Robbery victimization of Mexican migrants while crossing the border

We analyse the factors associated with Mexican migrants being victims of robbery or assault while crossing the US–Mexico border, based on an analytical model of the victimization of migration in transit. Drawing on Emif Norte survey, we analyse the prevalence of victimization of robbery or assault to migrants according to migrant's sociodemographic characteristics as well as the journey characteristics, and we use a logistic regression model to assess the way in which such characteristics are associated with being victim of that crime. Findings suggest that migrants who crossed through Tamaulipas and those who hired coyotes in transit or at the border have higher odds of being robbed or assaulted, in contrast, the individual sociodemographic characteristics and crossing with family/friends are not associated with being robbed or assaulted.     

The social process of undocumented border crossing among Mexican migrants

"In this article a theoretical model is developed that views undocumented border crossing as a well-defined social process influenced by the quantity and quality of human and social capital that migrants bring with them to the border, and constrained by the intensity and nature of U.S. enforcement efforts. Detailed histories of border crossing from undocumented migrants originating in 34 Mexican communities are employed to estimate equations corresponding to this model.... As people gain experience in border crossing, they rely less on the assistance of others and more on abilities honed on earlier trips, thus substituting migration-specific human capital for general social capital.... On all trips, the intensity of the U.S. enforcement effort has little effect on the likelihood of arrest, but INS involvement in drug enforcement sharply lowers the odds of apprehension."     

Repossessing Border Space: Security Practice in North American Border Art

Abstract

This paper discusses how the visual arts engage in representing border crossing experiences and, more specifically, how art interrupts border security practices and their rituals. After introducing the history of North American border art and different approaches to issues of border crossing, the paper will concentrate on specific works. It argues that the selected works of art perform interventions that confront the public with the borderlands as a place of violence and death. At the same time, artists are shown to employ different artistic strategies of symbolically re-possessing the borderlands for undocumented migrants who – when crossing it – experienced it as an existential obstacle.     

Before,during and after crossing the border: narrating the ‘visa-free Grodno’

On 26 October 2016, Belarus introduced a visa-free border crossing regime for travellers visiting the Augustow Canal area and the city of Grodno. Based on a multi-method study, this article aims at investigating how this ‘visa-free regime’ is enacted and ‘narrated’ before, during and after border crossing. First, it analyses the website ‘grodnovisafree.by’ and searches for patterns of what the visitors encounter before travelling to the border area. Second, it analyses the border crossing experience, based on a participant observation while crossing the border from Lithuania to Belarus. Third, it investigates the linguistic and multimodal landscape after crossing the border in the city of Grodno. This study concludes that the ‘real’ ‘narrative’ about challenges and boundaries that the visitors have to overcome to cross the border is at times overshadowed by the ‘ideal’ picture of easily accessible Grodno and its area.     

Cosmopolitan attitudes through transnational social practices?

Within the scope of the debate surrounding globalization, ever increasing attention is being directed to the growth of border‐crossing social relations and the emergence of transnational social spaces on the micro‐level. In particular, the question of how these border‐crossing interrelations influence the attitudes and values of the people involved causes some controversy. Some assume that the increasing trans‐nationalization of social relations will foster the development of cosmopolitan attitudes, while others warn that renationalization may also be a result. On the empirical level, the relationship between transnationalization and cosmopolitanism has so far only been addressed with regard to certain groups or specific circumstances. However, we assume that on the general level there is a positive relation between the two syndromes and address this question empirically on the level of the entire German population. On the basis of a representative survey of German citizens carried out in 2006, we find that people with border‐crossing experiences and transnational social relations are more likely to adopt cosmopolitan attitudes with respect to foreigners and global governance. The analysis shows that this general interrelation remains stable even when controlling for relevant socio‐economic variables.     

Practices of border crossing in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina: the case of Mostar

In this article, I bring together literature from the fields of memory and reconciliation to investigate practices of ‘border crossing’ in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. While national divisions prevail, subtle attempts at border crossing can be witnessed even in those areas most impacted by the war’s partition, such as in Mostar, a city that has been left divided into Croat and Bosniak sides. Borders are physically crossed to reintegrate the ‘other side’ into one’s everyday life, but also in a more metonymical sense through the questioning of absolute national identities. Such acts of border crossing heavily rely on memories of positive pre-war cross-national relations, which are brought forward to re-establish these relations in post-war times. The research findings suggest that re-enacting a shared common ground – most often found in the past rather than in the present – bears an integrative potential that deserves more attention in post-conflict settings.     

