Creating Space For Citizenship: The Liminal Politics of Undocumented Activism

Abstract

Creating SpaCe For CitizenShip: The Liminal Politics of Undocumented Activism thomas swerts abstractSince the turn of the century, urban scholars have argued that cities are the sites par excellence where new political subjects are emerging and changing the face of citizen ship. Undocumented activism is often invoked as an example of this phenomenon and an object of renewed interest. What remains unclear, however, is how these precarious actors, who are barred from institutional channels for voicing their grievances and who have little access to resources, become political. This article argues that the urban interstices--or the spaces in between legality and illegality, visibility and invisibility and formality and informality--offer strategic opportunities for undocumented activism. I introduce a theo retical understanding of liminal politics that focuses on the spatial and symbolic prac tices by means of which the undocumented, who find themselves betwixt and between statuses, develop innovative methods of political expression. Based on a multisited ethnography, I demonstrate that undocumented activists craft urban space as a 'backstage' as well as a 'frontstage' for their struggles over citizenship. On the one hand, undocumented immi grants build safe spaces in which they can (re)imagine their subjectivities and develop political scripts. On the other hand, they stage and enact these political scripts by appropri ating public space. This study therefore highlights the spatiality, theatricality and perfor mativity of emerging forms of urban citizenship.

Reeling in Newcomers: Urban Competition around Migrant Reception in Brussels

“…This article contributes to the burgeoning urban literature on immigrant reception (Uitermark et al ., ; Amin, ; Darling, ) and local struggles over citizenship (Isin, ; Nyers and Rygiel ; Swerts, ) by showing how urban coalitions compete over, cater for and manage newcomers on the ground and how the resulting recruitment and retention strategies influence newcomers in practice. More particularly, I demonstrated that recruiting and retention are means that are used strategically by the predominantly Flemish urban coalition to attract newcomers, build commitment and eventually increase their political influence within the city.…”

“…The existing scholarship on citizenship struggles at the local level mainly focuses on how informally organized groups and urban grassroots movements claim their right to citizenship (see e.g. Isin, ; Nyers and Rygiel; ; Swerts, ). The important role played by institutionalized groupings in urban struggles over citizenship and their competing views over what constitutes ‘good citizenship’ thereby gets overlooked (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Ireland, ; Uitermark et al ., ).…”

Contested Territories, Liminal Polities, Performative Citizenship: A Comparative Analysis

“…The concept of liminality has already been applied to a number of categories of citizenship including, but not limited to, women (Roy 2010;Boutkhil 2016) and undocumented migrants and refugees (Skeiker 2010;Swerts 2017). Thomas Swerts develops a theory of 'liminal politics' that utilizes both liminality and performance.…”

The role of urban movements in the process of local spatial planning and the development of participation mechanism

“…Moreover, new types of political subjects that had previously been excluded from civil rights and the institutional channels to voice their claims have become included in the phenomenon of urban activism. Referred to as "undocumented urban activism", this process increasingly often takes place among illegal and often invisible immigrants inhabiting the city informally (Swerts 2017). However, the main focus of the article is placed on institutionalised urban movements and their role in the process of local urban planning and social participation, and on their cooperation with local authorities.…”