Abstract The US immigration detention and deportation system is a vector for state violence against criminalized, racialized populations, in service to racial capitalism. The immigration policies of both Democrats and Republicans are designed to extract profit from migrants, disciplining them as a deportable underclass of workers while minimizing and externalizing the costs of social reproduction. The detention of pregnant women presents the immigration enforcement system with both discursive and material challenges, as detaining pregnant women entails additional potential costs and exposes the system to public critique on humanitarian grounds. Through an analysis of the experiences of detained pregnant women at the US/Mexico border, we argue that federal immigration policy in USA renders pregnant migrant women disposable and expendable, even during administrations that purport to make humanitarian exceptions for them. We describe and analyze processes of profit extraction, externalization of social reproduction, and symbolic exploitation in relation to the detention of pregnant women from the last year of the Obama administration in 2016 through 2022. Our findings demonstrate that recent Democratic and Republican administrations alike mobilize discursive and material practices to neutralize the challenge embodied by pregnant detainees, preserving and protecting an ever-expanding and privatized immigration enforcement system while causing profound harm to pregnant women and their families.

Abstract Drawing on a thematic–narrative analysis of twenty in-depth interviews with Latin American women who relocated to the Helsinki Metropolitan Area primarily through marriage, this article explores how public libraries are mobilized to support their social integration trajectories. By linking social integration with the notion of “transcultural embeddedness,” the article demonstrates that settlement processes are facilitated through social relationships and community-building with diverse social Others within libraries. The findings underscore that social integration appears as an ongoing and negotiated process of transcultural embedding, enacted through everyday practices in super-diverse urban contexts. Public libraries emerge as key sites where women cultivate social ties, negotiate belonging, and engage in transcultural practices with Finnish nationals, co-ethnics/co-nationals, co-regionals, heritage-language communities, and other transnational actors. These practices—including learning Finnish, supporting bilingual children’s language development, building friendships, and creating communities of support—evolve into forms of transformative transcultural capital. Such capital addresses both personal and familial needs while contributing to broader place-making aspirations. Ultimately, this article argues that public libraries operate as “super-diversity container spaces,” positioning transcultural embedding as both a means of navigating settlement and a form of capital that enables women to build/sustain attachments, negotiate multiple belongings, and actively shape their place in the city.

Abstract Since the financial crisis of the late 2000s, ‘investment migration’ schemes (golden passports and visas) have multiplied, offering access to citizenship or residence to migrants deemed ‘desirable’, in exchange for financial investments in host countries. Academic research focusing on these new privileged migratory regimes has, however, criticized their effectiveness in attracting people and capital. In this article, the author examines the case of Mauritius to revisit the question of the relationship between golden visas and migration. He focuses on an overlooked aspect of these programmes: real estate. Property, and more broadly what he calls ‘territorial infrastructure’ appears to be one of the major instruments of these investment migration policies. How are real estate and urban development used as instruments of migration policies? What kind of ‘desirable migrants’ do Residence by Property (RBP) schemes produce? The author uses an ethnographic method to study not only the actors involved in the implementation of RBP schemes, but also the profile of the beneficiaries of these programs. He argues that these schemes produce a unique migration model: ‘rentier migration’. This term reflects both the fact that the beneficiaries live mainly on capital income that can be managed remotely and that these programmes contribute to reorienting vast swathes of the host societies and economies around property income. Broadly, this study contributes to debate over the role of migration promotion policies in the emergence of ‘immigration rentier states’ and ‘real estate states’.

Abstract While there is considerable research on return migration, it is disproportionately focused on the immediate moment of return, including decision making. There is an emerging interest, however, in the outcomes for returnees—a policy relevant question at a time when there is growing emphasis on harnessing migration to support rural development. However, limited research has explored the social structures which mediate return migration outcomes, particularly from rural migrant source communities which are facing growing agrarian stress and rising inequality. This article seeks to understand the long-term livelihood trajectories for returnees to rural communities in Nepal, Moldova, and Thailand. Looking at the entire cycle of migration from initial departure to the migration experience overseas, and the options open to returnees, it analyses how outcomes are mediated by ongoing patterns of agrarian differentiation. Drawing upon large surveys, combined with over 100 interviews with households experiencing international labour migration, the article finds that for most returnees, the structural conditions within which rural migrants work overseas, including the associated costs, mean that accumulated savings are rarely sufficient to support transformative change in livelihoods and accumulation of wealth on return. For some migrants, particularly those who are in a subordinate economic position before going overseas, deception or exploitation overseas can result in them returning in an even weaker financial situation, often culminating in a loss of assets. There are, nevertheless, a minority of returnees who have achieved upward mobility in the rural economy following their return. While again, this largely follows class lines with wealthier farmers securing better paid jobs and having less debt, there are a small subset who are able to rise the economic ladder through post-return investments. Effective mobilization of social networks, sustained long term migration and a supportive policy environment—have been cited as significant factors contributing to post-return success within these contexts.

