Doctoral Dissertation Research: The political economy of migration, labor, and documentation

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。文中展示了规范的官僚策略，以防止具有合法身份的移民沦为非法移民。这也可能对依赖移民劳动力谋生的社区产生不利影响。这篇博士论文研究的问题是，在不断变化的政治背景下，个人如何通过谈判获得文件来支持他们的主张。它直接侧重于支持国家身份主张的文件的连续体，试图超越对法律地位的二元描述。本项目对研究生进行实证性、科学性的数据收集和分析方法的培训。研究结果将广泛传播给学术和非学术受众。该项目整合了法律人类学、官僚人类学和政治经济学的理论，以调查三个研究问题：1)文书工作与法律地位有何关系？2)移民采取什么策略来获得文件，政府官员如何评判这一点？3)文件对移民的生活经历有什么影响？学生调查员在文件过程展开的多个环境中使用参与者观察、访谈和档案研究来表征不同形式的文件对法律地位和生活经历的影响。这项工作为使文件流程正规化的努力提供了信息，以使受劳动力迁移影响的社区和个人受益。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Regularized bureaucratic strategies are demonstrated to prevent migrants with legal status from lapsing into illegal status. This can also adversely impact communities whose livelihoods depend on migrant labor. This doctoral dissertation research asks how individuals negotiate securing documentation to support their claims in changing political contexts. It focuses directly on the continuum of documents that support claims of national identity in an attempt to move beyond binary characterizations of legal status. This project trains a graduate student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis. The results will be widely disseminated to academic and non-academic audiences.The project integrates theory in legal anthropology, the anthropology of bureaucracy and political economy to investigate three research questions: 1) How does paperwork relate to legal status? 2) What strategies do migrants pursue to secure documentation and how is this adjudicated by government officials? 3) What are the consequences of documentation on migrants’ lived experiences? The student investigator uses participant observation, interviews, and archival research in multiple settings where processes of documentation unfold to characterize the effects of different forms of documents on legal status and lived experiences. The work informs efforts to regularize documentation processes to benefit communities and individuals impacted by labor migration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.