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Restrictive immigration policies harm the mental health of undocumented immigrants and their U.S. citizen family members. As a sociopolitical stressor, threat to family due to immigration policy can heighten anxiety, yet it is unclear whether political engagement helps immigrant-origin students to cope. We used a cross-sectional survey of college students from immigrant families (N = 2,511) to investigate whether anxiety symptomatology was associated with perceived threat to family and if political engagement moderated this relationship. We stratified analyses by self/parental immigration statuses-undocumented students, U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, and U.S. citizens with lawfully present parents-to examine family members' legal vulnerability. Family threat was significantly associated with anxiety; higher levels of political engagement reduced the strength of this relationship. However, this moderation effect was significant only for U.S. citizens with lawfully present parents. These findings emphasize the importance of the family immigration context in shaping individuals' mental health outcomes.

This article argues for the importance of Europe in the 1990s for understanding the UK's changing immigration policy and the development of campaigns of resistance. The creation of the European Union and a common market brought with it the threat of common immigration policies and 'harmonisation'. As the borders of European states shifted, so too did bordering regimes and the policing of the (migrant) crisis. The 1990s, and particularly 1992, represented a juncture in migration and mobility across the 12 member states: who was going to be free to move across this single market of labour, capital and goods? Who would get to belong to Europe? The article explores shifting understandings of Britain's responsibilities towards refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. The restrictions of Fortress Europe and the 'new European racism' were met with substantial resistance. Despite differences in politics, audiences and supporters, what campaigners—from NGO reformers to more radical activists—held in common was the mobilisation of 'rights' as a language and resource for claim-making in the British and European state beyond the boundaries of citizenship. The tension between rights as minimum individual standards or radical, collective futures can be traced through those fighting against Fortress Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study explored the predictive relationship among international student trauma responses, visa status anxiety, and perceived institutional support. Researchers also sought to understand the relationship between help seeking behaviors and trauma exposure responses. Participants: International students (n = 172) from U.S. colleges and universities enrolled since March 2020. Methods: Data were collected via an electronic survey administered during the fall 2020 academic term. Results: The model was found to be significant, explaining 67% of the variance of student trauma responses. Anxiety surrounding students' ability to stay in the U.S. was found to be the greatest contributor to the model. Additionally, particular clusters of trauma symptomatology were significantly correlated with help seeking from specific individuals within student networks. Finally, students reported moderate levels of mental health help seeking behaviors, with friends and family being the most likely sources sought out for help. Conclusions: Despite focus on students' health and wellness concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, visa policy uncertainty was a primary driver of self-reported trauma symptomatology at the onset of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newcomers are living and working across rural and smaller communities in Canada. However, immigration research and policy are overwhelmingly focused on large, urban centres. Responding to this knowledge gap, this article presents the results from a scoping review of the Canadian literature on immigration outside of Canada's largest cities. An analysis of 90 studies reveals several key trends in the literature related to the geographic focus and themes addressed. The results of the review demonstrate that the majority of studies focus on regions with a high population density that are in close proximity to major urban centres, thus revealing a gap in knowledge regarding settlement across more rural and northern parts of the country. Issues related to settlement services, employment opportunities, welcoming communities, public policy, infrastructure, and retention and secondary migration were the most addressed themes across the literature and represent the diversity of rural Canada. In response to these findings, we conclude with a discussion of the potential opportunities for future research and policy change. Key messages: The urban focus of knowledge production around immigration in Canada excludes the rural experience and has resulted in an incomplete portrait of settlement and integration.As governments continue to promote the regionalization of immigration, more research on rural immigration and funding for settlement services and infrastructure in smaller places is urgently needed.Addressing the challenges that newcomers face in rural and smaller places will require systemic policy change that accounts for the urban policy bias in Canada and diversity of rural spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration process for immigrants is a multi-dimensional concept, influenced by a wide range of structural and individual factors, including social connections that immigrants make in the host society. An important part of this social connection can be developed with other co-nation immigrants within the immigrant community. However, this sometimes can be challenging due to the divisions that might exist within communities. Drawing on data with a mixed-method design, this study focuses on the Afghan community in Western Australia to understand, firstly, the relationship