Luin Goldring

Continuities in Transnational Migration: An Analysis of Nineteen Mexican Communities

Researchers working in Mexican communities have observed both regularities and inconsistencies in the way that transnational migration develops over time. This article presents a theory that accounts for these uniformities and discrepancies and proposes a method to compara the process of migration across communities. It also argues that studies must report and control for the prevalence of migration within communities. Data from 19 Mexican communities show that predicable demographic, social, and economic changes accompany increases in migratory prevalence. Although international migration begins within a narrow range of each communitys socioeconomic structure, over time it broadens to incorporate other social groups.

Institutionalizing precarious migratory status in Canada

This paper analyzes the institutionalized production of precarious migration status in Canada. Building on recent work on the legal production of illegality and non-dichotomous approaches to migratory status, we review Canadian immigration and refugee policy, and analyze pathways to loss of migratory status and the implications of less than full status for access to social services. In Canada, policies provide various avenues of authorized entry, but some entrants lose work and/or residence authorization and end up with variable forms of less-than-full immigration status. We argue that binary conceptions of migration status (legal/illegal) do not reflect this context, and advocate the use of ‘precarious status’ to capture variable forms of irregular status and illegality, including documented illegality. We find that elements of Canadian policy routinely generate pathways to multiple forms of precarious status, which is accompanied by precarious access to public services. Our analysis of the production of precarious status in Canada is consistent with approaches that frame citizenship and illegality as historically produced and changeable. Considering variable pathways to and forms of precarious status supports theorizing citizenship and illegality as having blurred rather than bright boundaries. Identifying differences between Canada and the US challenges binary and tripartite models of illegality, and supports conducting contextually specific and comparative work.

“The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in Mexico-U.S. Transnational Spaces”

This paper proposes an approach for analyzing the gender and geography of citizenship practices in transnational social spaces in order to contribute to theorizing on state‐transmigrant relations and citizenship. Drawing on feminist scholarship on citizenship, I conceptualize citizenship as including formal rights and substantive citizenship practices that are exercised in relation to different levels of political authority, and in different geographic sites within transnational spaces. The approach is used to examine dynamics between Mexican state policies and programs and transmigrant organizations in Los Angeles. Using data from research on migration between Zacatecas and California, I argue that men find a privileged arena of action in transmigrant organizations and Mexican state‐mediated transnational social spaces, which become spaces for practicing forms of citizenship that enhance their social and gender status. Women are excluded from active citizenship in this arena, but often practice substantive social citizenship in the United States.

Immigrant political socialization as bridging and boundary work: mapping the multi-layered incorporation of Latin American immigrants in Toronto

Abstract We present a longitudinal map of three overlapping organizational trajectories developed by Latin American immigrants in the city of Toronto. We propose the concept of bridging and boundary work to specify how new (1) intersectional political identities and organizational agendas are constituted by Latin American feminist women and artists in the interstice of (2) country-of-origin and (3) mainstream pan-ethnic organizations. Boundary work occurs as activists with intersectional priorities carve out a distinct political agenda; the ‘out-group’ relations based on a shared sectoral focus constitute bridging work. Tracing changes in the local and transnational political opportunity structures, we consider how negotiations over resources, representation and agendas between these three Latin American organizational forms generate multi-directional political learning and socialization and the coexistence of different Latin American political cultures. We define political socialization as in-group and out-group encounters between political cultures understood as civic toolkits or ways of doing politics.

Assembling noncitizenship through the work of conditionality

Abstract We develop a framework for understanding noncitizenship that combines attention to systemic processes with interest in contingency and indeterminacy in the production and substantive practices associated with noncitizen legal status categories and trajectories. We argue that noncitizenship is a dynamic, multi-scalar assemblage that brings together disparate elements in patterned and changing ways. Individuals and institutions generate the formal and substantive systems that confer or deny noncitizens the formal and substantive right to be present in a country and/or to access entitlements. Noncitizens exercise agency in choosing to make claims (or choosing to not make claims) to substantive rights, and the individuals and institutions with which they interact may facilitate or hinder such claims-making. In this process, social actors are enacting conditionality; they are working to meet the conditions required to maintain presence and access. Discretion, migrant agency, unequal social interactions, and social learning unfold over time and can generate a range of experiences of noncitizenship and legal status trajectories. These do not necessarily conform to expected pathways and timelines, and may combine access to various resources and public goods in variable and contingent ways. We illustrate the framework with data from research conducted in Toronto.

