BACKGROUND
A growing number of primarily qualitative studies have shown that the legal trajectories of immigrants in Western countries are often complex. However, immigrants’ long-term legal trajectories remain a blind spot in quantitative migration research.

OBJECTIVE
This paper aims to provide new empirical insights into the variety of legal pathways among non-European immigrants who arrived in Belgium between 1999 and 2008. We build a typology of legal trajectories, and we investigate how these trajectories are related to immigrants’ country of origin, asylum status, and social ties in Belgium.

METHODS
The micro longitudinal data is from the Belgian National Register. We use sequence analysis to identify clusters of legal trajectories, and multinomial logistic regressions to explore how they are related to immigrants’ characteristics.

RESULTS
We identify seven types of legal trajectory. While some are simple and smooth, others are characterized by moves back and forth between legal statuses and frequent periods of irregularity. Immigrants from the least developed countries and rejected asylum seekers are more likely to experience slow and chaotic trajectories. By contrast, simple and short trajectories are more common among immigrants from higher- or middle-income countries. We also find that social and family ties are a key factor in long-term immigrants experiencing smooth legal trajectories.

CONCLUSIONS
Legal statuses vary substantially over time, and trajectories differ widely among immigrants. Some categories of immigrants are more at risk of highly precarious long-term trajectories that may lead to situations of ‘permanent temporariness’.



中文翻译：

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多重（il）法律途径：比利时移民法律轨迹的多样性（作者：Bruno Schoumaker、Mireille Le Guen、Louise Caron、Wanli Nie）

背景
越来越多的主要定性研究表明，西方国家移民的法律轨迹往往很复杂。然而，移民的长期法律轨迹仍然是量化移民研究的一个盲点。

目
_比利时的出身、庇护身份和社会关系。

方法
微观纵向数据来自比利时国家登记册。我们使用序列分析来识别法律轨迹集群，并使用多项逻辑回归来探索它们与移民特征的关系。

结果
我们确定了七种法律轨迹。虽然有些简单而顺利，但其他的特点是在法律地位之间来回移动，并且经常出现违规行为。来自最不发达国家的移民和被拒绝的寻求庇护者更有可能经历缓慢而混乱的轨迹。相比之下，简单而短的轨迹在来自高收入或中等收入国家的移民中更为常见。我们还发现，社会和家庭关系是长期移民经历顺利法律轨迹的关键因素。

结论
随着时间的推移，法律地位差异很大，移民的轨迹也大不相同。某些类别的移民更容易面临高度不稳定的长期轨迹，这可能导致“永久暂时”的情况。