Ableism forms the scaffolding of our immigration laws, policies, and practices, but the operation of this pervasive form of exclusion has been grossly unacknowledged and understudied until now. In ...1882, Congress first codified the exclusion of defective bodies by declaring that, "any lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge," was unworthy of admission onto U.S. shores. These ability-based hierarchies remain in today's immigration system which rewards productivity, educational attainment, and high-skilled labor with regularized immigration status, an array of public benefits, work authorization, and other advantages. We argue that immigration legal and policy frameworks must be reimagined in order to decouple the process of migration from this system of body valuation. This Article is the first to argue that dismantling ableism must be a core imperative of the movement for immigration abolition, and that the principles of disability justice can serve as a tool for identifying the radical changes necessary to achieve this transformation. We begin by interrogating abolitionist scholarship. We observe the limited acknowledgment of the role that ableism has played in erecting systems of oppression and the consequent absence of anti-ableist strategies to achieve a vision of abolition that eliminates the categorization and stratification of bodies. We then look more closely at the immigration system and the ways in which it creates categories of exclusion based on perceptions of worth and productivity. We also illuminate how ableism has fueled the erection of access barriers for disabled immigrants, and the resulting disempowerment of these individuals as they navigate complex immigration procedures. We contend that decoupling migration from ableism and advancing access as a pathway to power and self-determination for immigrant communities must become a part of the abolitionist vision. This approach encourages the exploration of new solutions drawn from the lessons of the disability rights and disability justice movements. We then explore three specific ways in which ableism operates in the modern immigration system. We posit that ableism: (1) undergirds the construction of disabled immigrants as unworthy burdens; (2) robs disabled immigrants of agency and self-determination; and (3) invisibilizes the experiences of disabled immigrants navigating immigration processes and the advocacy ecosystem. We look to the ten principles of disability justice to propose transformative solutions to address these systemic problems. We argue that accounting for ableism as an intrinsic and formative component of the existing immigration system will augment existing eff orts to achieve change. We hope that this reframing is only the beginning for new lines of scholarly and empirical exploration. Our goal is to reimagine migration for disabled people, and, in turn, for all bodies that cross borders.
El artículo se basa en un trabajo de campo en la zona fronteriza España-Marruecos, para analizar la interacción entre las tácticas creativas de los migrantes en movimiento y las herramientas ...gubernamentales implementadas por la Unión Europea para filtrar el flujo de personas hacia su territorio. Se analiza cómo la externalización de la frontera afecta la ordenación territorial del área y cómo los migrantes la confrontan y la transforman activamente. El espacio confinado se convierte, entonces, en un lugar de lucha, resistencia y contestación por parte de sujetos que alteran ese orden a través de su movimiento.
Explanations for immigrant health outcomes often invoke culture through the use of the concept of acculturation. The over reliance on cultural explanations for immigrant health outcomes has been the ...topic of growing debate, with the critics’ main concern being that such explanations obscure the impact of structural factors on immigrant health disparities. In this paper, we highlight the shortcomings of cultural explanations as currently employed in the health literature, and argue for a shift from individual culture-based frameworks, to perspectives that address how multiple dimensions of inequality intersect to impact health outcomes. Based on our review of the literature, we suggest specific lines of inquiry regarding immigrants’ experiences with day-to-day discrimination, as well as on the roles that place and immigration policies play in shaping immigrant health outcomes. The paper concludes with suggestions for integrating intersectionality theory in future research on immigrant health.
► Cultural explanations for immigrant health outcomes obscure the impact of structural factors on immigrant health. ► A stronger emphasis on how place, racialization processes, and immigration policies impact immigrant health is necessary. ► We recommend an intersectional approach to the study of immigrant health. ► We suggest specific lines of inquiry regarding immigrants' experiences with racism and anti-immigrant policies, and their health impact. ► Interpreting available immigration-related measures requires fuller theorizing as to their context-specific meaning.
