The Path to Work Authorization: Violence, Livelihood, and Care for Asylum Seeking Women in New York City

• In Event: Resisting Carcerality and Border Imperialism (Hybrid)

Abstract

It's seen on the news, talked about in passing at the dinner table, and stripped of humanity on the debate stage. Largely known as the “migrant crisis,” the rapid increase in asylum seeker arrivals between Spring 2023 and Spring 2024 reached nearly 182,900 people in NYC alone, while only 37,714 of them had actually applied for asylum and, subsequently, work authorization. This paper shares the true experiences of the women hidden in these numbers, and details how they navigate life without the legal ability to work.
My deep analysis includes interviews with leaders of organizations focused on managing and supporting these women through the asylum process, including officials from the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. Through them, I break down the legal and literal paths asylum-seeking women take to gaining work authorization: from the trauma and gender-based violence endured when crossing the border, to the difficulties of employment outside the law, to their access to mental health care, community support, and forms of resistance. In light of this broad approach to the asylum-seeking process, the paper aims to humanize asylum-seeking women and contribute to the discussion of how “immigration reform” might work to improve their lives, which are both so often overlooked.

Biographical Information

McKenna Merriman (she/her) is a student at The New School receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in the Spring of 2025. Through her studies she is dedicated to understanding how broad and often confusing subjects such as racism, colonization, and capitalism are seen in everyday life, and how they have shaped the state of immigration, homelessness, and social inequality inside (and outside) the United States today. Aside from completing her degree, she has worked for the New York City Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, The Movement for Black Lives' Director of Communications, Shanelle Matthews, Knock for Democracy, and non-profits in her home state of Ohio. She believes that having limitless curiosity is the best way to learn and work for a healthy and liberated world.

Author

• McKenna S Merriman, The New School