal thought and applies the method of historical-conceptual analysis. As a result, the explanatory power of six theoretical models of the rule of law was verified against the data with the view to highlight the virtues and vices of the respective explanatory frameworks. This article reaches a two-fold conclusion. First, as far as the explanatory frameworks are concerned: the results of the two case studies cannot be fully explained by any of the models considered in this study. This fact alone casts doubts on the explanatory power of these theories and calls for further research on judicial decision-making more generally. Secondly, a key finding of the study regarding the notions of discretion and arbitrariness is that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that is most easily influenced by arbitrariness. The author argues that this paradox can be easily dissolved by paying attention to the plural dimensions of arbitrariness. If we consider arbitrariness from a legal point of view, i.e. as an illegal decision, it is unsurprising that the authority that most uses its discretionary powers is also the one most at risk of abusing these discretionary powers and hence of exercising arbitrary power. However, if we consider arbitrariness from the point of view of philosophical-political theory, i.e. as a form of domination characterised by the absence of sufficient justification, it is unsurprising that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that takes its own role as guarantor of these rights and of the constitutional democratic legal order as such most seriously. This judicial approach thus most often risks exercising its power in criticisable ways, as compared to an authority much more in line with the requirements of law enforcement agencies. Keywords: migration, discretion, justice, arbitrariness, civil rights, Rechtsstaat, expulsion, mixed constitution. (shrink)

Different evocations of “crisis” create distinct categories that in turn evoke certain social reactions. Post-2008, Greece became the epicentre of the “financial crisis”; simultaneously, since 2015 with the advent of the “refugee crisis,” it became the “hotspot of Europe.” What are the different vocabularies of crisis? Moreover, how have both representations of crisis facilitated humanitarian crises to become phenomena for European and transnational institutional management? What are the hegemonically constructed subjects of the different crises? The everyday reality in the crisis-ridden (...) hotspot of Europe is invisible in these representations. It is precisely the daily, soft, lived, and unspoken realities of intersecting crises that hegemonic discourses of successive, overlapping, or “nesting crises” render invisible. By shifting the focus from who belongs to which state-devised category to an open-ended, polyvocal account of capitalist oppressions, we aim to question the state’s and supranational efforts to divide the “migrant mob” into discrete juridical categories of citizens (emigrants), refugees, and illegal immigrants, thereby undermining coalitional struggles between precaritised groups. (shrink)

New York based Families For Freedom is among a handful of organizations that directly organize deportees and their families. Analyzing the organization’s resignification of criminalized men of color as caregivers, I argue that current deportation policies and practices reorganize care work and kinship while tying gender and sexuality to national belonging. These policies and practices severely compromise the ability of migrant communities to socially reproduce themselves. Furthermore, the convergence of criminalization and immigration enforcement renders the kinship ties of deportable men (...) illegible, and justifies their separation from their loved ones. Since FFF publicly supports men with criminal convictions, it reveals that its members become targets of deportation precisely because they do not and cannot conform to heteronormative prescriptions. (shrink)

In December 2007 it was revealed that the British government is considering the exclusion of certain groups of migrants—those considered to be present “illegally”—from primary health care provided by the National Health Service. At present, practitioners have discretion to accept any individual for NHS treatment regardless of their status. A joint Home Office and Department of Health review is examining this access for foreign nationals, and the likely outcome is the restriction of access to irregular migrants, which would, (...) according to the Institute of Public Policy Research, affect around 390,000 people. In 2004 such groups were excluded from NHS secondary care, most controversially from treatment for HIV, and so the present proposal would bar them from all but emergency health treatment. (shrink)

This Article situates contemporary shifts in citizenship law within a story of the relationship of globalization and illegal migration. The central argument is that citizenship as a formal legal status is enjoying a resurgence of authority at present. This mirrors the paradoxical nature of globalization itself: along the vector of citizenship, both inclusions and exclusions are increasing at present. As states are increasingly unable to assert exclusive power in a range of policy domains, immigration and citizenship law are transformed into (...) a last bastion of sovereignty. Many shifts in citizenship law are explained through an understanding of how migration law and citizenship law work in tandem to form the border of the national community. Recent changes in citizenship law respond to two trends: a crackdown on extra-legal migration and a desire to reassert authority over diasporic populations. While the focus of the Article is on citizenship as a formal legal status, the importance of amnesty programs for extra-legal migrants demonstrates that ultimately the bifurcation of formal and substantive citizenship is untenable. (shrink)