between Afghan immigrants' social connections within their community and successful integration within Australian society, and secondly the causes of divisions and challenges within the community. To do this, the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) Integration Index was used to measure the level of integration among 115 Afghan participants in the quantitative phase, with 18 interviews and two focus groups conducted in the qualitative phase, to understand Afghan experiences of divisions within their community. Findings show that there is a correlation between Afghans' social connections within their community and the four dimensions of economic, social, linguistic, and navigational integration. Qualitative findings also showed the details of the challenges that Afghans face within their community due to ethnic/regional divisions as well as the challenges women face in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often, undocumented immigrants are considered a population living in the shadows. But living below the radar of U.S. governmental authorities is no longer as accurate. As of the end of 2023, estimates indicate nearly six million, or nearly half, of the undocumented population has some level of liminal or protected status. At the same time, these protections are more temporary than before as most immigration policy now occurs in the executive, and not the legislative, branch, and is subject to dramatic shifts with a change in administration. Also, the diversity of protection types has grown. Using data for the U.S. case, this paper examines the broader implications of this trend on how the term "undocumented" is defined, as well as the advocacy and policy implications such new statuses portend. Having the world's largest undocumented population, the U.S. case can also shed light on our broader understanding of the undocumented label as a globally-referenced category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health is an integral feature of immigration, providing not only insight into population health but also a critical lens into immigrant integration and the power structure in receiving countries. The goal of this article is to chart the trajectory of scholarship on immigrants' health, focusing on the formative shift away from dominant individualistic perspectives focused on cultural and behavioral explanations toward a profoundly structural understanding of immigrants' health. Focusing primarily on the US context, we synthesize theoretical and empirical advances in structural perspectives of immigrants' health. We anchor these advances in the concept of exclusion, detailing how it undergirds structuralist perspectives of immigrants' health. We review common ways in which exclusion has been measured in the empirical literature on immigrants' health and highlight recent evidence linking exposure to exclusion to immigrants' health outcomes across the life course. We conclude by discussing key directions and challenges for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sheds light on health selection into migration from Poland to the Netherlands. Scholars have highlighted health as an important resource to overcome barriers to migration, and suggested that health selection into migration may particularly be expected under specific conditions, e.g. when geographical distances between origin and destination countries are large and when immigration policies in the destination country are restrictive. I assessed whether health selection into migration was also present in a within–European Union migration flow to which such conditions do not apply. I analyzed data from four surveys of Polish migrants in the Netherlands (n = 1 ,210) and European Social Survey data on Polish natives who stayed in Poland (n = 1 ,843). I performed conditional logistic regression analyses for matched case–control groups to model health selection into migration. Better health status was associated with a greater propensity to migrate from Poland to the Netherlands. Additional research is needed to determine whether the lower expected returns on migration for people in suboptimal health make them less inclined to migrate than their healthier counterparts, also in the absence of restrictive immigration policies and excessive geographical distances between origin and destination countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, an increasing number of nations have developed and institutionalized immigration programs aimed at attracting high-net-worth individuals, promising expedited residency and, in many cases, a streamlined path to citizenship. These initiatives target individuals expected to contribute economically, whether through immediate financial investments, capital transfers, or desirable professional skills deemed essential for national economic competitiveness. This article critically examines the rise of talent programs against the backdrop of scholarship studying investment-based citizenship schemes. While there is a developed literature studying investment-based citizenship programs and criticizing the imposition of neoliberal rationalities on state-induced meanings and practices of citizenship, there is less attention paid to the implications of these so-called merit-based citizenship programs. We argue that both sets of schemes follow a neoliberal market logic, prioritizing immigrants based on their perceived economic value. We explore how these programs disembed potential immigrants from their social contexts and perpetuate market-based inequalities. Thus, we propose that despite the distinctions often made between talent programs and investment schemes, both contribute to the reinforcement of a global citizenship hierarchy. Drawing on examples from Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries' skilled migration initiatives, we demonstrate how these programs shape discourses of selectivity and "deservingness" for future citizenship. Through a comprehensive analysis of legal frameworks and policy databases, the study highlights the complex interplay between migration policies, commodification of citizenship, and global