Abstract In this article, we explore the wartime and post-war lives of a unique group of internally displaced children—those who were born in Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) captivity in northern Uganda. We draw upon in-depth interviews and individual and collective art-making activities with 79 children born of conflict-related sexual violence in three districts in northern Uganda. Using the concept of “wayfinding,” we highlight children’s perspectives and experiences in relation to home, belonging, and future-making. In particular, we examine the role of imagination and the co-emergence of shared terrains of meaning in the creation of a community of experience in these children’s lives, as well as how children worked both individually and collectively to actively (re)build and (re)envision their past, present and their futures. We argue that for children born in LRA captivity, establishing control over their memories and experiences, individually and with others, enables a form of individual and collective wayfinding through social exclusion that contributes to agentive future making.

Abstract When do host governments protect migrants and expand their rights? On 8 February 2021, Colombian President Iván Duque announced a 10-year temporary protected status for over 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants, a policy shift contrasting with more restrictive global migration responses. We offer three motivations for Colombia’s liberalization of migration policy: the pragmatic response to challenges in border control, the economic and legibility benefits of migrant regularization, and the pursuit of international reputation gains. Drawing on interviews with thirty Colombian policymakers, politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, and NGO leaders, this study offers insights into the drivers of inclusive migration policies in the Global South.

Immigration laws are a means of legal control of migration at the world level. This chapter delves into the origin of immigration laws and how they spread among various countries. Additionally, it explores the range of subject matter that could properly come within the domain of immigration laws. Finally, it explores the influence of immigration law in recent decades on human rights, as several international treaties have become relevant to immigration law.

Over the last few decades, the changing role of gender in migration has emerged as an important field of research and is being extensively explored under various disciplines. Literature on migration pointed out several significant changes in the migration trends and patterns, particularly an increase in the number of women migrants when they are no longer ‘associational’, and the emergence of gendered perspectives on a range of topics. Women are migrating for work, responding to the growing women-centric occupations in an independent capacity. Gender in migration is about women joining labour force after migration, popularly known as ‘feminisation of migration’. This chapter explores the various nuances of migration with reference to women, focusing on India. It begins with an overview of the growing literature on migration of women in India. The chapter highlights that while ‘feminisation of migration’ has enhanced the visibility of women in the migration discourse, much more needs to be done in terms of generating appropriate data, ensuring their protection and security and increasing their participation in the labour market.

Growing recognition of migration in international climate policy frameworks suggests the rising importance of migration in the climate and environmental change mechanism for a better understanding of adoption strategy and mitigation. By 2050, the volume of climate- or environmental-induced migrants will reach a gigantic figure, estimated at approximately 150–200 million globally, which will be contributed mainly by Sub-Saharan African, South Asian and Latin American countries. Studying environmental migration faces broad challenges; the chapter sheds light on that. It delves into the complexity and challenges of studying environmental migration on the ground, climate-migration nexus, methodological inefficiency and methods of data collection and approaches, and policy responses and legal framework issues. Defining environmental migration still faces definitional difficulties that impede data acquisition, measures and global comparability. The chapter also provides a broad overview of the growing concern and magnitude of environmental migration and its varying impact on gender, social status and geographical locations.

Abstract Efforts to identify the happiness consequences of international migration for the migrants themselves are hampered by severe data limitations. In principle, the effect of migration on the happiness of migrants can be evaluated via comparison between migrants and stayers; the stayers are used as the counterfactual for migrants (i.e. had they not migrated). But analysis in this mode must consider the selectivity of migration: migrants and stayers are different in ways that are consequential for their happiness. The difficulty is that gaining leverage over selection into migration requires the use of data about core aspects of migrants’ pre-migration lives. Available data on migrants mainly gives information on their ‘current’ (post-migration) situations; data on their pre-migration situations are typically absent. In this article, I address the incompleteness of information via a ‘bounds’ approach. The aim is to identify happiness consequences for migrants via a propensity-score weighting analysis. Key variables, relevant to migration propensity, are lacking in the data I use (the European Social Survey)—in particular, pre-migration health, relationship status, and frustration with income. To overcome these absences, I estimate results using randomly assigned values for migrants, oriented to defined scenarios that draw on what we know about migrant selectivity in general. I apply this approach to an analysis of Polish migrants living in Ireland, the UK, and Germany. In comparisons of migrants and stayers adjusted via propensity-score weighting, there is no support for the idea that migration has led to any change in migrants’ happiness (in contrast to earlier published findings).