Irregular in the UK: Bibliography for MRC

List of Materials: Background Information on Undocumented Migrants
(H:\Company Shared Folders\Media & Policy\Undocumented Migrant\Undocumented migrants\Undocumented migrant Research)

1. Migrants Rights Center Ireland, December 2007, “Life in the Shadows: An Exploration of Irregular Migration in Ireland” available at

- Pathways (routes) to irregularity
- Types of State responses (prevention, removal, regularization) and effectiveness
- international law sources and EU policy developments

2. Website of PICUM (platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants)

PICUM, March 2007, “Undocumented Migrants Have Rights: An Overview of the International Human Rights Framework,” Brussels, available at

- human rights of undocumented migrants under international and European law divided by themes (physical and mental integrity; health care; adequate standard of living; fair labor conditions; education; equality before the law)

PICUM, 2008 “Undocumented Children in Europe: Invisible Victims of Immigration Restrictions,” Brussels, available at < http://www.picum.org/sites/default/files/data/Undocumented%20Children%20in%20Europe%20EN.pdf>

- focus on children

3. Website of the Clandestino Research Project (Counting the Uncountable: Data and Trends Across Europe)

Clandestino Research Project, October 2009, “Comparative Policy Brief – Size of Irregular Migration”, available at

- estimates of the size of irregular migration in European countries including the Uk evaluated in terms of reliability

Franck Duvell, 27/3/2009, “Irregular Migration in Northern Europe: Overview and Comparison”, London; COMPAS available in

- including data on UK: irregular migrants as a percentage of the (total and migrant) population; main countries/region of origin based on detention data are Indian Subcontinent, Nigeria/Ghana, and Jamaica (p. 7); paths into irregularity (“most common route is ‘overstaying’ …, working without permission, or working longer hours/in jobs than allowed” “only a small minority enter clandestinely” “many of those [who do enter illegally], in case of being apprehended could nevertheless not be deported but put on the system again…a waiting-for-removal status” (p. 8), also refused asylum-seekers (p.10)); only paths out of irregularity in the UK (amnesty for asylum seeker families; and 14-year stay)
- very brief description of immigration discourse and policy developments in the UK (p. 12-13)


4. Institute for Public Policy Research, April 2006, “Irregular Migration in the UK: An IPPR Fact File”

- Home Office 2005 estimate of the number of irregular migrants in the UK; number of enforcement actions taken from 2000-2004, including nationalities of those who have been detained and deported
- Estimated tax revenues from regularisation
- Estimated cost of deportation
- NSO 2004 statistic on immigrant movement

5. Migrant Work and Migrants’ Rights Network, May 2009, “The Urgent Need for a New Approach”, available at

- pathways to irregularity illustrated through cases
- estimates of number or irregular migrants in the UK
- employment of irregular migrants (cases)
- description of UK’s “managed migration” policy
- description of employer sanctions policy and impact on employers
- regularization in the UK: existing mechanism
- reference to positive evaluation of the 2005 regularisation program in Spain in a resolution by the Council of Europe (p. 22)
- summary of likely economic impact of regularisation in the UK discussed in relation to following themes: taxes and social security, public services; housing; social services; health care; community safety; planning (pp. 24-29)
- in the EU, “68 regularisation programmes have operated from 1973 to 2008” (p.32)
- two aims of the 2005 Spanish regularisation program
- brief description of programmes in Italy (“not regarded as successful”), USA (problematic) and Canada (limited experience)
- history of limited regularisation in the UK (p. 34)


6. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Resolution 1568 (2007), “Regularisation programmes for irregular migrants”
“10. The Assembly notes in particular the regularisation programme carried out in Spain in 2005 in which over 570 000 persons were regularised, and considers that Europe can learn from this experience. This regularisation programme has been welcomed by irregular migrants, civil society, employers and trade unions, as well as by the majority of politicians in Spain.
“13. The Assembly is aware of the criticism put forward, including in Spain, that regularisation programmes have a pull effect on irregular migration. The Assembly, however, considers that this factor may be exaggerated. If one takes the example of Spain there are a number of other important contributing factors causing irregular migration. These include Spain’s geographical location, its colonial history and linguistic ties, the high level of demand for unskilled labour and limited opportunities for regular migration. There is a further contributing factor which is the difficulty Spain has in returning irregular migrants and the fact that those irregular migrants who are not returned within forty days of being held in detention must be released.”