hierarchies. Ultimately, it calls for a deeper understanding of the continuities and transformations in citizenship logics enabled by the infusion of market dynamics into migration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their geographical distance, the UK and Australia share proximity with their hostile immigration policies and managed migration practices, characterised by inhumanity under the guise of deterrence. People Seeking Asylum (PSA) who seek sanctuary typically endure protracted temporariness, which denies them access to state resources and imposes limitations on access to post-compulsory education. Despite state-endorsed exclusion, universities in both countries have developed approaches to circumventing immigration barriers by offering access via scholarships. The case of PSA, therefore, offers insights into the ways that Derrida's notion of 'hostipitality' – a conceptualisation of the tangled binary of hospitality and hostility – operates in higher education. In this article, we explore the types of hospitality that universities across the UK and Australia have invited PSA to cross the threshold into university study and transcend barriers imposed at the national level, and question how these modes of 'welcome' work to counter sector and state-level apparatus of rejection or reinforce existing barriers. We construct our argument around the disruption of three key binaries: host/stranger; settled/unsettled immigration status; and deserving/undeserving migrant. In doing so, we navigate the complexity of the conditions shaping access and welcome as forms of sanctuary within universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive Summary: This article examines China's recruitment of high-skilled migrants within a broader comparative analysis of selective migration strategies and adds the neglected Chinese case to the comparative immigration policy literature. China adopted certain selective migration polices from other countries, such as Canada and the United States, but its selective migration strategy does not fit established categories. Beginning in 2013, the Chinese communist government enacted new laws and issued new regulations to attract foreign talent and better regulate the entry, residence and employment of foreigners. The contours of China's distinctive selective migration policy became more defined as Beijing established a point system combined with a job offer requirement; reformed the Z visa, which is issued to those with a college degree who intend to work in China; established the R visa for exceptionally high-skilled migrants; and adopted more liberal policies on permanent residency for the highly skilled. These policies, combined with the opportunities presented by China's rapidly growing economy, attracted growing numbers of university graduates and propelled China, to become, for a brief period before the COVID-19 pandemic, a major destination for high-skilled migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive Summary: During his first administration, former President Trump adopted aggressive anti-immigrant policies, which included family separation, a ban on individuals from Muslim-majority countries, stringent border policies like the Remain in Mexico and Title 42, and attempted terminations of programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for several national groups. Attorneys and representatives for immigrants had some success in pushing back against the administration's most extreme measures through litigation and advocacy. Should they return to the White House, Trump and his supporters have promised to enact an even more draconian anti-immigrant agenda, including a commitment to conducting the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, ending birthright citizenship (which is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment), and revoking humanitarian protections for those already in the United States. Many of these efforts, of course, will be challenged in court. This article summarizes 10 likely immigration initiatives under a second Trump administration. It seeks to educate members of the public who value the crucial role and myriad contributions of immigrants and refugees — past and present — in the United States. It will also outline how advocates can fight to protect their clients from these measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the role of individual and local marriage market characteristics in whether recently wed U.S. residents "imported" a spouse instead of marrying someone already present in the country. Our findings indicate that U.S. natives and immigrants whose spouse is a "marriage migrant" (someone who arrived in the U.S. the same year as the marriage occurred) are positively selected along some dimensions but negatively along others. The results also suggest that U.S. immigration policy plays an important role in whether immigrants bring in a spouse. We further investigate the trade-offs in spouse characteristics associated with having a marriage-migrant spouse. Marriage-migrant spouses are more likely than other spouses to have characteristics that their spouse may find desirable, such as being relatively younger and less likely to have been previously married. Among naturalized citizens, differences in spousal characteristics between marriage migrants and other spouses are notably large, showcasing the desirability of someone who can easily sponsor a spouse for permanent residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how legislative representation and issue activism change as parties polarize on an issue by examining immigration politics in the U.S. House. Using an original data set of the policy positions in immigration bills from 1983 to 2014, an original coding of email newsletters from 2010 to 2020, and existing speech data, we show that increased partisan disagreement on immigration and the sorting of immigrants into the Democratic Party changed the way lawmakers represent their districts on that issue. Larger foreign‐born populations consistently have representatives who take pro‐immigration positions, but the effect