This study examines how immigration policies construct pathways into irregular legal statuses and models three pathways: no-visa entry, overstaying, and befallen irregularity. Drawing on literature on the sociolegal production of migrant irregularity, this study hypothesizes that variation in contexts of reception and migrants’ access to forms of capital and institutional connections will produce different pathways. Retrospective MAFE-Senegal data provide legal status histories. Results show pathways that occur early in a migrant's trip-no-visa entry and overstaying-are more sensitive to both contextual variables and access to forms of capital. In contrast, befallen irregularity is less related to contextual variation.
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