The Movement Project is a project of Yale Law School that seeks to reform migration laws and frameworks to advance the interests of working people, manage climate and demographic change, function at a scale necessary to meet 21st-century demand, and honor humanitarian goals. It brings together national, international, and community-based experts in labor, immigration, climate justice, and democracy to undertake actionable research, convene stakeholders, and test research directly in targeted policy reform initiatives to advance a working peoples' immigration agenda.
Through this work, the Project aspires to support the development of rights-forward, equitable, climate-smart, pro-worker, publicly supportable, and actionable immigration paradigms for the climate-crisis era.
The Movement Project is led by Faculty Directors Muneer Ahmad, Sol Goodman Clinical Professor of Law, and Michael Wishnie, William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law, and Director of Strategy Becca Heller, Senior Research Scholar and Founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. Emily Tulli serves as Strategic Advisor for the Project and Tsedeye Gebreselassie serves as Senior Advisor.
Among other topics, The Movement Project seeks to:
- Research strategies to improve labor standards in immigrant-dense industries, including by increasing workers' bargaining power.
- Analyze policies to meet the nation's labor needs and shortages.
- Design pro-worker immigration legislation and policy.
- Study methods to enhance protections for workers with temporary status or visas, including those in abusive work programs.
The Movement Project engages students in creative strategic thinking while emphasizing the practical impact of legal strategies and policy innovations.
Highlights of Our Work:
- Supporting the inception of the AFL-CIO Labor and Immigration Policy Fellows Program, an initiative bringing together nearly 30 rank-and-file union members and leaders from across industries and geographies to build connection, strengthen knowledge and skills on immigration policy, and engage in national and local research and advocacy defending and expanding immigrant worker rights.
- Contributing research and drafting to Citizenship and the Affordability Agenda, a key collaboration between the AFL-CIO and the ACLU analyzing a broad path for citizenship as essential for creating jobs, raising wages, and improving affordability for all workers.
- Contributing research and drafting to Workers Rights Ice’d Out, an analysis of the ways in which the Trump administration has prioritized immigration enforcement over the needs of working people.
- Conducting research on questions at the intersection of labor and immigration law.
- Examining the impact on union members and other workers of the loss of immigration status, such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and parole, and proposals to eliminate protections for various classes of guestworkers.
Contact Us
For questions about The Movement Project, write to us at info.movementproject@yale.edu.