Increasingly, protests occur across borders and are carried out by non-nationals. Many of these protests include elements that break the laws of their host country and are aimed at issues of global concern. Despite the increasing frequency of transnational protest, little ethical consideration has been given to it. This article provides a cosmopolitan justification for transnational disobedience on behalf of self and others. The article argues that individuals may be justified in illegally protesting in other states, and that in some (...) circumstances they may do so even when laws have been legitimately constituted by the domestic constituencies of those states. Using a cosmopolitan reading of the notion of civility and of the civil realm, the article argues that transnational protests are capable of conforming to the normative and conceptual standards necessary for them to be labelled civil disobedience. As a result, they ought to carry a privileged moral status compared with other forms of protest. The article applies the All Affected Principle to argue that a democratic deficit can provide transnational protesters and resident migrants with a right to civil disobedience even where that right is not held by members of the demos they protest within. (shrink)

Based on anthropological fieldwork in Yemen, this article examines the relationship between gender, mobility, and il/legality in the lives of Ethiopian domestic workers. Studies about migrant domestic workers in the Middle East often focus on abuse and exploitation, making a plea for the regulation of women’s legal status. Yet legal migration does not automatically mean that women gain more rights and become more mobile; regulation may also entail more control. The relationship between method of entry and legal status is not (...) fixed, and the boundaries between legality and illegality are often blurred, with women moving in and out of il/legality and legal organizations following illegal practices, and vice versa. Gendered state policies and practices also affect women’s space for maneuvering, and attempts at regulation may further restrict rather than increase their mobility. (shrink)

The study aims to investigate indigenous communities’ socio-economic impacts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore coping strategies to aid in the socio-economic recovery of indigenous communities. -/- The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on indigenous people's livelihoods, including employment and income, education, the migration of people, health, and natural resources. As a result of COVID-19, the indigenous people have lost their employment and income. The price of fish has decreased, which has lowered their ability (...) to make money from selling fish. Migrant workers returned home because they were concerned about their health security and many lost their jobs. Schools were closed because of COVID-19 and this increased education inequality. Health was impacted because it was difficult to access health services due to restrictions on travel. Returning migrants have pressured forest and fishery resources through increases in the number of fishers, which include the migrants who have returned to their own village. -/- The RGC, rural communities and indigenous communities have taken a number of measures to cope with the issues stemming from COVID-19. Migrant workers tried to look for local employment, used fishing to supplement household consumption and income needs, and often borrowed money from neighbors. Students attempted to use e-learning that was facilitated by the government; teachers visited some students’ homes, and older students supported younger students in their school lessons. In terms of health, home visits were facilitated for pregnant women, and people sought permission to travel to health centers. After giving birth, families were visited and offered a small amount of money to support their basic needs. To deal with natural resources, some coping strategies included smaller groups of patrolling teams, support grants from CSOs for forest and fishery resource patrolling, drone delivery to community fishery committees, and requesting community members to report illegal fishing or logging. And to minimize the spread of COVID-19, a mandatory 14-day quarantine at home was imposed on all people returning to the village. (shrink)

This article aims to articulate a set of general principles of a Christian ethic of mass immigration. Toward this end, it considers: biblical and theological grounds for cosmopolitanism (and ‘open borders’); biblical and theological caveats against cosmopolitanism; elements of a Christian ethic of the treatment of near and distant neighbours; what Francisco de Vitoria’s ‘On the American Indians’ has to contribute; what lessons should be learned from the history of European colonialism; and the nature of mass immigration into twenty-first-century Europe (...) and the problems it entails. The article concludes with six principles: relevant empirical data should be mastered before developing a judgement; concerns about mass immigration should not be dismissed out of hand as ‘racist’; care of the alien may take a variety of forms, not only that of granting asylum; illegal economic immigrants should normally be returned home; compassion should look in several directions—not only at the migrant, but also at the working-class competitor for jobs and services, and at members of government burdened with the responsibility of making hard decisions; and the Christian is obliged to exercise, not only compassion, but justice and prudence. (shrink)

