ABSTRACT Overstayers—travellers entering a country with a valid visa but staying beyond the initially authorised period—are a blind spot of migration research. Past studies claim that overstaying is indeed the main gateway to irregular migration in Europe, but few estimates exist. This paper explores three new methods to estimate the inflows of overstayers. We concentrate on the Schengen area as destination, given its relevance in global migration flows, and on non‐European countries as origins, since for travellers from these countries commercial flights are the most likely transportation mode to Europe. Our methods rely on aggregate information on incoming and departing passengers from all airports in the Schengen Area, and on Facebook users' mobility data. In the first method, we compute ‘net air travel flows’ as the difference between incoming and outgoing passengers; we then deduce net regular migration (using data from Eurostat and the QuantMig project) from ‘net air travel flows’ to obtain ‘unaccounted net flows’, which we hold to equate approximately to newly incoming overstayers with short‐stay visas for 2019. In the second method, building on the first estimate, we employ the logic of gravity models to project estimates for later years. In the third method, we build on the intuitions of the first method but use net migration figures from data on Facebook users' cross‐border movements. Substantively, the results of the different methods converge, indicating around 450,000 new overstayers who entered the whole of the Schengen Area in 2019 with short‐stay visas. Analyses for the following years obtained with the second and third method match and are in line with changes in travel policies during the COVID‐19 pandemic (2020 and 2021), suggesting a significant reduction in the number of overstayers for those years and an uptick for the years 2022–2023. By uncovering the size and scope of the overstaying population we shed light on a highly contested issue in the public debate and ultimately contribute to raise awareness on the constructed nature of the ‘regular’ versus ‘irregular’ framing of migration.

ABSTRACT This study explored the mental distress experienced by migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon under the Kafala (sponsorship) system, adopting a dual lens that considers both workers' lived realities and the host society's social‐psychological processes. Drawing on intersectionality and social psychology, the analysis examines how intersecting forms of discrimination, rooted in race, gender, class and legal status, combine with crisis contexts, such as Lebanon's economic collapse and the Beirut port explosion, to deepen psychological harm. The study interrogated the cultural narratives, moral hierarchies and ingroup/outgroup dynamics that normalise or obscure these conditions, situating the Lebanese Kafala regime within broader regional labour migration systems. Findings reveal a cyclical dynamic in which legal precarity, racialised labour hierarchies and societal attitudes reinforce both structural abuse and social invisibility. While MDWs mobilise coping strategies including solidarity networks, digital mobilisation, religious practices and community‐based initiatives, these remain constrained by systemic exclusion from national services and persistent stigma. The study argued that meaningful reform requires dismantling both the legal architecture of Kafala and the social‐psychological mechanisms that sustain it, coupling structural change with culturally responsive psychosocial interventions and regional labour governance reforms.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the existence of asymmetry in the relationship between labour migration and economic growth within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Utilising a non‐linear approach informed by Shin et al., the research analyses data from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank for the years 2000–2021. Results indicate a positive impact of labour migration on economic growth, revealing that a 1% increase in labour migration corresponds to a 0.66% decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with statistical significance. Conversely, non‐linear findings suggest that increases in labour migration statistically reduce GDP by 0.16%, while decreases enhance GDP by 1.36%, though this effect is insignificant in the long run. The study concludes that there is an asymmetric relationship between labour migration and economic growth in ECOWAS, underscoring the necessity for policymakers to adopt practical measures to maximise the benefits of migration.

ABSTRACT This study used an interpretive research method to assess the effectiveness of policy reforms in ensuring safe migrant labour from Indonesia, a major sender of low‐skilled workers. The findings indicate that inadequate implementation infrastructure can exacerbate human rights abuses rather than prevent them. While the central government emphasises official protection mechanisms, local governments lack physical and human resources for effective implementation. Furthermore, structural dependence on market‐savvy sending agencies has emerged. The study suggests that Indonesia's labour migration policy needs to shift from a framework of detailed regulations to a flexible mechanism more in line with implementation capacity and market realities and recommends the establishment of public support centres, the standardisation of cost structures, the expansion of skills certification systems, and the strengthening of public‐private partnerships.

ABSTRACTMigrant deservingness, the criteria by which host populations assess migrants' entitlement to rights, resources and social acceptance, plays a critical role in shaping public opinion on immigration. Drawing on the CARIN framework, this study examines Turkish citizens' attitudes towards immigration through latent profile analysis on 788 participants (52% female, Mage = 34.1 SD = 13.6). The analysis identified four attitudinal profiles: Pragmatic Conditionalists, Humanitarians, Cultural Protectionists, and Exclusionists, each reflecting varying levels of support for or opposition to migrants based on perceived deservingness. Further analyses revealed significant differences across profiles in nationalism, religiosity, political ideology, perceived realistic and symbolic threats, social distance, contact quality and affective responses towards migrants. Exclusionists exhibited the highest perceived threats, social distance, and nationalism, whereas Humanitarians displayed the most inclusive attitudes. The findings contribute to immigration attitude research by clarifying how host populations categorise migrants, influencing social cohesion and policy.

ABSTRACTGuestworker schemes have increased in geographical extent and numerical importance in the twenty‐first century. In the southern hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand developed schemes primarily drawing workers from small Pacific island states to meet horticultural needs. Proponents of guestwork pointed to a triple win for farmers, workers and source countries, couched in economic terms. In small Pacific states, such economic gains were less evident at workers' household level, while growing numbers of participants created increased social problems for workers' households and source countries, evident especially during and after the COVID‐19 pandemic. Increased demand for workers in destination states and new geopolitical tensions in the region enabled Pacific states to demand structural changes to the schemes that would remedy social costs. However, Antipodean schemes retained the structural problems of guestworker schemes elsewhere, but emphasised by skill losses, a permanently temporary precariat, and impacts affecting the entirety of small states that challenge the simplicity and ubiquity of ‘Triple win’ discourses.

The author has nothing to report.

ABSTRACTResearchers broadly define sanctuary cities as localities with policies that limit local cooperation or participation in federal immigration enforcement, but this is often a binary definition. Existing scholarship has examined the roles that sanctuary cities play in limiting cooperation in federal immigration enforcement but has tended to rely on an inconsistent definition of what constitutes a ‘sanctuary city’. Much of the existing research also analytically treats sanctuary cities the same, regardless of the individual components of a given policy. To address these shortcomings, we draw on a content analysis of 379 municipal policies passed from 1971 to 2021, coding each policy along a seven‐point scale originally developed by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC). We draw on individual city case studies to illustrate each component of the scale and then score each locality from one to seven based on a content analysis of the policy's text. We demonstrate that policies vary in the limits they place on cooperation in federal immigration enforcement and that these limits vary geographically and temporally. We find that sanctuary policies have added new components over time, as federal immigration policies and agencies have changed, with the most comprehensive policies passed after Trump won the presidency in 2016.