International Journal of Migration and Border Studies (7 papers in press)

Special Issue on: Coloniality of Bordering and Belonging Everyday Bureaucratic and Legal Violence through Nation-State Governance

• Open Access

  Bordering through legal non-existence: the production of de facto statelessness among women and children through the National Registry of Citizens in Assam, India ( Free Full-text Access )

  by Rupaleem Bhuyan, Madhumita Sarma, Abdul Kalam Azad, Anupol Bordoloi 
  Abstract: This article applies a feminist bordering lens to examine the legal and administrative procedures through which an estimated 1.9 million residents of India’s northeastern state of Assam, have been excluded from the 2019 National Registry of Citizens (NRC). Since India’s independence from Great Brittan, the colonial legacy of borders and national belonging have fueled heated conflicts among the Assamese ethnic majority, Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims whose ancestors originated in what is now Bangladesh, Adivasi communities (i.e. the region’s original inhabitants), and the Indian government’s authority to expel “foreigners.” While the convergence of Hindu nationalism and Assamese ethnonationalism contributes to a citizenship crisis among people of Bengali heritage in Assam, we consider how bureaucratic requirements to verify citizenship reinforce racial, class, and patriarchal inequality for women and children from low-income communities who are at risk of de facto statelessness because they are not “legible” as citizens in India.
  Keywords: precarious citizenship; stateless persons; documentary citizenship; intersectionality; marginality; migrant; illegality; nationalism.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10057915
   
  
• Silence and intersectional resistance: the mobilisation of Moroccan temporary migrant women in Spain  
  by Chadia Arab, Mustapha Azaitraoui 
  Abstract: Every year since 2007, Moroccan temporary migrant women, known as the strawberry ladies (Arab, 2018), have travelled to the province of Huelva, Spain to work as strawberry pickers. Morocco and Spain have signed an agreement allowing Spain to recruit Moroccan women each year, in order to meet a need for labour in the agricultural sector of southern Spain. This arrangement also ensures the transfer of foreign currency remittances back to Morocco while also fighting against irregular immigration. These women workers must then return to their homes in Morocco once their contracts are completed. This is a feminised and racialised segment of temporary agricultural work in Spain. The aim of this article is to analyse the political, social and daily conditions under which these women immigrate and work, conditions that produce complex forms of violence, insecurity and abuse, as well as inspiring strategies of resistance mobilised by these workers. Relationships of domination will be described in relation to class, race, gender and age.
  Keywords: migration; intersectionality; violence; resistance; migrant workers; Spain; Morocco; women.
  
  
• Bordering of family and the social care of migrant farmworkers: mens gendered experiences of the global care chain  
  by Jill Hanley, Pankil Goswami, Guillermo Ventura Sanchez 
  Abstract: This article explores how family separation, enforced by destination countries’ bordering practices, denies the humanity of men migrant workers and places them in a situation of both family and social care deficit when they experience illness, loneliness or other personal difficulties while abroad. Drawing on semi-structured interviews in two studies about the social rights of migrant workers to Canada, we illustrate our arguments with two case studies of Guatemalan agricultural workers who experienced major health problems necessitating care. Given the impossibility of being joined by their families and their barriers to accessing social care in Canada, their care deficit was acutely evident. We conclude with a discussion of how examining the care needs of men migrant workers can advance our understanding of the global care chain from an expanded gender perspective and provide a basis for advocacy to abolish immigration policies that place borders within families and keep migrants outside the borders of social care.
  Keywords: global care chain; care deficit; migrant workers; Canada; agricultural workers; social rights; gender; men; Guatemala; access to health; social care; family separation; bordering.
  