"Territorial Presence As A Ground For Claims: Some Reflections" returns to political theory to assess the moral and legal position of those individuals who are inside the territory of liberal democratic states, but whose very presence has been unauthorised by the state. The author asks the question as to what their bodily presence means and does from a political perspective. The paper is part of a broader political phenomenology of territoriality in liberal national thought and puts emphasis on the idea (...) that it is migrants’ bodily presence within the state’s territory that lies at the analytical heart of the conversation about irregular immigrants. What is paradoxical about territorial presence of unauthorised migrants is that such presence is simultaneously the source of the offence states invoke as a justification for making them ‘illegal’; the basis for protections the migrants may claim against the state for basic fair treatment while present; and the ground for claims they make to remain present – i.e., to stay in the territory. Territorial presence is thus a fertile ground for the analysis of arbitrary law-making in migration. The author sets out to analyse some recent legal developments pertaining to the governance of irregular non-citizen immigrants in the United States. These developments bear on the project of theorising "immigrant justice" as resistance to the growing illiberalization of migration policy. In her view, the very existence of a class of people designated as irregular migrants within state polities presupposes that such polities maintain formal exclusionary border regimes and that in such regimes, some persons are predesignated as ineligible for entry. And even though those exclusion rules do not function to fully preclude entry and presence of such persons, states do not treat their arrival as an automatic basis for full membership either. Hence, irregular immigrants are territorially present in a state that purports to eschew that presence. The author then explores how the idea of “sanctuary” relates to the kinds of claims that both liberal humanitarians and immigrant justice advocates have been making over the last few years. These are claims which ground protection in what exponents cite as the overriding ethical significance of immigrants’ territorial presence – their already-hereness – as the basis for recognition and rights. In particular, the author makes the case that even though "sanctuary" provides a logic of safe harbour, it fails to end the predicament of constitutive based in border exclusionism. For her, the political, social, but also philosophical, struggle for the idea of border abolitionism requires a figurative sword that must go beyond sanctuary so that borders are not just mitigated, but radically deconstructed and even destroyed. The author takes this to be the vital imperative that confronts all legal and political theorists who must engage the normative challenge of rethinking arbitrary law-making in view of the new inequalities that a global political order grounded on sovereign borders produces. (shrink)

Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, Grégoire Chamayou examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous simply for existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable. Chamayou begins in (...) ancient Greece, where young Spartans hunted and killed Helots as an initiation rite, and where Aristotle and other philosophers helped to justify raids to capture and enslave foreigners by creating the concept of natural slaves. He discusses the hunt for heretics in the Middle Ages; New World natives in the early modern period; vagrants, Jews, criminals, and runaway slaves in other eras; and illegal immigrants today. Exploring evolving ideas about the human and the subhuman, what we owe to enemies and people on the margins of society, and the supposed legitimacy of domination, Chamayou shows that the hunting of humans should not be treated ahistorically, and that manhunting has varied as widely in its justifications and aims as in its practices. He investigates the psychology of manhunting, noting that many people, from bounty hunters to Balzac, have written about the thrill of hunting when the prey is equally intelligent and cunning. An unconventional history on an unconventional subject, Manhunts is an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe report the findings of an experimental study that tested the contributions of semiotic and critical discourse studies on immigration. Two-way analyses of variance were conducted to examine the effects of immigration terminology on measures of attribution and empathy. Our experiment revealed a statistically significant difference in attribution. Participants who received a narrative prompt with the term ‘illegal immigrant’ evaluated the character's situation with internal attribution, and thus deserving of any negative outcomes, such as racial profiling, deportation, and separation from (...) one's family. This finding is consistent with studies that have reported the concrete effects of immigrant labels on public opinion and policy, as migrants become scapegoats for macro-structural forces. Our experiment did not reveal an effect on empathy, demonstrating the complicated symbolic and material effects produced by immigration discourse. (shrink)

