Article by Luciana Gandini
The article Pressured Exit by Jayesh Rathod presents a novel and original analysis of a relatively unexplored phenomenon: people who migrate under pressure to leave the United States due to conditions of vulnerability. The author aims to explore less significant flows, which, although a minority, still contribute significantly to understanding the diversity of contemporary human mobility. Through rigorous analysis and empirical examples, Rathod proposes the category of pressured exit to describe those who leave the United States under duress due to their vulnerable circumstances but with different degrees of agency.
Pressured exit contributes to the field a theoretical and methodological framework for analyzing human migration that challenges the limits of agency and voluntariness. Conceptually, the framework constructs an object of study, and methodologically, it complements that framework with a typology that allows for operationalizing it empirically.
In response to Rathod’s ideas, I aim to explore and further problematize them for their potential implementation in this and other real-world scenarios. Rathod’s article is groundbreaking because it introduces a new kind of theoretical reflection that has both methodological and empirical implications to which I will refer. In this regard, my reflections focus on the conceptual debate and compare it with other contemporary analytical categories used for studying human mobility, such as forced migration. Finally, I will suggest some directions for further conceptual reflection and empirical application.
About the Author
Luciana Gandini. Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Citation
98 Tul. L. Rev. Online 21 (2024)