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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of Moroccan women crossed the border between Melilla and Morocco on a daily basis to work in domestic employment, a consolidated niche sector of cross-border employment for low-skilled working-class women. When the border closed due to COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, many decided to remain in Melilla. Following the precepts of grounded theory and using biographical interviews, the paper investigates the survival strategies these women deployed following the border closure. An ambivalent process began: on the one hand, their labour conditions worsened, exposing them to worse situations of violence; on the other, they developed strategies of resistance and agency, assuming the role of breadwinner for their families and opting for a process of emancipation through inclusion and training opportunities in the city of Melilla. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The personal experience of crossing a border differs according to gender. Specifically, the selectivity of immigration controls means that deportation affects many more men than women. Based on the analysis of official data on the detention of people in irregular situations, detention in migrant detention centres (CIE in its Spanish acronym) and repatriations, disaggregated by sex, this paper provides some theoretical reflections on why a gender gap exists in the deportation apparatus in Spain. Taking up the feminist criminology research agenda's challenge, it seeks to contribute to the development of "criminology of mobility" with an analysis of migration control in Spain from a gender perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past 15 years a series of apparently unconnected architectural events and assemblies have appeared in the immediate vicinity of Spain's Southern Border to improve the constructed border's functionality and capacity to respond. This paper addresses the dynamic shift the contemporary border is undergoing according to the detection of three strategies: seal, delay and contain. The critical cartography and forensic reconstruction of a series of events allow us to demonstrate the typological transformation shifting the weight of stable constructions to dynamic and instantaneous assemblies. These can no longer be said to be static solutions, but a territorial mechanism or assembly that configure and define the border. While the border architecture is a clear materialisation of sovereignty, it is necessary to question the territorial model, which is no longer represented by the rule but by the condition of operability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Spain as a case study, this paper analyses the institutional production of border apparatus within reception countries, which affect very diverse areas of the daily life of migrants. Hence, rather than as a rigid line dividing the population into included and excluded, the border is approached as a flexible governance mechanism that differentially regulates access to rights. Starting by analysing the formal and informal operation of some of the institutions that manage the process (immigration offices, social services and the healthcare system), an attempt is made to give an account of the norms, requirements, administrative procedures and infra-penal mechanisms that especially affect vulnerable groups, stratifying the recognition of rights and condemning subjects to a legal limbo in which their legitimacy is - at best - blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a critical examination of the most recent developments in Spanish practice relating to the control of irregular immigration. It analyses the commitments being made in the framework of the European integration process and their implications for the control of external borders as well as the agreements concluded by Spain - treaties and non-binding agreements (memorandums of understanding, etc.) - aimed at controlling flows of people. In this context, the article also gives attention to Spain's international obligations on human rights taking its impact on the issue and the most recent internal developments into account - both in legislative changes approved and those being enacted as administrative practice. In light of the foregoing, a critical assessment of these developments and events (e.g. "hot returns") is submitted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2008 onwards, the economic crisis experienced by countries such as Spain marked a turning point in migratory flows. As a result, faced with the serious reality of unemployment and the precariousness of the Spanish labour market, the option of return has become the last resort for some immigrants, and an attractive strategy for governments (of both countries of origin and destination), which attempt to manage return using special programmes. From this point of view, the aim of this paper is to examine the assisted voluntary return programmes in Spain and Bolivia and their suitability to the dynamics of return, beginning with an exhaustive review of the programmes and the perceptions on them expressed by Bolivian immigrants as part of the survey «Circulation and Return», carried out within the framework of the RETTRANS project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis has started a new migration cycle in Spain. As an effect of the restrictive measures taken and the depth of the crisis, migrant inflows have reduced and outflows have increased, the latter especially among Latin Americans. This paper explores the impact of the crisis on migrant people and their families in terms of unemployment, of declining living conditions, and of legal uncertainty. In this situation, a growing minority of immigrants, particularly Latin Americans, implement transnational strategies such as return, circular migration and others. Notwithstanding this, most immigrants are facing the crisis here, combining work, social and family strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]