Immigration, Documentation, and Social Protection in Comparative Perspective

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel studies the crucial role of immigration and legal status for accessing full citizenship rights. By including analyses of the causes and consequences of unequal access to documentation and to basic services, as well as the securitization of immigration, it aims to answer some of the central questions in comparative immigration politics. What are the causes and consequences of lack of access to documentation? How and why do governments pursue a strategy of exclusion towards ethnic minorities? How does legal status affect and become affected by social policies? How do anti-immigrant parties shape politics? The papers included in this panel analyze countries throughout world regions, including Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Kenya, India, Spain, the U.K., and the US. Besides its broad regional coverage, this panel also includes diverse data collection and analysis methods, such as field-research and interviews, surveys, coding of party manifestos, and case studies.

Hunter studies how contemporary nationalist governments in the Dominican Republic, Kenya, and India impose onerous administrative processes for receiving nationality-granting documentation as a way to exclude ethnic minorities. With reference to Dominicans of Haitian descent, Somali Kenyans, and Assamese Muslims in India, the author illustrates the role of nationalism in the context of state-building efforts.

Messina’s paper analyzes how media and anti-immigration-parties’ issue framing shape the political competition landscape. Focusing on Spain, the US, and the UK, the author shows how the higher the association of immigration with security in both media and political discourse, the higher the convergence of public opinion, elite attitudes, and party platforms on immigration related issues.

Niedzwiecki analyzes the degree to which Latin American welfare states incorporate immigrants to their social policies. The paper compares Argentina, Chile, and the Dominican Republic and argues that countries with stronger presence of left parties with linkages to social movements will be more inclusive of immigrant populations in their design of policies, while barriers at the moment of policy implementation are not vulnerable to electoral changes as they are shaped by structural policy legacies.

Peña-Vasquez studies the ways in which municipal housing rules in Spain structure irregular migrants’ regularization opportunities. Through studying three municipalities within Spain, the author shows different experiences of immigrants with housing and the legalization process. These local differences exemplify mechanisms of exclusion that reinforce civic stratification in the face of national inclusive measures.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Nationalism and the Unmaking of Citizens in the DR, Kenya and India - Wendy Hunter, University of Texas, Austin

• Securitizing and Politicizing Immigration: Spain, UK, and US - Anthony M. Messina, Trinity College

• Immigration and Social Policy in Latin America - Sara Niedzwiecki, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Putting Down (Social) Roots: Housing and Legalization Policy in Spain - Andrea Pena-Vasquez, University of Notre Dame

Chair

• Alice M. Jackson Morgan State University

Discussants

• Imke Harbers University of Amsterdam

• Edward A. Koning University of Guelph