  
• Bordering non-citizenship assemblage through migrant legibility: a conceptual framework for tracing hidden forms of legal and bureaucratic violence  
  by Lindsay Larios, Rupaleem Bhuyan, Catherine Schmidt, Heather Bergen 
  Abstract: In this paper, we conceptualise migrant legibility as a bordering practice where migrants seeking to maintain status or transition to permanent residency in Canada must negotiate the dynamic milieu of: 1) laws and regulations governing immigrant inclusion; 2) bureaucratic processes for verifying eligibility and admissibility; 3) informal social networks which can expand or restrict access to information and resources. Using two case studies from empirical research with migrants in Canada, we attend to the legal, bureaucratic, and social processes through which migrants must prove their humanity (i.e., biopolitical life) in the context of unpredictable, heterogeneous, multi-scalar, and often hidden forms of legal and bureaucratic violence. Through theorising the legal and bureaucratic violence of legibility, this paper illustrates the historical, political, and economic conditions through which migrant illegality and patterns of imperial/colonial/racial/gendered ordering operate in tandem with neoliberal multicultural constructions of equality and inclusion of autonomous and self-sufficient individuals.
  Keywords: undocumented immigrants; non-citizens; migrants; legal status transition; bureaucratic violence; bordering; assemblage; legibility; immigration; Canada.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10057239
   
  
• Narratives from non-citizen former youth in child welfare care fighting crimmigration and deportation  
  by Mandeep Kaur Mucina, Abigail Lash-Ballew 
  Abstract: This article exposes the policies that affect the stability of non-citizen migrant youth who enter child welfare care and reveals the carceral logics underpinning three dominant systems: child welfare, immigration, and criminal (in)justice. Drawing on the narratives of four former youth in care with precarious status ensnared in the criminal (in)justice system and slated for deportation, we advance a transcarceral and bordering framework to understand the systemic oppression non-citizen former youth in child welfare care encountered as they navigated social exclusion from multiple carceral systems and resisted constructions of belonging. We argue that the child welfare systems abandoned these former youth in care, leading them to an unstable life spiralling towards criminality while they were unconsciously living with precarious status as non-citizens, facing deportation from Canada. The article ends with recommendations from the former youth in care as they reflect on the events that led them towards deportation.
  Keywords: child welfare; deportation; aging out; transcarceral; crimmigration; bordering practices; migration; non-status youth; precarious status.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10058305
   
  
• Far from perfect: Iranian international students experience of human dignity within the Canadian/Quebec immigration system  
  by Erfaneh Razavipour 
  Abstract: Every year a significant number of international students (ISs) move to Canada to pursue university education, encountering myriad challenges at the various stages of their migration. This paper explores how Iranian international graduate students experience human dignity (HD) in relation to the Canadian/Quebec immigration system (CQIS). Drawing on in-depth interviews with 24 current and former Iranian international students (IISs) (ten men and ten women IISs in Montreal, and two men and two women graduates who had left Canada), this paper adopts a conceptual framework of HD to analyse the data. Two themes emerged as key to Iranian international students’ experiences with CQIS: 1) frustration with immigration rules during their studies; 2) lack of clarity regarding processing times and procedures. These themes provided empirical support for the HD framework including equality, humanity, respect, and human rights. An awareness of ISs’ experiences of HD within the immigration system could strengthen the support offered to ISs in Canada. The findings also have useful implications for Canadian/Quebec Government personnel and policymakers, as well as administrators of educational institutions that seek to attract ISs.
  Keywords: Canada; Quebec; human dignity; international students; Iran; migration; permanent residence; immigration policy.
  
  
• Twenty years of femonationalism in France: the veil and other anti-immigration affairs  
  by Nasima Moujoud 
  Abstract: In France, discourses and policies which mainly target women and immigration (migrants, foreigners, naturalised citizens, even second-generation in France), especially Muslims, multiplied since the 2000s. Many policies have been carried out simultaneously, particularly aiming to ban the veil, forced marriage or women trafficking. Each time, there is reference to the figure of the victim (vulnerable young women) who should be protected from men and from themselves, or from their own religion (or so-called native culture). This paper examines the contexts in which these policies were produced and the ways they discriminate against migrant women on the pretext of protecting them. In this context, the veil joins other cases of femonationalism against the presential legitimacy of postcolonial immigrants and their children in France.
  Keywords: immigrant women; veil; forced marriage; prostitution; public discourse; femonationalism.