Call for Papers: AALS 2014 Program on Families and Immigration

The AALS Sections on Immigration Law and Family and Juvenile Law invite papers for their joint program on “Families and Immigration Law” for the 2014 Annual Meeting. 

The program will explore the complex interactions between family policy and family law and immigration, citizenship, and asylum law. Family ties are often central to individual rights and status under federal immigration law, yet Congress has established unique definitions and limitations on the family relationships considered for these purposes, and many aspects of immigration law serve to undermine rather than foster family ties. For many people, then, immigration law is constitutive of the family. Beyond immigration law, numerous federal and state laws (including so called “alienage” laws) classify on the basis of immigration or citizenship status, in ways that increase the vulnerability of family members. The unique problems of families with complex nationality or immigration status have been largely invisible to the mainstream of family law.

Papers may be submitted on topics such as families and citizenship, marriage and family migration, child migration, the legal circumstances of immigrant and mixed-status families, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

The sections expect to select two papers from this call for papers in the joint program.

The presenters will join two invited speakers: Kerry Abrams, from the University of Virginia School of Law, and Jennifer Chacón of the University of California-Irvine School of Law. Please note that we will reserve one of the two positions for a paper written by a junior scholar, defined for this purpose as an individual who has been a full-time law teacher for six years or less.

Eligibility: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Pursuant to AALS rules, faculty at fee-paid law schools, foreign faculty, adjunct and visiting faculty (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school), graduate students, fellows, and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Please note that all faculty members presenting at the program are responsible for paying their own Annual Meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Submission: Papers (rather than abstracts) should be submitted to the program committee no later than August 15, 2013, and the papers to be presented will be selected based on an anonymous review by the section’s program committee by September 15. Please send submissions to [email protected]. In order to facilitate anonymous review, please identify yourself and your institutional affiliation only in the cover letter or email accompanying your manuscript, and not in the manuscript itself. (If you wish to be considered for the junior scholar slot on the panel, please indicated this in your cover letter.)

Inquiries: Questions regarding the program may be directed to: Ann Estin (for the Family & Juvenile Law Section) at [email protected], or Muneer Ahmad (for the Immigration Law Section) at [email protected].