. The article is based on the analysis of the works of the famous Ukrainian thinker from Canada, Yuriy Mulyk-Lutsyk, who in the mid-twentieth century. deeply considered the state of the Ukrainian diaspora, its search for a strategy of its development abroad within the limits of ethnic particularism and international universalism. His thoughts have not lost their relevance today, as new waves of migration pose the same questions to Ukrainians: whether to remain or dissolve as a national community among a (...) multiethnic and multicultural world. The migrants, diasporans, whose grandchildren have lost their connection with their historical homeland and are part of other multinational states, are particularly disturbed by those outside Ukraine. The main problem of the migrants and diasporas of that time, according to Mulyk-Lutsyk, was that they did not distinguish between ethnic particularism and interethnic universalism, identifying or substituting one another. This led to radical one-sidedness: the Ukrainians cared for one or the other in themselves. The main reason for this imbalance according to the thinker was that Ukrainians intellectually were not ready to migrate. They did not have time to realize their ethnic identity, their uniqueness, as they got into millstone universalism, which led them to "spiritual turmoil, gypsyism". Instead of meeting with other worlds, Ukrainians experienced a cultural trauma. It is possible to overcome the latter by realizing the equality of the universal and the specific, the universal and the ethnic, which are two "natural signs of one and the same". The Ukrainians should understand that they/he are/is human, because he has such physical and spiritual attributes that are common to all people; at the same time he is a member of this ethnic community because it contains such features that are not present and cannot be found in other ethnic communities. Although universal and specific are opposite to one another, however, in the person they exist in combination both as a physical indivisible unity and as a spiritual one. Yu.Mulyk-Lutsyk realized that integration into a multidimensional space, sometimes so alien, but to be friendly for himself, is very difficult. He insisted on fostering within himself both national and universal, where the particular was affirmed through the universal and the universal manifested in the particular. Eventually the thinker urged: if the ethnic community understands what the essence of its ethnicism is, that is, it realizes the secret connection between ethnic content and ethnic form and learns the absolute, natural boundaries of ethnicism, which are not free to artificially, illegally, unnaturally, contraband; and if the ethnic community at the same time understands the essence of its universalism, that is, it realizes the secret connection between human content and human form, and learns the absolute, natural limits of humanity, in which it is not free to artificially, illegally, unnaturally, contraband if and only then the ethnic community in general and each of its constituent units in particular will form a unity on a natural basis - national unity. Knowledge of the experience gained by the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada may be of use to those who wish to migrate to other countries and other cultural worlds. (shrink)

The administrative practices of officials who process the admission of immigrants show severe variations in the ways in which migration policy is enforced on the ground. For the author, inequality of treatment lies in the very hierarchy of tasks and services of what he dubs, following Pierre Bourdieu, the immigration "field". According to the author, the governments’ securitizing priorities favour the sort of suspicion towards foreigners that the media then reproduces, thus authorizing so-called street-level bureaucrats to act with great leeway (...) with regard to immigrants. Under pressure, governments implement what the author calls a "trompe-l’oeil policy" that explores the ambivalence between international and domestic law: while the state enforces repressive laws that apparently comply with fundamental human rights, it leaves to low-ranking civil servants enough discretion to make those rights ineffective. This point is the author’s central contention. The arbitrariness of these officials is neither contingent nor accidental: it actually constitutes a purposive "front-line policy" to enlarge the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats in charge of regulating admissions. Unequal treatment comes in three flavours in this context. First, officials are asked to ensure that each right granted to a foreigner will not threaten the national order, which means the economic, social and political order. They are therefore in a position to judge the suitability of each application in view of their own arbitrary interpretation of what such "threats" consist of. The question of discretionary power is in this way intimately linked to the problem of equality before the law. Second, the scarcity of material and human resources allocated to services in charge of welcoming migrants starkly contrasts with the expenditure incurred to deport foreigners. Inequality also arises from how agents perceive users and the leeway they have to implement the law. Third, inequality is related to foreigners’ abilities and means to challenge discretionary power, especially through the legal tools they use or through legal intermediaries. The author thus concludes that such "front-line policy" has increasingly been used as a weapon against migrants, especially since the early 2000s, when immigration and detention policies were generalized in France. More broadly, in Europe as well as in United States, immigration reforms have made greater use of detention and focused on enforcement rather than on hosting programs and services for asylum seekers. But they have also strengthened the role of legal intermediaries. Hence the need to investigate how discretionary power is challenged as it sheds light on the power relations between states and migrants. Keywords: foreigners, discretion, sociology, participant observation, front-line policy, illegalism, jobs, insecurity, legal intermediaries. (shrink)

