Legal Status-Making and Bureaucratic Inscription: Navigating Precarious Employment and Job Mobility among U.S. Student-Migrant-Workers

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 18: Precarious and Nonstandard Work

Abstract

This study argues that the legal status-making process and its associated bureaucratic inscription procedures profoundly influence, constrain, and often compromise the employment decisions and job mobilities of migrants without permanent residency. This study investigates how these processes affect the employment experiences of student–migrant–workers in the United States. The study builds on the concepts of “status-making” and “bureaucratic inscription,” which conceptualize legal status as a fluid, precarious trajectory marked by constant interactions with government agencies, employers, and the continuous demands of administrative documentation. This study frames these legal-status-making and inscription processes as critical determinants of migrants’ labor market conditions. Through in-depth interviews with 65 participants—including student–migrant–workers and immigration lawyers—the study investigates two key questions: (1) How do legal status-making processes and bureaucratic inscription requirements influence the decision to accept precarious employment? and (2) How do these processes affect subsequent job mobility? The findings reveal that stringent bureaucratic inscription requirements—securing a qualifying job and adhering to a rigid 90-day unemployment limit—compel many migrants into precarious employment arrangements. Moreover, waiting periods imposed by both government agencies and employers during the bureaucratic inscription process exacerbate the risks associated with changing jobs, thereby reducing migrants’ labor mobility before they achieve permanent status. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how legal status’s fluid and precarious nature directly impacts employment decisions and labor mobility.

Author

• Xiaochen Liang, University of California-Santa Cruz