Navigating barriers: how housing instability impacts access to asylum, U-Visas, T-Visas, and Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) protections in the U.S.

Abstract

What is the relationship between housing (in)stability and people’s ability to secure immigration protection via defensive asylum and humanitarian visas? Processes for seeking asylum and humanitarian visas in the United States are complex. They involve bureaucratically intensive procedures that require individuals fleeing persecution abroad and violence in the United States to navigate multiple administrative and legal hurdles. As violence and other drivers of migration—such as climate change, political persecution, and gender-based violence have increased globally and domestically in the U.S, the number of people seeking asylum and humanitarian relief in the U.S has grown significantly. While previous research has documented myriad ways in which people’s access to relief has declined, the ways in which housing instability impacts people’s ability to secure relief have received less attention. Drawing on 17 in-depth interviews with immigration attorneys and social service providers across multiple states, I detail how housing instability operates as an internal mechanism of exclusion, limiting applicants’ capacity to prepare cases, maintain communication, meet procedural deadlines, and access care networks necessary for both daily survival and the preparation of testimony. The study develops a relational understanding of housing, arguing that the absence of stable housing produces consequences that undermine migrants’ access to legal protections while further limiting their access to stable housing and its attendant protections. Rather than isolated barriers, the findings show a system in which housing instability and legal precarity reinforce one another through interconnected mechanisms: communication failures, delayed timelines, employment and affordability constraints, survival decisions, and cumulative exclusion, creating a vicious cycle that reduces people’s access to legal protections and stable housing.