Using INS border apprehension data to measure the flow of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico frontier

"This article examines how data on INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] border apprehensions are related to the flow of undocumented migrants crossing the southern U.S. border. Its centerpiece is a demographic model of the process of unauthorized migration across the Mexico-U.S. frontier. This model is both a conceptual framework that allows us to see theoretical linkages between apprehensions and illegal migrant flows, and a methodological device that yields estimates of the gross number of undocumented migrants. One implication of the model is that, for the first time, the relation between apprehensions and illegal flows can be examined empirically. We show that the ratio in each period between apprehensions and the undocumented flow is simply the odds of being located and arrested on any given attempt to enter the United States clandestinely."     

Death at the border

"Debates about United States border control policies have generally ignored the human costs of undocumented migration. We focus attention on these costs by estimating the number, causes and location of migrant deaths at the southwest border of the United States between 1993 and 1997.... Deaths from hyperthermia, hypothermia and dehydration increased sharply from 1993 to 1997 as intensified border enforcement redirected undocumented migration flows from urban crossing points to more remote crossing areas where the migrants are exposed to a greater risk of death."     

Nations Rebound?: Crossing Borders in a Gated Globe

This article engages critically with the proposal that flow, fluidity, and mobility are the central and organizing features of globalization. By focusing on the growing obstacles that people- most of them from poorer nations- encounter as they attempt to cross national borders, I explore global interconnection and mobility as stratified and highly regulated. My adoption of crossing borders as a central analytic grows out of a broader discussion within border studies about the problematic way in which "crossings" have been used, namely in cultural studies and Border Theory. This article therefore explores crossing borders as moments in which differences can be powerfully reinforced and opportunities for transnationality systematically denied. Here, I attempt to look at the transnational as occurring within established structures of power (a militarized border) and probe the politics of "border crossings" by focusing on a group of social movement actors as they contest the state's authority to organize and manage movement across its southern border. In this analysis I attempt to frame the United States-Mexico border as a "diagnostic" site where anthropologists can study the dynamics of power and flows across global landscapes in the context of specific political fields and histories. Consequently, this line of analysis leads to a different set of metaphors for globalization-one rooted not so much in an iconography of a world in ceaseless motion, but in an image of a "gated globe."     

The Efficacy and Impact of the Alien Transfer Exit Programme: Migrant Perspectives from Nogales,Sonora, Mexico

The Alien Transfer Exit Programme (ATEP) is a US deportation strategy created in 2008 whereby migrants are returned to border regions of Mexico distant from their initial place of apprehension. The goal of this strategy is to geographically separate migrants from their coyotes [paid crossing guide], who are often waiting for them in Mexico, in an attempt to discourage people from attempting additional border crossings. The official government stance concerning this programme is that it is both effective at deterring migration and that it protects migrants from abusive coyotes who often “force” them to cross the harsh Sonoran desert. The effectiveness of this new policy or its impact on the experiences of migrants has yet to be examined. Using a combination of ethnography and archaeology, I describe ATEP and its impacts on the social process of border crossing with an emphasis on the experiences of migrants who have been deported from California to the Mexican border town of Nogales. I argue that recent formalized deportation strategies such as ATEP build on previous lateral relocation programmes that have long been ineffective at slowing migration. In addition, ATEP contributes to sustaining previous migration control policies of exclusion (based on age, gender, and health) that now produce new dangers for both those included and excluded from this programme. ATEP should be viewed as an enforcement strategy aimed at systematically placing migrants in harm's way by relocating them geographically and by undermining the resources (i.e., human and social capital) that people have come to rely on for successful (and safer) border crossings. These findings contribute to the growing literature on the anthropology of deportation and the critical phenomenology of illegality.     