has changed from a direct effect to one mediated by partisanship. Issue attention also became asymmetrical, with Democratic lawmakers who represent more immigrants being more active on immigration policy, but no such relationship for Republicans. This suggests that for Democrats, immigration is a distributive issue driven by geographically concentrated “policy demanders” but for Republicans, it is a partisan issue that is less connected to geography. These findings have implications for who and where new policy proposals come from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel to traditional immigration control policies, states send substantial amounts of foreign aid to address the root causes of migration. Using a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we evaluate a representative type of “root causes” aid (RCA) project in Africa, implemented by the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM). We find the project reduced aspirations to migrate and slowed preparations for the journey. Multiple mediation analysis shows “instrumental place attachment”—or the ability to pursue important goals in one's place of residence compared to other destinations—is the main driver. However, effects wane 6 months after project end. That a small RCA project increased instrumental place attachment, albeit briefly, is significant given global inequalities. We explore this finding by conducting interviews with international organization (IO) and nongovernmental organization (NGO) practitioners to understand how development organizations affect instrumental place attachment, and with youth to understand how interventions (un)successfully moderate the choice to stay or migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How responsive are House members to the immigration policy interest of constituents, sub‐constituencies, and businesses? We test members' responsiveness to each of these groups by focusing on House Democrats' decision to cosponsor the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act (DDIA), a bill that phases out the use of private immigrant detention facilities. We expect House Democrats to be more likely to cosponsor DDIA when their constituents possess more liberal immigration attitudes and represent larger Latino, Asian American, and foreign‐born populations. Conversely, we expect House Democrats with private immigrant detention facilities in their districts or accept PAC contributions from private prison companies to be less likely to cosponsor the legislation. Our findings show general support for all three expectations. Thus, even though some House Democrats are unlikely to take positions on liberal immigration reform policies, such as the DDIA, House Democrats are responsive to their constituents on the issue of immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European immigration policy is increasingly selective and stratified, favoring immigrants considered productive in the eyes of society. Using the case of Swedish family reunification, this article investigates how ideas of deservingness underlie this selection process and how it intersects with temporal bordering, impacting hierarchies of transnational mobility. Through qualitative interviews with individuals across a spectrum of legal statuses, the study finds that the increased connection between immigration policy and the housing and labor markets, combined with restrictions concerning visas, age, and legal status, induce and reproduce inequalities in waiting times and access to reunification. Within these restrictions, however, families find ways to circumvent the wait and get family time. The study contributes to the temporal turn in migration studies by exploring reunification among families with diverse backgrounds, complementing previous literature's focus on the experiences of forced migrants. By considering how deservingness and temporal bordering shape mobility, the article offers both conceptual and empirical contributions to mobility and migration studies. Ultimately, the study brings forward a nuanced analysis of the consequences of restrictive shifts in Swedish immigration policy, contributing to the broader understanding of the current, transnational, mobility regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractLiterature on immigration policies has observed a shift from selecting migrants based on origin to skill-based selection across the globe. Based on an interpretive analysis of stakeholder interviews, legislation and policy documents, this article argues that selectivity in migration governance is developing differently in Mercosur: in the rights-focused political context of South America, no progression from selection-by-origin to selection-by-merit can be observed. Skill-based selection is considered illegitimate and scarce, while selection based on origin persists with nationality as a central administrative selection category. In addition, the general migrant – refugee divide, elsewhere decisive for selective policies, becomes blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a model for the study of optimal immigration from the perspective of natives. They have preferences over redistributive transfers, a public good subject to congestion, and over the level of family‐based migration. Border enforcement is costly. The model derives conditions for an optimal immigration policy, which balances skill‐based against family‐based migration, equalizes the fiscal opportunity cost of unauthorized immigration with the marginal cost of enforcement, and balances the effects on transfers against the implied congestion effects. A parameterized version of the model studies the 1994–2008 period and finds legislation projects on immigration consistent with the model's predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy evaluation studies, which assess the effect of an intervention, face statistical challenges: in real-world settings treatments are not randomly assigned and the analysis might be complicated by the presence of interference among units. Researchers have started to develop methods that allow to manage spillovers in