Unlike other transit countries, Ecuador's position as a transit country has just begun to be publicly addressed, having been more of a strategic public secret than a topic of public interest. Based ...on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2016, this article discusses the dynamics of the (re)configuration of Ecuador as a transit country used by both immigrants and Ecuadorean deportees mainly from the United States to reach other destinations. It argues that this process should be interpreted in light of a series of historical and political elements in tension. The article suggests that the subtle presence of the United States' externalized border, together with national political inconsistencies, have a repressive as well as a productive effect, which has functioned to produce a systemic form of selective control of transit mobility. KEYWORDS: externalized border policies, freedom of movement, irregularized transit migration, postneoliberal leftist regimes, universal citizenship
This study advances our understanding of the contextualization of the effects of cultural intelligence (CQ). Drawing from trait activation theory and institutional theory, we develop a multi-level ...model showing how host countries’ informal and formal openness towards foreigners facilitate or constrain the importance of expatriates’ CQ in becoming embedded in the host organization. Furthermore, this study positions organizational embeddedness as a mediator in the association between expatriates’ CQ and a central element of expatriates’ jobs – knowledge sharing in the foreign workplace. Results from a cross-lagged survey of 1327 expatriates from 100 different nations residing in 30 host countries combined with secondary data indicate expatriate CQ relates positively to organizational embeddedness. Cross-level interaction analyses further suggest that in-group collectivism, the proxy for host countries’ informal openness towards foreigners, facilitates the importance of CQ as a predictor of expatriates’ organizational embeddedness. In contrast, CQ was not found to interact with the proxy for host countries’ formal openness towards foreigners, i.e. national immigration policies. Consistent with predictions, we identified that CQ relates positively to knowledge sharing and that organizational embeddedness carries an indirect effect. We discuss the implications for theory and practice.
Despite abundant state-level policy activity in the U.S. related to immigration, no research has examined the mental health impact of the overall policy climate for Latinos, taking into account both ...inclusionary and exclusionary legislation.
To examine associations between the state-level policy climate related to immigration and mental health outcomes among Latinos.
We created a multi-sectoral policy climate index that included 14 policies in four domains (immigration, race/ethnicity, language, and agricultural worker protections). We then examined the relation of this policy climate index to two mental health outcomes (days of poor mental health and psychological distress) among Latinos from 31 states in the 2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a population-based health survey of non-institutionalized individuals aged 18 years or older.
Individuals in states with a more exclusionary immigration policy climate had higher rates of poor mental health days than participants in states with a less exclusionary policy climate (RR: 1.05, 95% CI: 1.00, 1.10). The association between state policies and the rate of poor mental health days was significantly higher among Latinos versus non-Latinos (RR for interaction term: 1.03, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.06). Furthermore, Latinos in states with a more exclusionary policy climate had 1.14 (95% CI: 1.04, 1.25) times the rate of poor mental health days than Latinos in states with a less exclusionary policy climate. Results were robust to individual- and state-level confounders. Sensitivity analyses indicated that results were specific to immigration policies, and not indicators of state political climate or of residential segregation. No relationship was observed between the immigration policy index and psychological distress.
These results suggest that restrictive immigration policies may be detrimental to the mental health of Latinos in the United States.
•Latinos in states with more restrictive immigration policies had poor mental health.•The policy-health association was weaker or non-existent for non-Latinos.•Results were independent of individual and state-level confounders.•Results suggest adverse health consequences of restrictive immigration policies.
Abstract By centering Indigeneity, specifically O'odham presence, sovereignty, and land at the site of the U.S.–Mexico border, I argue that the U.S.–Mexico border, the Department of Homeland ...Security, and U.S. immigration law are ongoing, settler colonial, and imperial formations of U.S. empire. Further, this paper investigates the settler process of racialization, specifically the construction of "illegal alien," and how, at the border, this racial category is imposed onto, and erases, Indigeneity. I argue that while racialization at the border focuses on criminalizing illegal crossings, it also eliminates Indigenous ontologies of migrants and immigrants, and eclipse land-based Indigenous presence and sovereignty. Through content and discourse analysis, and archival research, I critically read O'odham Indigenous critique of the border and immigration policies against U.S. government documents to show that the settler racialization process of undocumented border crossings is foundationally one of Indigenous erasure and genocide. The aim of this paper is to broaden the scope of critique via an analytic of Indigeneity in the realms of the academy, advocacy work, organizing, activism as related to the U.S.–Mexico border and U.S. immigration.
Scholarship has sought to develop theoretical frameworks to set order on the rather muddled web of actors, interactions and tensions involved in asylum and immigration policies. The article considers ...three of them: the "venue shopping approach", the "multi-level governance approach" and critical humanitarian studies.
The purpose is to contribute to this debate by elaborating the concept of "battleground" of asylum (and immigration) policies. With this concept, I mean that they are a contentious field in which different actors interact, cooperating or conflicting. Different levels of public responsibility are involved but also non-public actors play a role. They encompass various pro-migrant supporters but also xenophobic movements. The article will analyse the crucial actors involved, with a focus on the local level: pro-refugee civil society; coalitions of diverse pro-refugee actors; opponents to refugee reception; local governments acting for and against refugee and migrant reception and asylum seekers and irregular immigrants themselves.
Inside the migrant camps emerging and being erased at the U.S.-Mexico border, we glimpse liminal lives crafted by punitive immigration policy yet sustained by hope.
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