7. International Center for Migration Policy Development REGINE Project, February 2009, “Regularisations in Europe: Study on practices in the area of regularisation of illegally-staying third-country nationals in the Member States of the European Union,” Vienna: ICMPD, available at

- from 1996-2008, 5.5 million people have applied for regularisation; 3.5 million were regularised
- 4.7 million applied under stand-alone regularisation programs of which 3.2 million were awarded legal status
- Italy, Spain and Greece account for 84% of all known regularisation applications
- “overall impact of regularisation programs is positive”; only “limited evidence of a pull effect” (p. 4)

8. Melanie Gower, Home Affairs Section, 4 January 2010, “Asylum: ‘legacy’ cases,” Standard Note SN/HA/4439, House of Commons Library

- background and data on the legacy cases

9. Philip Cole, “Health, Human Rights and Global Justice,” available at

- on the attempt in December 2007 to remove undocumented migrants from NHS coverage

Domestic Worker's campaign in the UK, RESPECT's lobbying in the EU, and the NL context

1. General context

picture of Netherlands population and migrant population:

total pop. 16.6 million; about 20% of foreign background (at least one parent is non-Dutch - they are counting until the second generation); 11% of non-western foreign origin (Japan is considered western!) led by Turks, Moroccans, and Surinamese. (Statistics Netherlands)
a telling story: "Just days before he was assassinated, Fortuyn had announced that he would grant amnesty to all rejected asylum seekers and other irregular migrants who were currently in the Netherlands, had been there for at least five years, and spoke Dutch."
number of asylum seekers in 2010 (15,150) was less than half of the 2000 figure

1. Cyrus, Norbert. 2008. "Being Illegal in Europe: Strategies and Policies for Fairer Treatment of Migrant Domestic Workers" in Lutz, Helen

- summarizes EU policy on illegal migration and undeclared work
- suggests alternatives

2. FNV-B and RESPECT
possible contacts:
"If you want more information about the domestic workers and FNV Bondgenoten or if you want to become a member you can contact Marianne Jekkers 06-13933207 m.jekkers@bg.fnv.nl (Nederlands, Español, English) Or Rebecca Pabon 06-51257247 r.pabon@bg.fnv.nl (Español, English)"

story of Coring de los Reyes in

on the history of RESPECT:
Schenken, Helen. 2005. "Domestic slavery" versus "workers rights": political self-mobilization of migrant domestic workers in the European Union, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, available at

Filipino organizations Waling Waling (Pearce 2000) and Kalayaan in the UK started and became the model of the RESPECT Network: a core (self-help) organization of migrants themselves worked in dialogue with an organization of both migrants and supporters that operated in the public sphere -> in the European level, you have Kalayaan (UK-based) and SOLIDAR (Brussels-based); "multi-level strategies"

documentation of the "successful" British campaign (Ariyadasa 1998) and a critical assessment (Anderson 2004)


in UK, domestic workers were aided by TGWU (Transport and General Workers' Union)

Shenker, Helen. 2003. "RESPECT for all: The Political Self-Organization of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the European Union", Refuge: Canada's periodical on refugees, Vol 21, No 3 (2003): Global Movements for Refugee and Migrant Rights

"Clearly, empowerment, subjectivity, and a rights-based framework are central to the success of domestic migrant workers."

NGO Actors in the Irregular Migrants' Rights Issue-Area

1. The state and its "agents" (here notice NGOs can be agents of immigration law enforcement)

Lahav, Gallya. 2006. "The Rise of Non-State Actors in Migration Regulation in the United States and Europe: Changing the Gatekeepers or Bringing Back the State?" in Messina, Anthony N. and Gallya Lahav, eds., The Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies. Boulder, Colorado/London:Lynne Reiner Publishers, 290-314.