Liminal Stigma and Disaligning Activity: Online Comments about Trump's Family Separation Policy

In 2018, the Trump administration initiated a “zero-tolerance” border policy wherein they criminally prosecuted all individuals who were apprehended crossing the border without proper authorization. The policy change resulted in numerous migrant children being separated from their parents. Through a qualitative content analysis of 1500 YouTube comments made in response to CNN and ProPublica news coverage, we examine each side's aligning activity. Separation challengers claimed border crossers were innocent while condemning their opponents as racist, cruel, and otherwise shameful. Separation advocates bolstered their own claims of innocence by denying that the detainees are victims and condemning separation challengers as hypocrites, dishonest, complicit in illegal immigration, and generally loathsome. These findings show that, enabled by social media, aligning activity in stigma contests can produce a liminal stigma, where identities suffer the ideational aspects of stigma but not necessarily the loss of social status.     

Salesmen,Saleswomen, or Sales Workers? Determinants of the Sex Composition of Sales Occupations

This study examines determinants of occupational sex composition in an expanding area of the economy—sales occupations. We used census data to determine which worker and occupational characteristics predicted the percentage of women in sales occupations in 1980 and in 1990, and which variables contributed to changes in the percentage of women in sales occupations over time. Although sales occupations experienced a disproportionate decline in occupational sex segregation during the 1980s, we found that the same variables predicted the percentage of women in sales occupations in both 1980 and 1990. Average years of schooling, average hourly pay, the percentage of unemployed workers, and the percentage of self-employed workers influenced the percentage of female workers in sales occupations in 1980 and in 1990, both for cross-sectional and dynamic models. In addition, a worker characteristic index that combines percentage White, percentage married, and average age of workers shows surprising effects on the percentage of women in sales occupations. We discuss the implications of these findings for occupational sex segregation, and suggest that a multidimensional queuing perspective offers the most useful interpretation of our results.     

Comment vendre un produit incertain ? Activités de détachement et d’attachement d’une firme d’agrofourniture

This article examines the sales practices of a French agricultural supplies company whose products have uncertain qualities and contested effects. We show that this characteristic leads the sales technicians responsible for selling these products to develop arguments that make extensive use of a rhetoric aiming to detach the clients from their competitors. Given how difficult it is to establish an objective assessment of products’ intrinsic qualities, we also show how attachments are built around a broad-ranging solution that in particular includes providing consulting services for farmers. More generally, in the analysis of sales work, the commerce of these uncertain products invites one to think of processes of attachment and detachment in symmetrical terms.     

The anatomy of a deception: Fraud and finesse in the Mock Auction sales ‘con’

In this paper we analyze recordings of the Mock Auction sales con and describe the various rhetorical and performative strategies employed by the seller/deceiver to accomplish sales success. Two features that distinguish this con from others are that sales are obtained from a crowd of shoppers and that the victims rarely complain after they have been deceived. We outline the principal skills that are brought into play by these salespeople to obtain sales and to manage the audiences' quietude. We show that the Mock Auction is, fundamentally, a social and interactional accomplishment.     

Labor Market Effects of Immigration Policies Border Enforcement and Amnesty

We explore the effects of tighter border enforcement and an amnesty on the wages and unemployment rates of natives and immigrants. We extend the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market model to include individuals authorized to work and illegal workers in a framework that accounts for voluntary return migration. Furthermore, we study the effects of an amnesty when a proportion of illegal workers pays payroll taxes. Our results show that the effect of changes in border enforcement on the number of illegal workers in the United States is theoretically ambiguous. While tighter border enforcement deters illegal migration of prospective workers, it also changes the incentives of those already in the United States decreasing return migration. If tighter border enforcement increases the number of illegal workers in the economy, it will also increase the wages of natives as market tightness increases. Our findings show that the larger the proportion of illegal workers paying payroll taxes, the larger will be the decrease in wages, and the smaller the increase in unemployment generated by the decrease in the number of illegal workers in the economy that will follow an amnesty.     

CAN THE RISK-SHIFTING EMPLOYMENT MODEL EXPLAIN FLUCTUATING EMPLOYMENT?