observational studies; recent works focus primarily on binary treatments. However, many studies deal with more complex interventions. For instance, in political science, evaluating the impact of policies implemented by administrative entities often implies a multi-valued approach, as a policy towards a specific issue operates at many levels and can be defined along multiple dimensions. In this work, we extend the statistical framework about causal inference under network interference in observational studies, allowing for a multi-valued individual treatment and an interference structure shaped by a weighted network. The estimation strategy relies on a joint multiple generalized propensity score and allows one to estimate direct effects, controlling for both individual and network covariates. We follow this methodology to analyze the impact of the national immigration policy on the crime rate, analyzing data of 22 OECD countries over a thirty-years time frame. We define a multi-valued characterization of political attitude towards migrants and we assume that the extent to which each country can be influenced by another country is modeled by an indicator, summarizing their cultural and geographical proximity. Results suggest that implementing a highly restrictive immigration policy leads to an increase of the crime rate and the estimated effect is larger if we account for interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on political representation suggests that legislative activity is influenced by governing parties' policy emphases in their election campaigns. We argue that populist governments are an exception as they may find it difficult to draft and implement laws on an issue even if it is salient to them. The anti-elitism, people-centrism, and Manichean-discourse nature of populist party platforms significantly alters their ability to legislate on their campaign issues. We test this claim using data on the saliency of governments' immigration policies in their election campaigns and subsequent legislation on immigration. The empirical analysis is based on 14 democratic states from 1998 to 2013. The results support the theory that populist governments will exhibit a relatively weak relationship between their issue emphases in election campaigns and the number of policies they enact on immigration. This research has important implications for our understanding of populism, political representation, and immigration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residence-by-investment schemes, which enable wealthy people to acquire a visa in return for a financial investment, have become increasingly common. In this article, an original immigration policy index and case studies are used to examine the political economy of residence-by-investment policies in three European countries: France, Spain, and the UK. Two contributions are made to the literature. First, the article compares investment with work visas and shows that across all three countries investor routes are significantly more open and generous than work routes, including for the highly skilled. Second, drawing on theories of comparative political economy, it is explored how investor visas are shaped by capitalist diversity. Based on these three cases, it is argued that investor visa policies are conditioned by national-level economic models and the political interests that underpin them. The article aims to advance understanding not only of how investor visas vary, but why they do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syrian refugees and Ukrainian labour migrants are among the increasing number of migrants in Denmark who have enrolled in training programmes to become skilled care workers in response to the Danish state’s initiatives to increase labour supply for public-sector elderly care. However, stricter immigration legislation together with regulations concerning state-financed education complicate training, employment and residence for these migrants. This article explores how the Danish welfare state’s conflicting interests in and attempts at pursuing both a strict immigration policy and securing enough trained care workers in eldercare affect trajectories to skilled care work among foreign nationals residing in Denmark. Based on data from long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we demonstrate how in various ways Syrian and Ukrainian care work trainees with temporary residence face a double-sided uncertainty, as their lives in Denmark are contingent on events and decisions out of their control, such as amendments to immigration and educational policies and legislation. On the one hand, these events and decisions jeopardize the migrant trainees’ and their families’ future in Denmark. On the other hand, they offer opportunities to make new connections and acquire new knowledge and skills, which in the longer run may contribute to improving their lives in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undocumented immigrants are one of the main issues faced by many countries, especially developed countries. Globally, various studies have been done related to this issue; however, in Pakistan, researchers are less inclined to investigate this phenomenon through mixed angles. This study aimed to investigate the specific barrier to undocumented Afghan immigrants accessing social services in the host community of Peshawar, Pakistan, and to examine the coping mechanism they used for overwhelming. Within this broad area, four key elements of undocumented immigrants were examined: the healthcare system, education system, livelihood, and human rights status. This study used mixed (qualitative and quantitative) research methodologies by purposely selecting samples and collecting data through interviews and surveys. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically, and quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, and MS Office software. The result revealed that undocumented Afghan immigrants faced various challenges in access to social services, such as legal status and documentation void, communication barriers, fear of authority and deportation, and socio-cultural values. They had inadequacies in service provision, such as challenges in the healthcare system, including overcrowded clinics, long waiting hours, and limited access to healthcare services, lack of access to the education system, including restricted access to education, crowded classrooms, an increase in student–teacher ratio, an increase in informal education like madrasas; challenges in livelihood, including informal jobs, an increase in unemployment, a low wage, less job security, and human rights violations. The study also determines that rights are available in frameworks, but undocumented immigrants don't have access to them in reality. In addition, discrimination based on status while accessing social services was found. To overwhelming the situation, they developed remarkable resilience and coping strategies. Addressing the multifaceted challenges faced by Afghan undocumented immigrants requires collaborative efforts from policymakers and service providers, emphasizing the need for inclusive and rights-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Created by Congress in 1996, the immigration enforcement program 287(g) has experienced several cycles of rapid expansion and contraction during different stages in the policy's relatively brief lifetime. It is an intergovernmental program where state and local agencies sign onto agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), effectively deputizing law enforcement agents to implement federal immigration policy. Using logit models and the lens of bureaucratic discretion, we find that agencies in politically conservative jurisdictions and counties with proportionally large Hispanic populations were most likely to sign these agreements and maintain them during the program's lean years. Conservative counties were even more likely to have them when they have larger Hispanic populations and during times of Republican presidential administrations. This paper puts these findings in comparative perspective and links them to the worldwide trend of democratic decline and the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s second stint in power 2012 to 2020 oversaw numerous ambitious reforms to Japan’s immigration regime whilst still maintaining the country’s status quo of ‘no immigration policy’. This status quo was established through the 1990 system and denies both the admittance of unskilled foreign labor and formal immigration policy, instead relying on ‘side-door’ policies to recruit most foreign workers. The goal of this article is to evaluate the policy outcomes of Abe’s reforms by taking a macro-level approach and using a historical institutionalist methodological framework. Through classifying Abe’s major policy initiatives utilizing the mechanisms of institutional change, I analyze whether despite Abe’s own insistence, he has changed the immigration status quo in a fundamental way. In the conclusion, I argue that in combination with recent reforms by his successors, the potential for a fundamental change in Japan’s immigration policy trajectory is present – even though this change has not taken place yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration policy reached the fore of the political agenda during the 109th Congress of 2005–2006, achieving near‐record levels of congressional committee attention. Literature on agenda setting typically portrays such attention spikes as evidence that the inertial forces of a status quo policy regime are losing the ability to keep the issue off the political agenda. Change may not necessarily follow, but from this perspective, opponents to change are in a vulnerable position. Yet, as this paper shows, opponents of immigration reform were the ones driving the flurry of committee activity. By demonstrating that opponents of policy change wielding agenda control can also leverage attention as a means of obstruction, the paper identifies a potential limit to using certain attention indicators as evidence of policy momentum. In the second part of the paper, I hypothesize conditions under which status quo defenders in Congress might abandon their negative agenda power. I argue that it is most likely when policy entrepreneurs elevate an issue with two or more unstable policy images that divide the majority party. The findings here offer further evidence of the congressional committee system's declining role in policy development and the intractability of immigration reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to evaluate current Czech immigration and also integration policies with the reflection of the most influential actors such as the Czech Ministry of Interior and their response to the influx of refugees from Ukraine after the Russian invasion in 2022. Special attention is paid to the role of the Regional Assistance Centers for Help (KACPUs), established in response to the general need to coordinate assistance provided to larger numbers of refugees. The text is a single-case study based on the document analysis complemented by expert interviews. The main finding of the paper is that the response to the influx of refugees from Ukraine was exceptional and contextual. The integration of refugees from Ukraine was possible only thanks to the flexible reaction of various institutional actors at the beginning of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Poland has become one of the top destinations for Ukrainian refugees, attracting international attention and recognition for its humanitarian attitude. However, this positive picture should be confronted with the analysis of the Ukrainian refugees' situation in a more holistic manner, taking into consideration the evolution of the multidimensional surroundings of the refugees and problems they face in the long run. Therefore, this article's aim is to picture the Ukrainian refugees' situation and how it has changed over time. It argues that the Polish state was not prepared for the massive influx of Ukrainian refugees, and the relatively smooth reception of them was possible thanks to the forces of local government and civil society. Almost two years after the