The Border(s) Within: Formal and Informal Processes of Status Production, Negotiation and Contestation in a Migratory Context

Abstract

This chapter reviews different streams of literature at the crossroad of border and citizenship studies, to offer a comprehensive understanding on what has been defined as the ``internal side'' of border drawing. It is often claimed that borders work as filters that operate through specific sociocultural, legal and administrative constructions of deservingness that extend from territorial ``entry gates'' into the ``soft inside'' of citizenship through status-producing/rights-allocating mechanisms generating a muddle of scattered and uneven assemblages of rights. As an emerging stream of research has shown, interactive processes of (il)legal status production and negotiation are especially useful to shed light on the role played by a whole variety of actors intermediating non-citizens' movements across the complex ``chutes and ladders'' of bordered (un)citizenship.