Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative

Many of America's most globally-competitive industries, like the tech industry, recruit a significant portion of their high-skilled workforce from outside the U.S. How do policies governing employment-based migration—like the 2017 "Executive Order on Buy American and Hire American"—affect American businesses? And how do these policies impact states like California that receive thousands of new workers on H-1B visas each year? This policy brief addresses these questions with help from Dr. AnnaLee Saxenian, a BIMI affiliate and UC Berkeley Professor who has spent over twenty years studying high-skilled labor migration and its effects on international trade relations.

The agricultural food industry is upheld by the very vulnerable and underpaid work of farm workers. With this comes far too many injuries that have become a normalized experience for these farm workers. This policy brief by Graciela Chong highlights Dr. Seth Holmes's article on the need for visibility in farmwork injuries within statistics and society to create meaningful change in the agricultural fields. Farm industries should allow flexibility and variety in the type of work farmworkers can perform on duty to limit the continuous, repetitive nature of their work.

How are images used to reveal different perceptions of migrant deservingness and undeservingness? Through an analysis of a California traffic sign and its multiple adaptations, Berkeley law professor Leti Volpp discusses how migrant categories have been constructed. Through this Research Brief, we explore Dr. Volpp's work on the representations of migrants and what these perceptions mean for our understanding of rights and membership. Read the original research article here.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has granted 800,000 young undocumented immigrants work authorization and protection from deportation, but its impact extends to their overall health and well-being. A recent study by Marie Mallet (Sorbonne) and Lisa García Bedolla (UC Berkeley) demonstrates that the Trump administration's announcement to repeal DACA has had negative health outcomes on DACA recipients. They find that "transitory legality," going in and out of a protected status, can have detrimental mental and psychological health effects. Read the original research article here.

As communities, public institutions, and all levels of government respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration authorities have continued to conduct immigration raids, detentions, and deportations. In a recent article "Raids on Immigrant Communities During the Pandemic Threaten the Country’s Public Health", BIMI affiliate Seth Holmes and Miriam Magaña Lopez present findings on how immigration enforcement is undermining public health for immigrants, as well as society as a whole. Holmes and Magaña Lopez also discuss how COVID-19 offers a historic opportunity to consider how we can transform our immigration system to better support the health of all communities.

Immigrant rights activists have been trying new strategies to advocate for refugees and undocumented people, including invoking human rights, civil rights, and American values. Berkeley Professors of Sociology Kim Voss and Irene Bloemraad surveyed California voters to find out which framing strategy works best. Contrary to popular logic, they found that the most effective framing strategy is the American values frame, showing a new path forward for pro-immigrant activism. Read the original research article here.

Public Interest Law Organizations (PILOs) have been a major driver of social change and legal reform in the United States in the last century. However, research by University of California-Berkeley Professor of Law and Sociology Catherine Albiston shows that PILOs are not accessible to all those who may need their services, including immigrants and residents of poor counties. This policy brief recommends that the Legal Services Corporation be reformed and that large, privately-funded PILOs partner with PILOs in rural areas to expand affordable legal services to new communities. Read the original research article here.

As countries around the globe grapple with COVID-19, they are presented with policy decisions regarding the movement of migrant healthcare workers into and out of their borders. In her recent essay, "Why are there so many Filipino nurses in California?", historian and BIMI-affiliate Prof. Catherine Ceniza Choy describes the historical precedent and contemporary impact of one particular group of migrant healthcare workers: Filipino nurses in California. This policy brief describes Dr. Choy's research and contextualizes her findings in the present moment, in light of policy responses to COVID-19 that threaten the mobility of Filipino nurses and other healthcare workers.

California is home to approximately one-third of the Cambodian-American population, many of whom came to the United States as refugees. In a chapter from her book, Southeast Asian Migration: People on the Move in Search of Work, Refuge and Belonging, BIMI-affiliate and Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies Khatharya Um, explores how Cambodian American youth participate in artistic expression and political engagement to navigate the burdens of transgenerational trauma and forced migration. Drawing on Prof. Um’s research, this policy brief makes recommendations for activists, educators, policymakers, and service providers to support the empowerment of young Cambodian Americans and other refugee communities.

The debate on immigration in the U.S. has become a highly partisan one, with little room for compromise between competing visions of America's national identity and immigration policy. In light of such deep divisions, the prospects for bipartisan immigration reform look bleak. So what does it take to change people's opinions on immigration policy? Political scientist and BIMI-affiliate Dr. Cecilia H. Mo and co-author Dr. Tabitha Bonilla tackle this question in an experimental study that offers promising findings for the future of bipartisan immigration reform. This policy brief relays their findings and how the persuasive tactic of "frame-bridging" is being applied today. Read Dr. Bonilla and Dr. Mo's original research article here.