"How can liberal democracies reconcile efforts to control the movement of people with those that promote free borders, open markers, and liberal standards? Are national actors, as some political analysts predict, 'losing control' over migration? (Sassen 1996; Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield 1994)"

third-party nonsatate actors in immigration regulation (growing trend toward privatization) pp. 295-303
- transport companies (sanctions)
- employers (sanctions): since 1920s in France
- civil society (sanctions for harboring illegal immigrants) except for Italy and Finland?
- citizens - attempted in France: obligation for sponsors to report when their foreign guests have left
- families (support requirement in the form of judicially enforceable pledges)
in the meantime, courts are being made non-actors

growing trend toward devolution to local level as well

growing trend to move enforcement upward to the international level (international enforcement)
in EU: supra and transnational actors
"In France, where the trend toward complete free movement of persons is critical for European integration, abolition of checks at internal borders have been offset by the proliferation of intergovernmental and supranational actors (the EU "third pillar", the Ad Hoc Immigration Group, TREVI, EUROPOL, the coordinating Rhodes Group, and the Schengen Group) who promote an effective migration control regime. Typically, they make decisions behind closed doors, with little or no formal debate in a public forum. Many intergovernmental cooperation groups do not have to answer to a representative body or international courts. The result is that it is difficult for certain national actors to oversee what international and regional organizations do, and they can be used to circumvent even the most liberal national constraints on migration control (Bunyan and Weber 1995; Guirandon 1997)." (305)

"European regional integration represents a supranational order consisting of strong states committed to pooling sovereignty besed on restrictive migration policies and more effective control. Unlike international regimes for the movement of capital, goods and services, which have sought to promote free trade, international cooperation on migration matters may serve to inhibit migration rather than promote it. Indeed, thus far, cooperation predominantly exist in the prevention of migration (Münz 1996, 14)." (307)

previously, writers have pointed to the tendency for border control to go inwards (the borders are everywhere crisscrossing the state)
there is also the tendency to push the border outwards into the territories of sending countries (jives with Feldmann 2004's "outsourcing") or at least into "transnational space" or "no man's land" like "airports, where intervention by lawyers and human rights associations is almost impossible" (306)

2. The irregular immigrants and their supporters (here NGOs are seen as providing "cover" to irregular migrants)

Engbersen, G. and Broeders, D., 2009. “The State versus the Alien: Immigration Control and Strategies of Irregular Immigrants”, West European Politics, 32(5), 867- 885.

this article is a good complement to the first one. the former emphasizes increased enforcement capacities whereas the latter shows the corresponding responses of irregular migrants, viz., thickening of the foggy social structures.

this is furthermore an article on the Netherlands: NGOs as "foggy social structures"

"In the manifest and secret societies in which irregular immigrants are
embedded there are all kinds of manifestations of what Bommes and Kolb
(2002: 5) have defined as ‘foggy social structures’: ‘Social structures that
emerge from efforts by individuals and organizations to avoid the production
of knowledge about their activities by making them either unobservable or
indeterminable; or, put another way, the practical production of fog.’ These
foggy structures are the product of contradictory economic, social and
juridical forces: economic demands of employers and humanitarian con-
siderations of civil society and state actors on the one hand, and the political-
juridical rejection of irregular immigration by the state on the other (Bosniak
2006; De Genova 2007). A variety of illegal and legal actors are active in the
manufacturing of fog, such as regular employers employing irregular
immigrants through illegitimate temporary work agencies; regular citizens
and religious organisations housing irregular immigrants, irregular immi-
grants using false documents to get medical aid; public service workers using
their discretionary power to give irregular immigrants access to public housing
and education; municipalities supporting failed asylum seekers who do not
want to leave the country; and private households employing irregular
domestic workers. A lot of fog is produced, for different reasons, in order to
make the activities of individuals and the organisations involved unobservable
or indeterminable (Bommes and Kolb Bommes 2002)."