At the time of writing, the UK Government’s ‘Illegal Migration Bill’1 had started progressing through the House of Commons. The Bill will enable the removal of people who have come to the UK seeking asylum by ‘illegal’ routes, including via the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats.2 That duty would apply whether a person makes a protection claim, human rights claim or is a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking. Asylum seekers risk crossing the Channel because there are very (...) few, if any, safe and lawful ways to reach the UK. At least 60% of the people who have made the crossing last year would be recognised as refugees through the asylum process.3 The Bill will also give the UK Secretary of State a follow up duty to deny people arriving by ‘illegal’ routes access to the asylum system and to permanently deny them legal status in the UK, this includes leave to remain and citizenship. On the 24 March, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights wrote to both Speakers of the UK parliament, stating ‘… the Bill would have serious consequences both for the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in the UK, and for the upholding of the UK’s international obligations more generally. The UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] has already stated that the Bill is in clear breach of the UK’s obligations under the 1951 …. (shrink)

The period we are living through is one of restoration, reminiscent of the 1930s. In a bellicose atmosphere that has proved conducive to an unstable reassertion of imperialism, we have seen a renewed dramatisation of questions of demography and migration, leading to an ethnicisation of social and political relations. Though Europe actually has a structural need of a migrant labour-force, its States have instituted a differential management in dealing with questions of race, depending on the origins of the migrants (...) and the nature of the jobs involved. The result has been to reduce vast numbers of migrants to the condition of illegal, clandestine workers, while operating as a powerful factor in the aggravated exploitation of labour and, in some instances, as a factor in the collective criminalisation of migrants. What Europe’s former Nation-States are thus witnessing, is the emergence of a citizen-foreigner duality which both occludes and perverts the structure of class relations. (shrink)

By the 1940s, the Municipal Council of Nairobi had enacted a host of By-Laws to control the presence of Africans, especially women, and had set up several agencies to implement them. Consequently, women street vendors were not only denied access to legal trade, but remained unwanted in the town except under very special circumstances. Nonetheless, pushed by their adversity, a number of them resorted to illegal hawking and demonstrated their resilience against the odds. However, as the hawkers’ earnings subsidised the (...) colonial low wage migrant labour system, it became difficult for the colonial administration in Nairobi to resolutely stamp out their activities, especially in Eastlands. Besides, by the end of the 1940s, the Council’s fight against hawking had slackened owing to unsustainable expenses. This paper examines the effect of colonial repression of African women street traders in Nairobi’s Eastlands area in the 1940s. Using the Gender and Development perspective along with data mainly from libraries, archives and oral sources, it interrogates the women’s attractions to Nairobi and the logic behind their street trading activities. It also examines the colonial dynamics that exploited the attitudes and beliefs of African male elders to validate the colonial government’s gender marginalisation policies against women, particularly the hawkers. The paper concludes that the gender-based constraints against African women traders notwithstanding, propelled by need, the women irrepressibly struggled to find space in the prosperous economy of Nairobi in the 1940s. Keywords Racism, gender discrimination, patriarchy, street trading, hawkers, licensing. (shrink)

Abstract:In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on January 12, 2010, the representative victim-survivor in multiple media sites appeared to the world in the face of the Haitian child-cum-orphan. This poignant image of loss and suffering lent urgency to a range of altruistic responses—or rather, paternalistic interventions—by white families in the U.S. I argue that in both narrative and practice, dominant constructions of normative (white) motherhood were exaggerated and made hypervisible, which propelled the actual lived experience of Haitian mothers (...) further into oblivion. In this article, I examine the discursive formations that produce Haitian women as “deviant black mothers” in transnational contexts. In similar ways, “the beggar mother” construct in the Dominican national media engenders powerful ideas about maternal neglect that link up with constructions of migrant illegality, criminality, and poverty. Drawing upon black and transnational feminist empirical analysis, I demonstrate how such discursive formations affectively circulate within transnational imaginaries and quotidian racial intimacies to effect forms of surveillance, objectification, and regulation of Haitian women and, by extension, their children who face an ever-greater risk of “statelessness.”. (shrink)

