The Continuous Spatial Vulnerability of Undocumented Migrants
Connecting Experiences of “Displaceability” at Different Scales and Sites
Keywords:
Displacement, displaceability, undocumented migration, deportability, evictabilityAbstract
Undocumented migrants often experience how their spatial vulnerability continues across their life trajectories through different forms of displacements in the form of forced migration, being at risk of deportation and being victims of gentrification or policies that make it difficult to find a stable housing situation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden and the UK, the paper shows how weak the position of undocumented migrants is on the housing market through recently established policies in the UK which criminalizes the letting of housing to undocumented migrants and the practice of sharing address information between the social services and the border police in Sweden. This intervention argues that these policies that construct spatial vulnerabilities locally are connected to national and transnational policies of displacement globally and suggest that “displaceability”, the potential of being displaced, is a strategy for governing vulnerable groups at every scale where governing takes place. Consequently, this intervention suggests that displaceability can help us capture the universal, interconnected experience of spatial vulnerability shared by many differently positioned groups in the world who are susceptible to forced mobility or removal.
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Yoshikawa, Hirokazu and Kalil, Ariel. 2011. The Effects of Parental Undocumented Status on the Developmental Contexts of Young Children in Immigrant Families: Undocumented Status in Immigrant Families. Child Development Perspectives, 5(4), 291–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00204.x
Bolt, David. 2018. An inspection of the “Right to Rent” scheme. Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/695273/An_inspection_of_the_Right_to_Rent_scheme.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Burgers, Jack. 1998. In the Margin of the Welfare State: Labour Market Position and Housing Conditions of Undocumented Immigrants in Rotterdam. Urban Studies 35(10), 1855–1868. https://doi.org/10.1080/0042098984187
Carnet, Pauline, Blanchard, Catherine and Ellis, Jonathan. 2014. The Azure Payment Card - The Humanitarian Cost Of A Cashless System. British Red Cross. Retrieved from https://www.redcross.org.uk/-/media/documents/about-us/research-publications/refugee-support/the-azure-payment-card-report.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Crawford, Joe, Leahy, Sharon and McKee, Kim. 2016. The Immigration Act and the ‘Right to Rent’: exploring governing tensions within and beyond the state (Policy Commentary). People, Place and Policy Online 10(2), 114–125. https://doi.org/10.3351/ppp.0010.0002.0001
De Genova, Nicholas. 2002. Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31(1), 419–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085432
Dobson, Janet and Stillwell, John. 2000. Changing home, changing school: towards a research agenda on child migration. Area, 32(4), 395–401.
Fazel-Zarandi, Mohammad M., Feinstein, Jonathan S. and Kaplan, Edward H. 2018. The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States: Estimates based on demographic modeling with data from 1990 to 2016. PLOS ONE, 13(9), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201193
Hall, Matthew and Greenman, Emily. 2013. Housing and neighborhood quality among undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants. Social Science Research, 42(6), 1712–1725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.07.011
Han, Clara. 2018. Precarity, Precariousness, and Vulnerability. Annual Review of Anthropology 47, 331-343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041644.
Huse, Tone. 2018. Gentrification and ethnicity. In, Loretta. Lees and Martin Phillips (eds.), Handbook of gentrification studies. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 186–204.
JCWI. 2017. Passport Please: The impact of the Right to Rent checks on migrants and ethnic minorities in England - The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Retrieved from https://www.jcwi.org.uk/passport-please [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Leahy, Sharon, McKee, Kim and Crawford, Joe. 2018. Generating Confusion, Concern, and Precarity through the Right to Rent Scheme in Scotland. Antipode, 50(3), 604–620. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12369
LeGates, Richard T. and Hartman, Chester. 1982. Gentrification-Caused Displacement. The Urban Lawyer, 14(1).
Lind, Jacob. 2019. Governing vulnerabilised migrant childhoods through children’s rights. Childhood, 26(3), 337–351. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568219847269
Lind, Jacob. 2017a. The duality of children’s political agency in deportability. Politics, 37(3), 288–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395716665391
Lind, Jacob. 2017b. The Method of Ethics-as-Process: Embracing Ambivalence in Research on Childhood and Deportability. Migraciones, (42), 93–117. https://doi.org/mig.i42.y2017.005
Lubkemann, Stephen C. 2008. Involuntary Immobility: On a Theoretical Invisibility in Forced Migration Studies. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(4), 454–475. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fen043
Lukes, Sue, de Noronha, Nigel and Finney, Nissa. 2018. Slippery discrimination: a review of the drivers of migrant and minority housing disadvantage. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1480996
Mackenzie, Catriona. 2014. The Importance of Relational Autonomy and Capabilities for an Ethics of Vulnerability. In Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, and Susan Dodds (eds.), Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 33–59.
Mikkelsen, Jens. 2016. Gränspolisen tar hjälp av Malmö stad att hitta papperslösa barnfamiljer som ska utvisas. Sydsvenskan. Retrieved from https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2016-11-29/granspolisen-far-hjalp-av-malmo-stad-att-hitta-papperslosa-barnfamiljer-som-ska-utvisas [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Nelson, Lise, Trautman, Laurie and Nelson, Peter B. 2015. Latino Immigrants and Rural Gentrification: Race, “Illegality,” and Precarious Labor Regimes in the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(4), 841–858. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1052338
New Keywords Collective. 2016. Europe / Crisis: New Keywords of ‘the Crisis’ in and of ‘Europe’. Near Futures Online 1. Retrieved from: http://nearfuturesonline.org/europecrisis-new-keywords-of-crisis-in-and-of-europe [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Price, Jonathan. 2014. The Hostile Environment. In, Bridget Anderson and Michael Keith (eds.), Migration: A COMPAS Anthology, COMPAS: Oxford. Retrieved from: https://compasanthology.co.uk/hostile-environment/ [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Simcock, Tom. 2017. State Intervention into Renting: Making sense of the impact of policy changes - Residential Landlords Association. Retrieved from https://research.rla.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/state-intervention-into-renting-2017-report.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2019].
UNESCO. 2018. Displaced Person / Displacement. Retrieved from: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/international-migration/glossary/displaced-person-displacement/. [Accessed 30 October 2019].
van Baar, Huub. 2016. Evictability and the Biopolitical Bordering of Europe. Antipode, 49(1), 212-230. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12260
Vollmer, Bastian A. 2014. Policy Discourses on Irregular Migration in Germany and the United Kingdom. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Yiftachel, Oren. 2018. Displaceability - A Southeastern Perspective. The Displacement Research and Action Network Blog. Retrieved from: http://mitdisplacement.org/symposium-oren-yiftachel. [Accessed 30 October 2019].
Yoshikawa, Hirokazu and Kalil, Ariel. 2011. The Effects of Parental Undocumented Status on the Developmental Contexts of Young Children in Immigrant Families: Undocumented Status in Immigrant Families. Child Development Perspectives, 5(4), 291–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00204.x
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Published
2020-04-15
How to Cite
Lind, J. (2020). The Continuous Spatial Vulnerability of Undocumented Migrants: Connecting Experiences of “Displaceability” at Different Scales and Sites. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 19(1), 385–396. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1814
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Themed Issue- Narratives of Displacements (Guest Eds. Pull, Lind, Tsoni, Baeten)
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