I don't like the term. So instead, I will discuss this in full saying what I don't like about it and what can be teased out from it.

types of support organizations and their activities, esp. in the Netherlands:
http://www.evasp.eu/attachments/061_PICUM,%20Providing%20assistance%20to%20undocumented%20migrants.pdf

3. Transnational actors (both EU and NGOs lobbying in the EU) here seen/discovered as distant from local actors

Guiraudon, Virginie. "Weak Weapons of the Weak?: Transnational Mobilization around Migration in the European Union" in Contentious Europeans

data-rich article!
there are (funding) opportunites within the EU for advocating/promoting migrants' rights but these are disproportionately enjoyed by elite Brussels-based lobbies
there is also an assessment of EU immigration policies as not coherent enough to provide a language to express local movement demands, and Brussels NGOs are unable to affect policy in favor of their supposed local constituencies
local actors (san papiers movement) frame issues in local discourse instead of universal human rights (hmmm..."instead of", but who said they have to be framed in terms of abstract norms?)
Brussels NGOs as Adrian Favell's "gatekeepers"

specific EU body identified: European Council on Refugees and Exiles
See more recent articles: ANDREW GEDDES, "LOBBYING FOR MIGRANT INCLUSION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION"

Gray, Emily and Paul Statham. 2005. "Becoming European? The Transformation of the British Pro-migrant NGO Sector in Response to Europeanization", JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies Volume 43, Issue 4, pp. 877-98.

Now Reading: Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions

Kabeer, Naila, ed., 2005. Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions. London: Zed Books.

Chap. 12. Ansley, Fran, "Constructing citizenship without a license: the struggle of undocumented immigrants in the USA for livelihoods and recognition," pp. 199-215.

narrative with commentary on a "campaign fought successfully for access to a state-issued driver's license for people who could not produce proof of lawful presence in the USA" conducted by undocumented migrants and their allies in Tennessee from spring of 2001 up to 2003

"Far from focusing overtly on the 'meanings and expressions of citizenship', this effort was initiated by and designed to benefit a population of non-citizens. Moreover, at least in its public aspect and public rhetorical strategies, it seldom mentioned anything remotely like 'rights'." (p. 199)

abolition of slavery was about citizenship
* so also, the legal struggle against racial discriminaton in immigration law "from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through to the national quota systems that were not finally abolished until 1965" (p. 201) (See also: Joppke, Christian. 200. "Are 'Non-Dicriminatory' Migration Policies Reversible? Evidence from the United States and Australia," Comparative Political Studies 38(1):3-25. => non-discrimnation norm, a key human rights norm ("a core principle of the human rights culture" p. 19), has been applied to great effect in the immigration law field! article also cites Risse, Ropp and Sikkink)

no public transportation system in Tennessee outside the small centers of large cities so that having a car was a basic "necessity for even the simplest acts of daily existence" (p. 203); also, since undocumented migrants could not get driver's licenses, they became a proxy for a citizen/legal resident's ID

who were the actors in the campaign (p. 204-206): a huge (legal) immigrant Latino community (that even Republicans wanted to court); "unexpected quarters" like chiefs of police (and businesses)

strategy used (p. 206): "A final reason I believe we won this struggle for the rights of undocumented workers in Tennessee is that we did not frame the campaign as a struggle for rights at all. Instead, at least in its visible, public face [the author is here implying there was a private, inaccessible space as well = the backstage, where the opposite can be observed], the campaign was framed almost entirely around desires, interests and preferences of US citizens." e.g., highway safety

reflections on the strategy (p. 206)? "The choice of a frame that left immigrants themselves so decidedly in the shadows was not uncontroversial within the campaign, but it represented a clear majority of opinion among whose who developed the strategy." (There is a recognition that the strategy kept undocumented migrants in the shadows, i.e., it is consistent with the over-all strategy of the "clandestine" migrants.) "The decision to frame the issue as one of highway safety grew out of the organizers' conviction that putting immigrants' rights or their welfare at the centre of the campaign (or even out towards its margins, if openly expressed) would be a kiss of death." (At this point, I cannot resist the comparison/contrast with LGBT activism. The "clandestine" migrants are in a kind of closet, and the rights they obtain in this campaign are in effect rights to remain hidden. A confrontational strategy would have required "clandestine" migrants to come out and identify themselves, as did LGBT activists. But even LGBT activists recognize that coming out is a personal decision.)

the human rights activists who led this "non-rights" campaign were performing as middle-men or translators (here you can cite Saugestad's article and footnotes): they decide "how much to highlight the rights and needs of the weak, and how much to appeal to the self-interest of the strong" (p. 207) hence they do not merely act as conveyor belts transporting global norms to local sites, but more like ?