In "Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?" Donna Gabaccia provides an illuminating account of the origin of the United States' claim to be a "Nation of Immigrants." Gabaccia's endeavor is motivated by the question "What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile or an illegal or clandestine?" . This question is very important to the immigration debate because, as Gabaccia goes on to show, "[t]o ponder (...) this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagination of nations" . In this paper, I am going to delve deeper into . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A "Nation" of ImmigrantsJose Jorge MendozaIntroductionIn "Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?" Donna Gabaccia provides an illuminating account of the origin of the United States' claim to be a "Nation of Immigrants." Gabaccia's endeavor is motivated by the question "What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile or an illegal or clandestine?" (Gabaccia 5). (...) This question is very important to the immigration debate because, as Gabaccia goes on to show, "[t]o ponder this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagination of nations" (Gabaccia 5-6). In this paper, I am going to delve deeper into Gabaccia's claim and argue that the issue of immigration is important for philosophers to consider because it is an issue that lies at the heart of the intersection between political philosophy and philosophy of race—an intersection that shows, more than anywhere else and in particular in the debate surrounding the use of the word illegal, how and why words do matter.The Braid of WhitenessDavid Roediger, in his book Working Toward Whiteness, argues that it is problematic to read "ethnicity" back into earlier accounts of race, specifically in the United States during the period from 1860-1924. Roediger argues that the term "ethnicity," at least as we use it today, does not really appear during this period. He goes on to show how the use of racialized language during that period was in fact very messy and would not fit neatly into the strict biological/phenotypic definitions that we give today. He writes: [End Page 41]This loose, state-endorsed linkage of biology to culture, history, and class can mislead modern historians of race who characteristically attempt to disentangle the biological from other rationales for oppression, regarding the former as underpinning racism and the latter as underpinning other kinds of prejudice. But what was so striking about restrictionist and racist thought at the beginning (and indeed, at the end) of the twentieth century was its very entanglement of the biological and the cultural.(Roediger 66)In short, Roediger is arguing that the distinction we currently make between race and ethnicity was not nearly as sharp at the turn of the century as it is now and that this messiness was most clearly present in the debates surrounding immigration.Roediger, for his part, argues that we do not need to fear this messiness or inability to neatly distinguish between race and ethnicity at the turn of the century, but instead we should allow for a space of "in-betweeness" within the strict white/nonwhite binary. In allowing for this space, Roediger claims we can come to understand how the "new immigrants" (i.e., Irish, Italians, Jews, and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who emigrated to the United States between 1860-1924) went from being nonwhite to white and in so doing, solidified our current understanding of whiteness (Roediger 3-130). While I am not sure Roediger does enough in his account to warrant dismissing the race/ethnicity distinction at the turn of the century, I think he is right in emphasizing whiteness as central to racism. He is also correct to note the key role that restrictions on immigration played in the construction and solidification of the U.S. nation-state as a white nation.To be clear, the term whiteness, in its more technical sense, does not simplistically refer to skin color, but denotes the dominant race and/or ethnicity as it passes for the nonracialized and non-ethnic norm upon which the "other" is differentiated. As George Yancy, a current philosopher of race, writes:To say that whiteness is deemed the transcendental norm is to say that whiteness takes itself to be that which remains the same across a field of difference. Indeed it determines what is deemed different without itself being defined by that system of difference. Whiteness is that according to which what is nonwhite is rendered other, marginal, ersatz, strange, native, inferior, uncivilized, and ugly.(Yancy 3)This privilege that whiteness enjoys is... (shrink)

In the context of the ever-increasing political problematization of migration in Europe, agencies charged with migrant administration create diverse categories of difference to distinguish between the 'deserving migrant' and the illegal one: They assess the detainability or the credibility of asylum seekers, the danger posed by Islamic organizations, and make situational decisions that determine whether migration or labour law applies to individual agricultural workers. In this book, each chapter analyses how organizational interpretations 'in service of' the common good shape bureaucratic (...) practices. Together, these ethnographic analyses reveal how migration policies in different European countries take shape in administrative practice."--Back cover. (shrink)