International Journal of Migration and Border Studies (7 papers in press)

Special Issue on: Coloniality of Bordering and Belonging Everyday Bureaucratic and Legal Violence through Nation-State Governance

• Open Access

  Bordering through legal non-existence: the production of de facto statelessness among women and children through the National Registry of Citizens in Assam, India ( Free Full-text Access )

  by Rupaleem Bhuyan, Madhumita Sarma, Abdul Kalam Azad, Anupol Bordoloi 
  Abstract: This article applies a feminist bordering lens to examine the legal and administrative procedures through which an estimated 1.9 million residents of India’s northeastern state of Assam, have been excluded from the 2019 National Registry of Citizens (NRC). Since India’s independence from Great Brittan, the colonial legacy of borders and national belonging have fueled heated conflicts among the Assamese ethnic majority, Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims whose ancestors originated in what is now Bangladesh, Adivasi communities (i.e. the region’s original inhabitants), and the Indian government’s authority to expel “foreigners.” While the convergence of Hindu nationalism and Assamese ethnonationalism contributes to a citizenship crisis among people of Bengali heritage in Assam, we consider how bureaucratic requirements to verify citizenship reinforce racial, class, and patriarchal inequality for women and children from low-income communities who are at risk of de facto statelessness because they are not “legible” as citizens in India.
  Keywords: precarious citizenship; stateless persons; documentary citizenship; intersectionality; marginality; migrant; illegality; nationalism.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10057915
   
  
• Far from perfect: Iranian international students experience of human dignity within the Canadian/Quebec immigration system  
  by Erfaneh Razavipour 
  Abstract: Every year a significant number of international students (ISs) move to Canada to pursue university education, encountering myriad challenges at the various stages of their migration. This paper explores how Iranian international graduate students experience human dignity (HD) in relation to the Canadian/Quebec immigration system (CQIS). Drawing on in-depth interviews with 24 current and former Iranian international students (IISs) (ten men and ten women IISs in Montreal, and two men and two women graduates who had left Canada), this paper adopts a conceptual framework of HD to analyse the data. Two themes emerged as key to Iranian international students’ experiences with CQIS: 1) frustration with immigration rules during their studies; 2) lack of clarity regarding processing times and procedures. These themes provided empirical support for the HD framework including equality, humanity, respect, and human rights. An awareness of ISs’ experiences of HD within the immigration system could strengthen the support offered to ISs in Canada. The findings also have useful implications for Canadian/Quebec Government personnel and policymakers, as well as administrators of educational institutions that seek to attract ISs.
  Keywords: Canada; Quebec; human dignity; international students; Iran; migration; permanent residence; immigration policy.
  
  
• Bordering non-citizenship assemblage through migrant legibility: a conceptual framework for tracing hidden forms of legal and bureaucratic violence  
  by Lindsay Larios, Rupaleem Bhuyan, Catherine Schmidt, Heather Bergen 
  Abstract: In this paper, we conceptualise migrant legibility as a bordering practice where migrants seeking to maintain status or transition to permanent residency in Canada must negotiate the dynamic milieu of: 1) laws and regulations governing immigrant inclusion; 2) bureaucratic processes for verifying eligibility and admissibility; 3) informal social networks which can expand or restrict access to information and resources. Using two case studies from empirical research with migrants in Canada, we attend to the legal, bureaucratic, and social processes through which migrants must prove their humanity (i.e., biopolitical life) in the context of unpredictable, heterogeneous, multi-scalar, and often hidden forms of legal and bureaucratic violence. Through theorising the legal and bureaucratic violence of legibility, this paper illustrates the historical, political, and economic conditions through which migrant illegality and patterns of imperial/colonial/racial/gendered ordering operate in tandem with neoliberal multicultural constructions of equality and inclusion of autonomous and self-sufficient individuals.
  Keywords: undocumented immigrants; non-citizens; migrants; legal status transition; bureaucratic violence; bordering; assemblage; legibility; immigration; Canada.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10057239
   
