Institute for the Social Sciences, Cornell University
Immigration: Settlement, Integration and Membership Theme Project
Maria Lorena Cook
Global Migration and Migrant Advocacy
My research examines the challenges faced by those who advocate on behalf of unauthorized migrants in the context of restrictive national border security policies. I am interested in how pro-migrant groups function within the double constraints of government policy and anti-immigrant public opinion, and in how they negotiate legal boundaries in their work with migrants who are targeted as “illegal.”
This comparative research is based on fieldwork conducted in three main sites: the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, Australia, and southern Spain. All three sites share the following features: 1) the movement of unauthorized migrants over land borders or across the sea; 2) increasingly restrictive government efforts to deter this form of unauthorized migration through “border security” measures; and 3) the emergence of citizen-based volunteer associations or NGOs who struggle to assist migrants and criticize government policies. I draw on the literature on law and international migration, international relations and critical security studies, and social movements, among others, to frame and analyze this work.
I am working on a book manuscript based on this research, titled “As Citizens Among Us: Global Migration and Migrant Advocacy.” The manuscript includes chapters on each of the three cases: Arizona-Mexico border, Australia, and southern Spain. Each chapter analyzes the interactions among government policies vis-à-vis unauthorized migrants, changes in migrant strategies in response to these policies, and the emergence and work of advocacy groups in the first half of the 2000s. The Arizona chapter focuses on humanitarian aid groups in southern Arizona who provide water and medical aid to migrants crossing the Sonora desert; the Australia chapter looks at the rise of a network of asylum-seeker support groups in response to the government’s mandatory detention of asylum seekers; and the chapter on Spain examines the role of pro-migrant NGOs as they balance their critique of state policies, service to migrants, and reliance on state funding in the context of escalating interdiction policies against unauthorized migrants.
One of my main arguments is that advocates face increasingly difficult challenges in the context of heightened “securitization” of migration taking place across all three of these sites. Not only do advocates themselves come under increasing scrutiny as state targeting of the unauthorized population intensifies, but advocates also have great difficulty in countering the state’s securitized discourse on illegal migration. One reason for this is that they lack an alternative discourse, one that simultaneously displaces the emotional power of “insecurity framing” and resonates with the national frame of reference of the majority of citizens.