"So my question is not whether rights-based approaches associated with citizenship can be useful ..., but rather when, how, and under what circumstances they are most likely to be useful - or not." (p. 209)

Chap. 3. Stammers, Neil, "The emergence of human rights in the North: Towards historical re-evaluation," 50-68.

cites Hampster-Monk(1992)'s retake on Locke's Two Treatises as having been written not to "justify the successful revolution of 1688...but to incite a future one" looking at Locke's relationship with the radical Diggers' and Levellers' movements
defies liberal and Marxist consensus that "natural rights" (the progenitor of "human rights") was developed to justify "bourgeois" hegemony
"... [A]lternative accounts identify social movements as important agents of transformation [in the English, American and French revolutions]. It was movement activists that generated discourses of natural rights, and that they did so as a way of challenging absolutist power. This is particularly clear in the English and American cases, perhaps less so in the French case. Seen in this terms, claims to natural rights are not simply reducible to an ideological defence of bourgeois property rights. Indeed, these alternative historical accounts suggest (again, particularly in the English and American cases) that it was the most radical currents of activism that developed and deployed the idea of natural rigths. Far from relying on them, the newly emerging propertied classes saw such talk as dangerous and revolutionary - anarchical fallacies, as Bentham neatly summed it up at the time (Waldron 1987)." (p. 59)

"[I]t is in the exclusionary potential of ... the institutionalization of human rights as citizenship rights that the key difficulties are located. In contrast, what may be most positive about the history of struggles for human rights in the North is to be found in claims to universality..." (64-65)

Chap. 2.

"rights are shaped through actual struggles informed by people's own understandings of what they are justly entitled to" (31)

Examples of (Mostly Discourse) Analyses of Irregular Migrants' Rights Issues

1. Feldmann, Andreas E. and Helena Olea. 2004. "New Formulas, Old Sins: Human Rights Abuses against Migrant Workers, Asylum Seekers, and Refugees in the Americas," in Gordon, Neve, ed., 2004. From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. Oxford, U.K.: Lexington Books, 129-159.

not focused on one issue, but more of a general discussion
The research problem here is slightly different, viz., how do states conceal human rights abuses against irregular migrants? The problem arises from within an understanding of human rights politics proposed by Risse, Ropp and Sikkink but no further engagement with the theory is offered. (From the theory, they derive the point that (host and transit) states have an interest in concealing human rights violations. Risse, et.al.'s own term is "denial" or non-acknowledgment, either of the norm itself or of the fact of violation. Cohen, as pointed out by Shor, has explored the varieties of "denial", including interpretative denial besides outright denial. Is "concealment" different from "denial"?) It seems that the word "conceal" implies that states know what norms have been violated which goes against the fact that states in fact do not acknowledge that human rights norms apply fully to irregular migrants

The authors discuss two specific ways of concealment: (1) through discourse; (2) through out-sourcing to other states.

Interesting discussion of the term "alien" in the law of English-speaking countries; also, "illegal alien".

p. 136 (should I need a quick enumeration of violations)

"A variety of actors take part in infringing on the rights of migrants, including state agents, employers, common criminals, traffickers and smugglers in human beings, and even the general population. Violations include the lack of due process in criminal and immigration proceedings, unfair and substantial working conditions, limited or no access to basic social services (e.g., housing, health and pensions), denial of political rights (e.g., the right to vote in the country of origin and the possibility of obtaining citizenship in the receiving country), harassment and discrimination on the part of authorities and the population, harsh or degrading detention conditions, and the impossibility of using the legal system to seek protection of their rights. ..."
(See also: Taran, Patrick. 2000. "Human Rights of Migrants: Challenges of a New Decade," International Migration 38(6).

p. 137 (should I need a quick evidence of recognition of vulnerability of migrants by UN)

"migrants constitute an especially vulnerable population prone to suffer human rights abuse" (See: UN Social and Economic Council, 1998. Specific Groups and Individuals: Human Rights of Migrants, Report of the Working Group of Inter-Governmental Experts on the Human Rights of Migrants, Report E/CN.4/AC.46/1998/5.)