  
• Narratives from non-citizen former youth in child welfare care fighting crimmigration and deportation  
  by Mandeep Kaur Mucina, Abigail Lash-Ballew 
  Abstract: This article exposes the policies that affect the stability of non-citizen migrant youth who enter child welfare care and reveals the carceral logics underpinning three dominant systems: child welfare, immigration, and criminal (in)justice. Drawing on the narratives of four former youth in care with precarious status ensnared in the criminal (in)justice system and slated for deportation, we advance a transcarceral and bordering framework to understand the systemic oppression non-citizen former youth in child welfare care encountered as they navigated social exclusion from multiple carceral systems and resisted constructions of belonging. We argue that the child welfare systems abandoned these former youth in care, leading them to an unstable life spiralling towards criminality while they were unconsciously living with precarious status as non-citizens, facing deportation from Canada. The article ends with recommendations from the former youth in care as they reflect on the events that led them towards deportation.
  Keywords: child welfare; deportation; aging out; transcarceral; crimmigration; bordering practices; migration; non-status youth; precarious status.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10058305
   
  

Regular Issues

• Positioning processes and dissent among Colombian migrants in Australia  
  by Liana Mercedes Torres-Casierra 
  Abstract: In the midst of the media-fuelled polarisation emanating from the peace talks between the Colombian Government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in 2015, the narratives of lived experience by Colombian migrants in Australia at the time portray the multiple positionings shaping their social and political selves. This paper hinges on dialogical self-theory (DST) scholarship to argue that despite the common beliefs and expectations over Colombians’ capacity to voice dissent, the migrants involved privilege the silencing or constraining of their standpoints especially when there are strong political views at play. It examines the ways Colombians in Australia construct their identities within different spaces of interaction with their fellow nationals, the host community, and their back and forth relation with their country of origin. The article draws on how the migrants’ ambivalent and also called third positions relate to different ways of silencing political dissent.
  Keywords: dialogical self theory; DST; dialogical triads; dissent; migrant identities; third positions; Colombian migration; Australia.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10057684
   
  
• Imposed dehumanised realities: crisis biopolitics at Lesvos border camps in the pandemic era of COVID-19  
  by Stergios Psifis, Electra Petracou 
  Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the implementation of restrictive measures against populations in the name of crisis politics. This paper examines the policies that have been applied to refugees living in Lesvos camps since the outbreak of the pandemic and the impact these policies have had on their lives and bodies. We approach the COVID-19 crisis as a complex phenomenon of multispecies encounters, in which human and non-human actors are entangled under the governance of biopolitics. We demonstrate how anthropocentrism and neoliberal capitalism have resulted in both refugees and Sars-Cov-2 being recognised as exogenous threats that need to be ostracised or eliminated, rendering them invisible outcasts. We argue that creating heterotopias for either humans or viruses is a self-defeating dead end that requires radical re-theorisation by embracing posthumanistic values. It is essential to realise that we live in a unified evolutionary ecosystem where every action (or inaction) has a ripple effect and impacts all. This realisation should underpin and guide all policies concerning the refugee and pandemic crises.
  Keywords: COVID-19; refugees; posthumanism; camps; Lesvos; biogeopolitics.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.10057865
   
  
• A principal-agent historical institutionalist perspective on Frontex Joint Sea Operations  
  by Yichen Zhong 
  Abstract: In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the European Union has embarked on a concerted effort to bolster its security apparatus and fortify its external border controls. The operational coordination among EU Member States at their external borders has been facilitated by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) since its establishment in 2005. Utilising historical institutionalism from a principal-agent perspective, this article investigates the development of Frontex’s Joint Operations and its implications for EU border control coordination. The article contends that the initial launch of the Frontex Joint Operation approach has generated gaps in member states’ control over subsequent institutional adjustments, and led to a self-reinforcing shift in EU border control coordination towards integration.
  Keywords: Frontex; border management; principal-agent; historical institutionalism.