Transnational Migration and Comparative Perspectives on Non-Citizenship in the Americas

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Global migration has assumed new forms in the 21st century, strained existing systems of migrant movement, selection, formal and de facto settlement; and obliged state and non-state actors to reflect on the relationship between citizenship and non-citizenship as policy, practice and ideal. In the Americas, countries such as Canada, with long traditions of permanent immigration and settlement are increasingly relying on temporary migrant labour to secure a workforce and restrict access to citizenship. Similar, but more informal dynamics are paramount in receiving states in Latin America, where high levels of poverty and inequality make the economic and social incorporation of migrants even more difficult. The permanent or temporary incorporation of already existing and new flows of migrants, in countries with strong social policy trajectories like Costa Rica, Chile and Argentina, or new types of trans-continental migrants from Asia and Africa in countries like Brazil, places fiscal, strategic and ethical challenges and pressures on already weakened and failing social welfare systems, making the incorporation of migrants a polemic issue. As such, migration adds another dimension to the management of integration, requiring states in the Americas to reconsider the rights of both citizens and non-citizens.

The panel offers a comparative perspective on the production and negotiation of non-citizenship in the Americas. It considers the form in which illegality and precarious legal status is produced and the social, institutional and political conditions for its reproduction. Papers in the panel engage with three guiding questions: what role do state and para-state policies, practices and regulatory frameworks play in the production of non-citizenship? What form and trajectories does non-citizenship take across different countries, regions and institutional arenas (e.g. healthcare, schooling, the labour market)? What kind of relation defines the link between migrants in one side, and state and society on the other?

Sub Track

• Migration, Borders and Diasporas

Session Organizers

• Koen Voorend, Universidad de Costa Rica

• Luis Eduardo Thayer, Universidad de Los Lagos

Chair

• Koen Voorend, Universidad de Costa Rica

Individual Presentations

• From social rights to social incorporation. Factors explaining Nicaraguan immigrants’ access to Costa Rican social policy - Koen Voorend, Universidad de Costa Rica

• Patchworks of Access and Conditionality of Rights: Public Education and the Non-Citizen Family in Canada - Patricia A Landolt, University of Toronto/Scarborough; Luin Goldring, York University

• State and migrants face to face. Institutional and subjective conditions in the state for precarious recognition of migrants in Chile. - Luis Eduardo Thayer, Universidad de Los Lagos

• Producing Illegality Through “Improved” Status Regularization Procedures in Mexico - Tanya M Basok, University of Windsor

Discussant

• Carolina I Stefoni, Universidad Alberto Hurtado