It is shown by numerical examples that, for the simple "two states of the world" version of Azariadis' original model of implicit labour contracts, enormous fluctuations in output price are required to generate layoffs. The paper then modifies the simple model, replacing the perfectly competitive product market specification with a sales constraint. This modification makes a significant difference; the combination of sales constraints and risk-shifting is shown to have the potential to explain layoffs. Since this sales constraint is unmotivated by micro analysis, its inclusion does not satisfy the original aim of the risk-shifting employment model to explain layoffs as based on micro foundations. A secondary aim of the paper is to make the workings of the risk-shifting employment model easier to understand by introducing a new diagrammatic analysis based on a contract curve.     

DETERMINANTS OF REGIONAL MIGRATION BY MANUFACTURING FIRMS

Economists have produced a sizable literature examining the role of labor migration in restoring wage and price equilibria among dispersed markets. A much smaller literature addresses another dimension of mobility, regional migration of entrepreneurs and firms. In this study we examine a model of the firm's decision to migrate, utilizing the Duns Market Identifiers data file. The model consists in part of an equation describing the decision to migrate, in order to determine the extent to which measured characteristics of the firm's environment explain firm migration. Additional equations in the model explain particular outcomes of migration: the growth in sales during a fixed interval after a move and the corresponding growth of employment.     

From Tupperware to Scentsy: The gendered culture of women and direct sales

Consumer culture has transformed the lives of working women and family life for well over a century. Perhaps one of the most gender distinct forms of consumer culture introduced in the 20th century was the direct sales industry. The business model of direct sales depends on women's social circles as a means to market products directly to consumers, antithetical to retail spaces of malls and shopping outlets. In this literature review, I explore how women construct meaning behind products in this sales culture, while examining the emotional investment that women make as direct sales consultants and the personal outcomes of this investment. To begin, I include a brief history of the direct sales industry with a focus on three pioneering companies: Avon, Tupperware, and Mary Kay as foundational to women's contributions and involvement in the industry today. Next, I explore the pathways that motivate women's draw to direct selling as a form of emotional labor that allows them to balance professional work and family life while yielding minimal financial gain. I analyze the messaging of direct sales companies that cleverly speak directly to women's needs for recognition and assist in constructing personal identity and self‐worth. Finally, I examine trends for the future of direct sales companies as they look to maintain relevance through global markets and brand recognition that will expand beyond women's social circles and parties.     

Territorial bounds to virtual space: transnational online and offline networks of Iranian and Turkish–Kurdish immigrants in the Netherlands

Abstract In this article we question a central trope of transnationalism and new media – deterritorialization – and its application to border crossing Internet usage by Iranian and Turkish‐Kurdish migrants in the Netherlands. Their Internet usage indicates the extent to which territoriality channels these groups' online practice. We found Dutch‐Iranian sites reflected correspondingly sparse offline community networks and state boundaries moulded their transnational ties, while regionally specific transnational dynamics were evident in Turkish‐Kurdish website surfing. These cases indicate that transnationalism and new media need not broaden or dissolve geographical identity or connectivity, but may reinforce it. Finally, we address the relations of territoriality with generation (first and second) and network medium (web forums versus conventional sites). Whereas first‐generation migrants' life online often reveals extensions of offline networks, the online practice of the second generation frequently reflects these networks in subtler ways, forming partially sovereign online communities that pivot on hyphenated identities. However, the relations of generation and network medium differ for Turkish Kurds and Iranians in the Netherlands.     

The Migration Archipelago: Social Navigation and Migrant Agency

This paper is inscribed into a new line of scholarly work seeking to cast light to the ways in which migrants convert their motivations into action within a policy framework that is characterised by many restrictions and limited opportunities to move. Drawing on recent fieldwork (2013‐2014) on irregular migrants from Afghanistan, Albania, Georgia, Pakistan and the Ukraine, in Greece, we investigate how they perceive opportunities and navigate restrictions eventually crossing borders whether unlawfully (from unguarded border areas or with fake documentation) or legally (abusing the terms of their entry/stay). The paper adopts the notion of social navigation as a heuristics tool to conceptualise the social, temporal and spatial character of the migration journey, its nodal points, and the interaction of migrants with different actors and factors that shape their migration plans and explores different types of migrant agency (recuperation, resilience and resistance) developed during the navigation process.