Beyond Asylum and Resettlement: Diverse Modes of Refugee Migration

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

Sociological scholarship and policy debates on refugee migration often center on asylum systems and resettlement pathways. Yet these frameworks capture only a tiny fraction of the mobility strategies pursued by displaced people. This panel highlights the diverse and often overlooked modes of refugee movement that unfold outside—or alongside—formal humanitarian channels. Contributions will explore cases ranging from labor migration and South-South mobility to education- and marriage-based strategies and onward movement through irregularized routes. Together, these papers examine how refugees creatively navigate restrictive regimes, mobilize social networks, and reshape mobility infrastructures. By foregrounding these alternative trajectories, the panel aims to unsettle binary distinctions between “forced” and “voluntary” migration, and to illuminate how displacement is lived and negotiated across multiple scales.

Sub Unit

• International Migration Section / Beyond Asylum and Resettlement: Diverse Modes of Refugee Migration

Presider

• Samuel Dinger, New School for Social Research

Individual Presentations

• Finding Security in a New Rhythm: How South-South Migrants in Uruguay Negotiate Transnational Temporalities - Asha Marie Kaur Sawhney, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Forced Migrants to Refugees: The Promises and Perils of Informal Categorization as Refugee Brothers and Sisters - Swan Ye Htut, Stanford University

• Legible Displacement: Temporary Protected Status and the Production of Legal Vulnerability, 1990-2025 - Neha Lund, Brown University

• The Lives & Possibilities of African Asylum Seekers in New York City - Dialika Sall, CUNY-Lehman College; Heba Gowayed, CUNY-Hunter College; Ethan Mayer-Rich, CUNY-Graduate Center; Sauda Muhammad, CUNY-Graduate Center

• “Turning Myself In”: How Pastoral Governance Shapes Access to Asylum at the US-Mexico Border - Anahi Viladrich, CUNY-Queens College

Discussant

• Nihal Kayali, Brandeis University

Session Organizer

• Samuel Dinger, New School for Social Research