2. Megan, Hugh. April 1997. "The Discourse of the Illegal Immigration Debate: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation," Discourse & Society, 8 (2): 249-270

analysis of "discourse strategies that fabricated the (irregular) immigrant as the enemy" in the Proposition 187 debate in California in 1994
"self-interest won over human rights"
this is a negative example (just like no. 1): how discourse was used against irregular migrants, i.e., to deny them rights or to exclude them from the coverage of rights

3. Sagunta Vas Dev. 2009. "Accounting for State Approaches to Asylum Seekers in Australia and Malaysia: the Significance of 'National' Identity and 'Exclusive' Citizenship in the Struggle Against 'Irregular' Mobility", Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 16(1):33–60.

yet another negative example, this time from the Asia-Pacific region; identify the specific "campaigns"
again the analysis seems to focus on the discourse of "illegality" and "nationalism"

4. Ansley, Fran, "Constructing citizenship without a license: the struggle of undocumented immigrants in the USA for livelihoods and recognition," pp. 199-215.

not a discourse analysis BUT a positive example I have come accross, i.e., an analysis of how a campaign succeeded; paradoxically, author says campaign succeeded because rights language was avoided, instead, campaigners appealed to citizens' self-interest (note again the term "self interest" which reverberates with Jordan and Duvell's clash of two self interests, and the idea of "human rights" as a "higher morality": focuses on the "persuasive" function of human rights talk)
also refers to the example of the abolition of racial discrimination in US immigration law as long battle that was won apparently permanently in favor of people on the move (labor migrants)
see also: "License to Drive: Pioneering A Compromise to Allow Undocumented Immigrants Access to the Roads"


5. "Emergence of Pro-regularization Movements in Europe"

framing strategies

6. Schwenken, Helen. 2003. "Sangatte-A case study about the political self-organization of refugees and migrants in the European Union" available at


gives an analysis of two "framing strategies"

7. Schenken, Helen. 2003. "Domestic slavery" versus "workers rights": political self-mobilization of migrant domestic workers in the European Union, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, available at

the research question: "the overall research question is how undocumented migrants and pro-migrant-organizations argue and mobilize, although the EU member states agree widely on combating irregular migration"

firstly, there is the "modern day slavery" discourse which frames abused migrant domestic workers as victims of human trafficking. RESPECT avoided this because the discourse did not fit the reality of the undocumented domestic workers who mostly came through legal means and also because it supported states' interest in curbing irregular migration more than in improving the women's situations in their host countries

secondly, “The European Commission is relatively progressive on the rights of women, more progressive than they are on the rights of migrant workers, and we should try and use that” (B. Anderson, in: SOLIDAR and Kalayaan, 1996: 14)

thirdly, the framing of domestic workers as "workers" or the use of workers' rights framework has advantages: (1) its empowering effect specifically on Filipinos (as opposed to Polish, for example); (2) unions are drawn in.

"the aim is to conceive domestic work as “real work” which was considered more important than struggling for the unrealistic aim of overseas professional employment"


9. McNevin's work on the sans papier movement and the Unpaid Wages Act
10. Guiraudon, Virginie. "Weak Weapons of the Weak?: Transnational Mobilization around Migration in the European Union"



11. Shindo, Reiko. June 2009. "Struggle for citizenship: interaction between political society and civil society at a Kurd refugee protest in Tokyo", Citizenship Studies 13(3): 219–237

not exactly discourse analysis but analysis of a sit-in protest stage in front of the United Nations offices in Tokyo in 2004
what he does here is exemplify a paradox about political representation of irregular migrants (I think someone called this the problem of "alterity") in which non-citizens need citizens to speak to the state
this is a problem that you can be sensitized to coming from post-colonial /subaltern studies perspective
here the author is using Partha Chatterjee