From ‘remittance’ to ‘tax’: the shifting meanings and strategies of capture of the Eritrean transnational party-state

Abstract For decades, mass out migration has remained a defining characteristic of Eritrea. The countrys first major refugee crisis occurred in the early 1980s, in the midst of its liberation movement. Upon gaining resettlement in the industrialized world, Eritreans overwhelming continued their support of the liberation war, both financially and politically. Since independence, the ruling government adopted strong measures to ensure the diasporas continued political and economic engagement. We examine the Eritrean party-states changing relationship with members of its dispersed population focusing on the evolution of an expatriate tax (2 percent Income Tax on Eritreans Working Abroad) levied on all emigrant Eritreans. Building on work that argues for recognizing the social and political dimensions of money sent ‘home’, this paper makes two contributions. First, we use an historical perspective to show how contextual changes can significantly shift the meanings of remittances, in this case from a voluntary patriotic remittance sent to the liberating government, to a coerced tax. Second, we bring the remittance-tax into the literature on remittances and development, expanding the types of income transfers under consideration. Attention is drawn to the party-states articulation of the 2 percent Tax policy as a national development imperative and the various transnational governance mechanisms employed to coerce compliance. Citizenship serves as a lens for examining the states instrumentalization and politicization of the diasporas engagement with the Eritrean nation.

Agenda Setting and Immigrant Politics The Case of Latin Americans in Toronto

The authors identify and analyze patterns of community organizing among Latin Americans in Toronto for the period from the 1970s to the 2000s as part of a broader analysis of Latin American immigrant politics. They draw on the concept of social fields to map Latin American community politics and to capture a wide range of relevant organizations, events, and strategic moments that feed into the constitution of more visible and formal organizations. Five distinct waves of Latin American migration to Toronto produce three types of community organizations: ethno-national, intersectional panethnic, and mainstream panethnic groupings. This migration pattern also leads to a layering process as established organizations evolve and new migrant groups with specific priorities and ways of organizing emerge. The authors present a case study of the development and agenda-setting process of the Centre for Spanish Speaking People, a mainstream, multiservice, panethnic organization. Agenda setting is defined as the process of defining the vision and mission of an organization or cluster of organizations. The case study captures how a mainstream panethnic organization mediates between diverse in-group agendas of Latin American immigrants and out-group, specifically, state-generated, agendas, and how this agenda-setting process changes over time in tune with shifts in the political opportunity structure. The authors propose, however, that agenda setting is a dialogic social process that involves more than navigating the existing political opportunity structure. Agenda setting involves in-group and out-group dialogues embedded within a complex organizational field. It is an instance of political learning. The analysis of these dialogues over time for a specific group and organization captures immigrant politics in practice.

Transnational Migration and the Reformulation of Analytical Categories: Unpacking Latin American Refugee Dynamics in Toronto

This chapter contributes to comparative research on migration and incorporation. It offers a reconceptualization of analytical categories of research in Toronto into migrants from four Latin American countries whose migration is characterized as forced. The authors’ initial research challenged assumptions about particular populations, similar contexts of departure, discreteness of contexts of arrival and the primacy of nationality. During fieldwork and subsequent analysis, the analytical categories were reformulated ‘on the go’. The chapter documents the reformulation of refugeeship, unpacks the contexts of departure and reception, and identifies the socio-temporal interrelationships of arrival contexts. Drawing on dynamic approaches to culture, the centrality of national differences was reframed and activist dialogues were formulated as a category for interpreting variable patterns of incorporation and transnational engagements. The chapter contributes to comparative migration studies by offering a strategy for addressing some of the challenges of methodological nationalism, while also considering the specificity of history and culture.

Introduction to the Special Issue on International Migration in the Americas

With this special issue on international migration in the Americas, the Canadian Journal of Latin and Caribbean Studies presents sorne of the most recent and insightful work currently produced in this field. Beginning with one historical and two contemporary articles that take up the question of public po licy on immigration and immigrant rights in Canada and the United States, the collection moves on to explore the lived experience ofLatinAmerican and Caribbean immigrants in the two countries, as well as the impact of out-migration on the sending communities and societies. This volume is part of an ongoing effort tore frame the geographie and conceptual underpinnings of area studies scholarship. 2 It also seeks to push the northern border of migration studies further north. The collection of articles reflects our interest in broadening the scope of discussions of existing area and migration studies in two ways: by including Latin American and Caribbean diasporas or transnationalized populations throughout the Americas in the scope of area studies, and by addressing Canada in discussions of Latin American and Caribbean migrations.