This article examines the effects of an uncertain legal status on the lives of immigrants, situating their experiences within frameworks of citizenship/belonging and segmented assimilation, and using Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Susan Coutin's Љlegal nonexistence.Љ It questions blackϪandϪwhite conceptualizations of documented and undocumented immigration by exposing the gray area of Љliminal legalityЉ and examines how this inϪbetween status affects the individual's social networks and family, the place of the church in immigrants' lives, and the broader domain of artistic expression. Empirically, it draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix from 1989 to 2001. The article lends support to arguments about the continued centrality of the nationϪstate in the lives of immigrants. 1 I prepared this article while I was a visiting scholar at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, in spring 2003 and would like to acknowledge the institutional support. I presented it in the thematic session Culture, Migration and Diaspora at the

This article analyzes how Central American immigrants in tenuous legal statuses experience current immigration laws. Based on ethnographic observations and over 200 interviews conducted between 1998 and 2010 with immigrants in Los Angeles and Phoenix and individuals in sending communities, this study reveals how the convergence and implementation of immigration and criminal law constitute forms of violence. Drawing on theories of structural and symbolic violence, the authors use the analytic category "legal violence" to capture the normalized but cumulatively injurious effects of the law. The analysis focuses on three central and interrelated areas of immigrants' lives-work, family, and school-to expose how the criminalization of immigrants at the federal, state, and local levels is not only exclusionary but also generates violent effects for individual immigrants and their families, affecting everyday lives and long-term incorporation processes. Concha is in Honduras, the native country of one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States. 2 The country's stagnant economy resulting from the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the

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This study seeks to comparatively assess the consequences of men's migration for gender roles and relations in Armenia and Guatemala. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.

Using participant observation and in‐depth interviews with ladina and indigenous Guatemalan immigrant women, this article examines the intricate social networks ‐ both local and transnational ‐ through which these immigrants obtain treatment for their own and their families' illnesses. Although Guatemalan women also relied on ties with friends, families and acquaintances to obtain a cure in their country, these ties acquire more significance within the broader U.S. politicoeconomic context that restricts their medical choices. Under these conditions, these women's informal networks become key in putting within reach a variety of treatments that include prescription drugs (obtained over the counter) and “traditional” medicines, which are acquired both locally and from contacts back home. Giving and receiving help through these social networks, however, is a negotiated process punctuated by disillusions, tension, and frustration as much as by cohesiveness and support.

In this article, the authors assess the still limited literature on domestic violence among immigrant women in major receiving countries so as to begin delineating a framework to explain how immigrant-specific factors exacerbate the already vulnerable position—as dictated by class, gender, and race—of immigrant women in domestic violence situations. First, a review of this scholarship shows that the incidence of domestic violence is not higher than it is in the native population but rather that the experiences of immigrant women in domestic violence situations are often exacerbated by their specific position as immigrants, such as limited host-language skills, isolation from and contact with family and community, lack of access to dignified jobs, uncertain legal statuses, and experiences with authorities in their origin countries. The authors then examine the various responses at the national and local community levels to this issue in receiving countries.

This review focuses on the enactment of borders beyond the physical demarcation of the nation, to encompass the entire migratory process, with particular attention to practices in the United States and the European Union. It addresses the twin processes of the externalization (outsourcing) and internalization (insourcing) of border controls, both of which rest on the securitization of migration management. Outsourcing involves a series of extraterritorial activities in sending and in transit countries at the request of the more powerful receiving state. Insourcing includes the policing of immigrants and enforcement controls within the interior, such as the detection, detention, and deportation of immigrants. This multipronged strategy that extends beyond the edges of a territory highlights the spaciality of enforcement and the buttressing of power imbalances between sending countries, on one hand, and transit and receiving countries, on the other, as well as inequalities within national territories with respect to legal status.

Thousands of minors are migrating unaccompanied to high-income countries. This special issue focuses on unaccompanied migrant minors from the Global South to Europe and the United States. In this introduction we seek to complement the contributions to this special issue by shedding light on what resources and experiences unaccompanied migrants arrive with, stressing these young migrants’ challenges at each stage prior to arrival and the challenges they face navigating the receiving context. We first clarify how the international community defines “unaccompanied minors” or “unaccompanied children.” We then provide brief histories of unaccompanied minors in immigration flows to the U.S. and the EU. Next, we review the literature on the experiences of unaccompanied minors before, during, and after migration. Finally, we discuss key themes and insights from the articles provided in this special issue.