Introduction to a Special Issue on the Impact of Immigrant Legalization Initiatives: International Perspectives on Immigration and the World of Work

Abstract

This article is the third in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. The series features articles that analyze the state of research and future directions for important themes the journal has featured over its many years of publication. In this issue, we also feature a special cluster of articles and book reviews on one of the most critical labor market issues across the globe-the legalization and integration of immigrants into national labor markets.Despite the urgent need for immigration reform in the United States, there is a paucity of US research that looks at the impact of a shift from unauthorized to legal immigrant status in the workplace. The US immigration literature has also paid little attention to immigrant legalization policies outside of the United States, despite the fact that other countries have implemented such policies with far more regularity. The articles in this special issue draw on studies of legalization initiatives in major immigrant destinations: Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Together they underscore the importance of cross-national perspectives for understanding the range of legalization programs and their impact on immigrant workers, the workplace, and the labor market. These findings contribute to key questions in migration scholarship and inform the global policy debate surrounding the integration and well-being of immigrants

Migrant labour and low-quality work: A persistent relationship

“…However, in many countries there has been gradual opening of 'side door' visa schemes that fall outside the formal scope of official labour immigration policy, such as visas for students with limited work rights. 'Back doors' for unauthorised migrants without any right to work are an important feature of labour markets in certain countries, such as the USA (Cook et al, 2018;Dibeh et al, 2019;Wright and Clibborn, 2017).…”

Treading lightly: regularised migrant workers in Europe

“…Since then, the number of the unauthorised immigrants have grown from an estimated 5 million to approximately 11 million in 2015 (Passel and Cohn, 2016). Subsequent US administrations have favoured increased immigrant detention and deportations as the main policy tools for managing the unauthorised immigrant population, targeting the workplace as a primary site for such enforcement practices (Cook et al, 2018). Similarly, in Europe, the political arena is overwhelmingly opposed to mass regularisations.…”