Undocumented Migration

Roberto G. Gonzales, Nando Sigona, Martha C. Franco, Anna Papoutsi

• Editorial: Polity
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781509506989
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Sciences sociales
• Categoría: Démographie

Undocumented migration is a global and yet elusive phenomenon. Despite contemporary efforts to patrol national borders and mass deportation programs, it remains firmly placed at the top of the political agenda in many countries where it receives hostile media coverage and generates fierce debate. However, as this much-needed book makes clear, unauthorized movement should not be confused or crudely assimilated with the social reality of growing numbers of large, settled populations lacking full citizenship and experiencing precarious lives. From the journeys migrants take to the lives they seek on arrival and beyond, Undocumented Migration provides a comparative view of how this phenomenon plays out, looking in particular at the United States and Europe. Drawing on their extensive expertise, the authors breathe life into the various issues and debates surrounding migration, including the experiences and voices of migrants themselves, to offer a critical analysis of a hidden and too often misrepresented population.

1
Who Are Undocumented Migrants?

Mohammad was 13 years old when he left Afghanistan in 2005. The Greek authorities found him twelve months later, on a beach, hungry and dehydrated after a 23-hour boat crossing in a dinghy with only one oar.

After both their parents died, Mohammad’s eldest sister told him and his brother, Abdul, that there was no future for them in Afghanistan. Life in their home country had become too dangerous and those who had killed their father would come back for them. Soon after, Mohammad and Abdul joined two dozen young men and children on the back of a truck headed for the country’s western border, near Iran. Once they reached the border, the group split up. Border guards were shooting at any sign of movement, and the group rationalized that it would be safer if they dispersed. Abdul told Mohammad to stay close.

The brothers walked for more than four hours in the dark until they reached the other side of the border. They arrived at a village where they stayed overnight in a house with a family of strangers. In the morning, they caught a local bus that took them to Tehran. In Tehran, they stayed a few days while the smugglers in charge of the next leg of the journey procured some forged passports for the group.

Eventually, another bus took Abdul and Mohammad to Urmia and, from there, to the border with Turkey. They were worried they would be easily spotted, but they managed to enter Turkey “dressed as business men.” However, funds for the group were running low. Brought to Istanbul, the brothers and their fellow travelers – more than twenty altogether – were locked in a basement apartment, as Mohammad described, “not much bigger than a one-bedroom flat”: “We were like mentally going crazy. People wanted to go out, but there was security outside. They had knives and guns. They were like, ‘You have two choices: cross this door and you are dead or stay inside and live.’”

After three months of living in cramped quarters, the head smuggler informed them that in ten days the group would board a boat. “He took us to a coach and we traveled for five or six hours. Then we got to the sea and there was a big jungle with lots of animals like snakes and tigers. A massive jungle it was. ‘That’s the sea, the other side is Greece,’ the agent said.” But there was only space on the boat for one more person. Abdul insisted that Mohammad go without him, and that he would follow soon after. Mohammad did not want to leave his brother behind, but he had little choice. Abdul had the following words of advice for Mohammad: “Whatever country you go [to] please stay in education, don’t make any troubles. Don’t smoke, don’t drink and … make me proud. Make your family proud.” This would be the last time they spoke. The supposed second boat never came.

After the first two attempts at crossing to Greece failed, Mohammad found himself back in Istanbul standing purposeless in a park, without his brother and with no money left. There, a stranger approached him and asked if he was looking for work. After a drive of some hours, the car arrived at a farm somewhere in the middle of the countryside. For several days, Mohammad joined other migrants picking tomatoes. He endured countless hours of backbreaking work and was fed a meager portion of eggs at breakfast and a watery soup at dinner. After ten days, Mohammad demanded to be paid.

