Lost Potentials? The Rights and Lives of the Excluded

Within the Max Planck Society's framework on migration and integration the Department of Foreign and International Social Law and the Department of Social Policy (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute of Social Law and Social Policy conducts a joint project with a focus on the “excluded”. Despite the fact that there is a vast body of literature on migration and integration we know remarkably little about those migrants who entered a country illegally, who have exhausted legal possibilities to stay in the country or who fall between the cracks otherwise. We seek to close parts of this research gap by focusing on those migrants who face additional obstacles to be integrated into society. By contrasting the investments, outcomes and expectations of migrants with different migration statuses, this inter-disciplinary project will allow insights into the legal and political factors that create and solidify mechanisms of exclusion. To this end, the project will take the legal categorization of groups of migrants as starting point. Subsequently the effects of the varying degrees of exclusion on the lives of migrants are investigated, i.e., their integration or marginalization with respect to the various spheres of the host society, most notably the labor market.