beginning of the invasion, there are still a variety of challenges faced by Ukrainian refugees without any systemic, government-organized approach to tackle them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether German respondents in an interactive vignette experiment prefer immigrants who are ethno‐racially more proximate to the majority population versus whether immigrants find acceptance in German society as long as they follow the law and respect the rules and customs of society. The approach is both descriptive and experimental. The descriptive results indicate that despite liberalisation of immigration policies since 2000 there is a sizable reservoir of the German population who holds ethno‐racial attitudes. The interactive experimental approach distinguishes two treatments: race and reason for dismissal from a job of two fictitious immigrants who are applying for permanent residency in Germany. Results indicate that while German respondents react more harshly when the reason for dismissal is drug possession than race, the Black immigrant is treated with more hostility for the same infraction than the White immigrant, independently of whether the reason for dismissal from a job is being downsized or drug possession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of immigration institutions has mainly focused on the effects these entities have on migrants and refugees' lives. Much less research has been produced from the unique perspective of the people who comprise these institutions. Drawing from work experiences and ethnographic research on the operation of detention centers for migrant and refugee children in southern Mexico, this article reflects on the daily work in these centers and on the personnel who reproduce the government and execute immigration policy. The article builds on feminist postcolonial perspective by focusing on the uniqueness of the bureaucrat-ethnographer viewpoint. Keypoints of this article are how axes of race, gender, and nationality hinder and/or favor access to these institutions either for work or study, and how this contributes to global inequalities in knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Categorising certain forms of human movement as 'migration' and others as 'mobility' has far-reaching consequences. We introduce the migration–mobility nexus as a framework for other researchers to interrogate the relationship between these two categories of human movement and explain how they shape different social representations. Our framework articulates four ideal-typical interplays between categories of migration and categories of mobility: continuum (fluid mobilities transform into more stable forms of migration and vice versa), enablement (migration requires mobility, and mobility can trigger migration), hierarchy (migration and mobility are political categories that legitimise hierarchies of movement) and opposition (migration and mobility are pitted against each other). These interplays reveal the normative underpinnings of different categories, which we argue are too often implicit and unacknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary global context, the challenge of integrating immigrants into host societies has gained prominence. This paper delves into the perceptions and experiences of Afghan immigrants in Iran regarding immigration policies and laws. Employing a constructivist grounded theory methodology, the study aims to uncover participants' interpretations and the meanings attributed to immigration policies and laws. Grounded theory analysis, involving initial, focused, and theoretical coding, was employed to collect data. The results reveal that current immigration laws and policies in Iran have led to economic disparities, limited educational opportunities, social isolation, and identity challenges for Afghan immigrants. Iran's integration policies lean towards exclusion. Consequently, Afghan immigrants experience a weakened sense of belonging in the country. Therefore, our study suggests the importance of implementing integration theories and policies instead of those promoting disintegration. Such policies not only hinder immigrants' assimilation but also impede the overall progress of the host nation, thus undermining social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a policy proposal for an immigration reform package that could be successful in the modern-day Congress. It is the second article of a series that began with an analysis of why immigration reform has been unsuccessful over the past thirty years despite bipartisan support. That article argued that polarization combined with the framing of immigration by the media and political elites has caused the public to view immigration as a onedimensional policy largely defined by border concerns, when in reality, it is a robust policy area that encompasses a number of various issues (i.e. family immigration, skilled and unskilled workers, entrepreneurs, asylum, border control, etc.). This successive article offers a policy proposal that could eclipse those concerns and provides a path forward for Congress and policy elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the extent to which the councils of five Catalan cities have modified their integration policies. The structural transformations of contemporary societies have had a great impact on city councils and local integration policies, especially from the point of view of planning and policy orientation. The article studies the policies developed in five Catalan cities in the last four mandates, specifically between 2007 and 2023, based on in-depth interviews and analysis of political and technical documentation. Although the strategies used in the five cities analyzed are not identical, the results show that during these years there has been a tendency to limit the approval of plans for the integration of immigrants, although this does not mean that the councils do not have explicit political priorities and objectives. The cities also tend to speak less specifically about integration and, on the contrary, resort to two different orientations: some councils design