So, I worked there for ten days and I said, “Now you have to give me some money.” And the farmer said, “No, no, no, no. You work free for the rest of your life. Because there’s no way you can get away from here. You’re mine now; you work free.” I thought this is really bad, I’m a slave. The next day I escaped from the home, but they took me back, saying “This is the last time you escape […]. Everyone knows you work for me. They will bring you back. I will call the police and they will send you back.” And I said, “No, don’t call the police, I don’t want to go back to Afghanistan.”¹

Eventually, Mohammed managed to escape. He headed back to Istanbul and found an acquaintance who helped him to board a boat. His third attempt succeeded. From Greece, he moved to Italy, where he was impressed by the generosity he encountered among ordinary people. He even found a person who offered to pay for his train ticket to Rome. He then made his way to France and eventually managed to arrive in Calais, the port city on the English Channel. In Calais, Mohammad joined hundreds of other migrants and refugees in the informal encampment known as “the Jungle.” There was not much to do there, other than wait for the right truck to hide in. It took multiple failed attempts and a few months to find a truck to take him to Britain. He carried out the final leg of the journey with an Afghan boy called Ahmed he had met in the Jungle. The boy was well educated and a gifted artist.

He was like “Oh, Mohammad, do we need money?” I said obviously we need money. He said, “I know how to make money, trust me. I’m an artist I can draw.” So, he went back to buy some brushes and stuff like that. He said, “Sit next to me here. Do you want me to draw you?” Many people saying yeah. And he would draw like exactly as they were, like very, very beautiful drawing. And people were giving him like 50 euros, 60 euros and they were like “Wow, that’s a talent!”

Selling a few portraits by night, the two boys were able to afford food and clothes, a luxury not available to others in the Calais camp. Eventually the opportunity came to leave, and they reached England. Unfortunately, they were picked up by the police and, because they were minors, they were brought to social services. In this instance, being well educated and smart worked against Ahmed.

I was the stupid one. Whatever they were saying to me I was answering like the way they wanted, and they thought maybe he is [a minor]. But with [my friend], they thought he was older, that he was my older brother. [While in custody] he called me: “They say I’m eighteen,” he told me. “It’s more likely they will send me back to Afghanistan.” So, I [told him to] run from here.

His friend absconded, avoiding any contact with social services. He kept in touch for a brief time but then disappeared.

Mohammad is now 23 years old and completing his master’s degree in a city in the English Midlands. He has refugee status. The perils he endured during the journey – the forged passport, slave-like working conditions, countless nights spent sleeping without a roof over his head, the clandestine crossing of multiple borders, and the loss of his brother – were the price he had to pay to claim asylum in the United Kingdom: an undocumented journey was the only way to become a documented refugee in Europe.

For Mohammad, the clandestine journey and forged passport were the only means available to him as a young Afghan to find protection and security. Increasingly restrictive visa policies make access to international protection impossible to the inhabitants of some of the world’s top refugee-sending countries. Reaching Britain, however, did not mean achieving asylum, at least not right away. The asylum process was long and convoluted, and there were several appeals before Mohammad was able achieve secure legal status and could begin to rebuild his life.

Unauthorized journeys

Mohammad’s story is far from unique. Between 2014 and 2017, almost two million people entered the European Union on dinghies and unseaworthy boats. They endured a great deal of hardship during their migration journeys, sometimes marked by death. Over roughly the same period, nearly 14,000 people died crossing the Mediterranean. Many more unaccounted for died on land, from hypothermia along mountainous border paths, from lack of water and heat crossing the Sahara, from torture and violence in Libyan illegal warehouses, and at the hands of predators specialized in targeting people on the move.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the vast majority of those who boarded boats to Europe, 84.5 percent, came from four countries: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Eritrea. Most of these individuals are now lawful residents in Europe, with state recognition as refugees or with other forms of humanitarian protection. But the psychological and physical scars of such unauthorized journeys, of the people left behind or lost along the way, of the violence witnessed and experienced, of being treated like slaves – those will not go away, regardless of their future immigration status (Allsopp and Chase 2017).

