IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

392

Transnational Migration As a Family Strategy and Global Trajectories of Precarious Legal Status

Abstract Submissions Closed

RC31 Sociology of Migration (host committee)

Language: Spanish and English

Session Type: Oral

We invite papers at the intersection of scholarship on migration, precarious legal status trajectories, and transnational family formations. Research on precarious non-citizenship in many parts of the world documents the temporal uncertainties and socio-spatial liminality of people displaced through disasters, but also those who move in search of better lives and livelihoods. Formed across multiple jurisdictions, globalized precarious legal status trajectories seemingly normalize experiences of permanent temporariness, illegalization, authorized and unauthorized forms of institutional insecurity; and contribute to the erosion of spatial rights--the right to enter a territory, or to settle where one works. Research on family migration demonstrates the power of immigration laws and enforcement policies to structure the day-to-day lives and long-term trajectories of migrant families. It also captures the ways in which such policies produce different gender, generational and class outcomes even within a single family. Bringing the variegated insights of these fields together, we seek papers that examine transnational migration as a family strategy within the context of globalized precarious legal status regimes. We are particularly interested in tracking legal status trajectories as these map onto the differential outcomes of migration within families, including divergent migration strategies, the connections between transnational and internal migration, or between the (at times compelled) mobility of some and the immobility of others. We welcome qualitative and quantitative research, as well as comparative and historical projects. The panel is planned as a regular session for up to five paper presentations.