and implement policies related to security, mediation, and community work in neighborhoods, while others tend to broaden the focus of their policies, opting for more holistic approaches focused on multiple forms of diversity, intersectionality, and anti-racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tragic events such as terrorist attacks have been shown to influence voters' policy preferences, but less is known about whether such events also affect actual immigration policy. In this study, I bring new evidence to this question by examining whether migrant shipwrecks and terrorist attacks affected asylum decisions in France during the refugee crisis of 2015–16. I find that asylum officers were more likely to approve an individual's refugee application if a shipwreck has recently been in the news than they are otherwise. Yet they were less likely to grant refugee status to asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq after a terrorist attack. Together, these findings suggest that tragic events can affect immigration policy through their influence on asylum officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on spouses of international students do not explore how F-2 visa regulations preventing them from working and becoming full-time students affect their social integration and building social networks. This ethnographic research about 16 formerly employed female spouses of international students in Central University1 aims to fill this gap, inspired by Holmes's Structural Vulnerability concept (2011), which suggests shifting attention from immigrants themselves to structural powers in order to detect what endangers immigrants' well-being. Through a multimethod approach, this article shows that F-2 visa regulations limit social integration and building social networks of the participants due to their F-2 visa regulations, and consequently affect their self-esteem, mental health, loneliness, and family relationships of the participants, despite the Central University and related/local offices efforts in integrating them in the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Poland has become one of the top destinations for Ukrainian refugees, attracting international attention and recognition for its humanitarian attitude. However, this positive picture should be confronted with the analysis of the Ukrainian refugees' situation in a more holistic manner, taking into consideration the evolution of the multidimensional surroundings of the refugees and problems they face in the long run. Therefore, this article's aim is to picture the Ukrainian refugees' situation and how it has changed over time. It argues that the Polish state was not prepared for the massive influx of Ukrainian refugees, and the relatively smooth reception of them was possible thanks to the forces of local government and civil society. Almost two years after the beginning of the invasion, there are still a variety of challenges faced by Ukrainian refugees without any systemic, government-organized approach to tackle them.

The aim of the paper is to evaluate current Czech immigration and also integration policies with the reflection of the most influential actors such as the Czech Ministry of Interior and their response to the influx of refugees from Ukraine after the Russian invasion in 2022. Special attention is paid to the role of the Regional Assistance Centers for Help (KACPUs), established in response to the general need to coordinate assistance provided to larger numbers of refugees. The text is a single-case study based on the document analysis complemented by expert interviews. The main finding of the paper is that the response to the influx of refugees from Ukraine was exceptional and contextual. The integration of refugees from Ukraine was possible only thanks to the flexible reaction of various institutional actors at the beginning of the war.

Abstract Undocumented immigrants are one of the main issues faced by many countries, especially developed countries. Globally, various studies have been done related to this issue; however, in Pakistan, researchers are less inclined to investigate this phenomenon through mixed angles. This study aimed to investigate the specific barrier to undocumented Afghan immigrants accessing social services in the host community of Peshawar, Pakistan, and to examine the coping mechanism they used for overwhelming. Within this broad area, four key elements of undocumented immigrants were examined: the healthcare system, education system, livelihood, and human rights status. This study used mixed (qualitative and quantitative) research methodologies by purposely selecting samples and collecting data through interviews and surveys. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically, and quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, and MS Office software. The result revealed that undocumented Afghan immigrants faced various challenges in access to social services, such as legal status and documentation void, communication barriers, fear of authority and deportation, and socio-cultural values. They had inadequacies in service provision, such as challenges in the healthcare system, including overcrowded clinics, long waiting hours, and limited access to healthcare services, lack of access to the education system, including restricted access to education, crowded classrooms, an increase in student–teacher ratio, an increase in informal education like madrasas; challenges in livelihood, including informal jobs, an increase in unemployment, a low wage, less job security, and human rights violations. The study also determines that rights are available in frameworks, but undocumented immigrants don’t have access to them in reality. In addition, discrimination based on status while accessing social services was found. To overwhelming the situation, they developed remarkable resilience and coping strategies. Addressing the multifaceted challenges faced by Afghan undocumented immigrants requires collaborative efforts from policymakers and service providers, emphasizing the need for inclusive and rights-based interventions.