Crossing international borders, by land or sea, can be a treacherous endeavor. Today’s immigration controls rely on several modes of enforcement that operate at state borders, within the territory, and increasingly externally in other sovereign states.² Detention, deportation, and forced destitution have become normalized as tools of immigration management in traditional receiving countries, and they feed a booming migration enforcement industry (Andersson 2014; Gammeltoft-Hansen and Sørensen 2012; Vogt 2013).

In addition to the dangers inherent in unpredictable geographies, the journey exposes undocumented migrants to violence and danger. From official state responses such as incarceration and punishment to the abuses and violence perpetrated by border patrol agents, violence, injury, and death are oftentimes not merely side effects of border controls but are elemental to current militarized strategies (De León 2015; Jusionyte 2018; Slack et al. 2016).

Migrant women are particularly vulnerable (Schmidt and Buechler 2017). For Central American women crossing multiple borders en route to the United States, threats come in multiple forms – bandits, corrupt officials, travel companions, and smugglers (Brigden 2018). Often outnumbered by men and vulnerable to crossing guides (or smugglers), migrant women are at risk of kidnapping, assault, and rape (Simmons, Menjívar, and Tellez 2015).

But those who attempt to leave their native countries often face violence at home. Physical and economic violence often drives migratory decisions (Schmidt and Buechler 2017). As Simon McMahon and Nando Sigona (2018) argue, while most migrants and refugees are aware of the dangers associated with unauthorized crossings, many view the journey as the only thing left separating them from what they hope is a better and safer life. This point is evidenced by Clara, an Eritrean woman who migrated to Italy by boat. She was interviewed a few weeks after her arrival in Italy in 2015:³ “We were very afraid on the boat. We could die. But at that point if you have lived the terrible things I saw in Libya and other countries, you do not care anymore about dying. It is almost better to die.”

Undocumented migration in a changing world

The act of migration cannot merely be reduced to a set of choices made by individuals. Just as migrants embark on cross-border journeys, human mobility is heavily regulated through multiple interactions and different and often distinct governing contexts. In this current era, opportunities for authorized mobility have shrunk. And, for some, crossing without papers or obtaining a temporary visa only to overstay its terms is the only way to settle in destination countries. For many migrants, the act of migration is a precarious experience, marked by hardship, dehydration and hunger, exploitation, and even violence. Mohammad’s story illustrates some of the complexity of undocumented migration. Along the journey, migrants confront a complex apparatus of smugglers, facilitators, border guards, and state actors. However, as Mohammad’s story shows, undocumented journeys and irregular entries are sometimes the only way to apply for international protection and asylum.

But not all undocumented migrants enter receiving countries irregularly. Each year a sizeable number of undocumented migrants enter legally on a variety of visas with the intention of or by chance overstaying.

Undocumented migration does not exist in a vacuum. The category “undocumented migrant” is only meaningful in relation to the contexts and circumstances that define it. What counts as undocumented migration and who is considered an undocumented migrant varies over time and space and is embedded in specific conditions, histories, and structures of power. As historian Mae Ngai powerfully argues, laws both reflect and constitute society. They naturalize and structure social relations (Ngai 2004: 12).

In many countries, concerns with undocumented migrants are prominently featured in political agendas. Persistent, misleading, and at times hostile media coverage of undocumented migrants can feed moral panic across diverse communities. Yet, despite renewed state efforts to increase patrols of national borders, to build longer and taller fences with neighboring countries, and to carry out swift mass deportation programs, undocumented migration persists around the world. Building a wall across one stretch of a country’s border may have the short-term effects of satisfying immigration restrictionists and reducing migration in an area. But it may also increase crossings a few miles away while heightening risks and increasing deaths (De León 2015; Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002). And when migration to certain regions of the world begins to slow down, new flows emerge as migrants are redirec...

Índice

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Introduction
• 1 Who Are Undocumented Migrants?
• 2 Theorizing the Lived Experience of Migrant Illegality
• 3 Geographies of Undocumented Migration
• 4 Immigration Enforcement, Detention, and Deportation
• 5 Undocumented Status and Social Mobility
• 6 Families and Children
• 7 Challenging Exclusion
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement