Status-making: Rethinking migrant categorization

Abstract

Migrants are increasingly categorized with different ‘statuses’ – that is, classified, quantified, coded and placed into hierarchies that are politically and socially determined and have embodied and material effects. However, scholarly critiques of status often remain focused on legal descriptors and dichotomous categories such as refugee/migrant or legal/illegal. Drawing on multiple examples from media and scholarly literature on contemporary Australian migration, I seek to show how diverse and complex forms of migrant status are ‘made’ in relation to both voluntary and involuntary migrant mobilities – that is, how they are produced, contested and contestable across fluid legal, political, social and cultural lines. In doing so, I argue that a critical sociological orientation towards ‘status-making’, rather than uncritical categorizing of migrants into ‘types’, may be conceptually useful in contexts of immigration complexity.

'Boat People' and Discursive Bordering: Australian Parliamentary Discourses on Asylum Seekers, 1977-2013

“…Public anxieties about boat people and unauthorized immigration reverberate back through parliamentary chambers, becoming entangled with policy responses from both government and opposition parties (Every & Augoustinos, 2008). Bureaucratic terminology can similarly both reflect and infect public and political debates, as in the 2013 invention of the term "illegal maritime arrivals" by then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison during Operation Sovereign Borders, to arguably dehumanizing ends (Robertson, 2019). As we show below, however, for over 1.…”

The Event in Migrant Categorization: Exploring Eventfulness Across the Americas

“…Social categories are ubiquitous and inevitable but also a conflictive element in modern societies (Hirschauer 2017), defining but also dividing social entities and providing as well as rejecting an individual's access to membership, belonging, and care. Migration scholars have explored the inclusive and exclusive dimensions of migration-related categories not only to interrogate the classic citizen-migrant dichotomy but also to understand the various immigration-status configurations -or "figures of membership" (Gonzales and Sigona 2017) -which intersect with other markers of social difference (Robertson 2019) and define the prerequisites for political, economic, and social inclusion (Bosniak 2006;Scheel and Squire 2014;Zetter 2007). Moreover, they have identified incompatibilities between pre-defined migration categories and the lived experiences of people displaced or otherwise on the move (Bakewell 2008;Crawley and Skleparis 2017).…”

“…We take the occasion to also express our appreciation for the critical reading of this article provided by two anonymous reviewers of Vibrant -Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, for the organizers and participants of the "Dynamics of differentiation" panel at the DGSKA Conference 2019 in Konstanz, and for the research participants and institutions who welcomed us in the field. questioned the neutrality, stability, and encapsulating power of categorization (Crawley and Skleparis 2017;Mountz 2011;Robertson 2019). Through this process, we interrogate how events might provide a useful lens for pinpointing the temporal and spatial processes that trigger, displace, and alter categorization.…”

Australian urban geographies of housing in the context of the rise of China in the “Asian Century”

“…For example, Fincher and Shaw (, ) have examined the production of racialised spaces in the context of “local” and “international” university students in Melbourne. They point to both institutional and self‐enacted practices that produce separate spaces and social circles for students, while acknowledging that these categories represent racialised rather than simply administrative distinctions (also Robertson, ).…”