Gaining a Voice: Storytelling and Undocumented Youth Activism in Chicago*

Swerts, Thomas

doi:10.17813/1086-671x-20-3-345

Cited by 24 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…DACA gives qualified Dreamers relief from deportation and permission to work in the United States legally (Milkman, ; Zatz & Rodriguez, ). DREAMers and their allies were actively mobilizing prior to the passage of the legislation by using their personal narratives (borrowing from LGBTQ activists) of “coming out” as undocumented and unafraid during protest campaigns between 2010 and 2012 (Nicholls, ; Seif, ; Swerts, ; Terriquez, ; Zimmerman, ). Undocumented youth engaged in civil disobedience actions including chaining themselves to the White House.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigrant rights and social movements

et al. 2018

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The disciplinary fields of immigration and social movements have largely developed as two distinct subareas of sociology. Scholars contend that immigrant rights, compared to other movements, have been given less attention in social movement research. Studies of immigrant-based movements in recent decades have reached a stage whereby we can now assess how immigrant movement scholarship informs the general social movement literature in several areas. In this article, we show the contributions of empirical studies of immigrant movements in four primary arenas of social movement scholarship: (a) emergence; (b) participation; (c) framing; and (d) outcomes. Contemporary immigrant struggles offer social movement scholarship opportunities to incorporate these campaigns and enhance current theories and concepts as earlier protest waves advanced studies of collective action.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigrant rights and social movements

et al. 2018

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“…As these examples show, sharing personal stories became a quasi‐institutionalized political script in the organization that in turn informs how undocumented youth make claims in public (Swerts, ).…”

Section: The Backstage Of Citizenship: Developing Political Scripts Imentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Put differently, to populations whose very residence in the city is illegalized and criminalized by state actors, the city offers a ‘backstage' and ‘frontstage' for struggles over citizenship. What happens in the backstages of citizenship informs what goes on in its frontstages and vice versa (see also Swerts, ). Further research could explore such feedback loops and the dynamics of evaluation, validation and action that come with it in more detail.…”

Section: Conclusion: Liminal Politics and The Symbolic Malleability mentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating Space For Citizenship: The Liminal Politics of Undocumented Activism

Swerts

2017

Int J Urban Regional Res

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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.

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“…Citizenship scholars on the other hand interpret active citizenship practices of undocumented migrants as expressions of political belonging and challenges to the status quo (Isin 2009;McNevin 2009;Nyers and Rygiel 2012). Yet other studies stress the ambivalences implied in how undocumented migrants claim formal citizenship by stressing their economic contribution, educational achievement and community service (Nicholls 2013;Swerts 2015Swerts , 2017aNicholls et al 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

In search of recognition: the political ambiguities of undocumented migrants’ active citizenship

Swerts

Oosterlynck

2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Existing scholarship on the active citizenship of undocumented migrants is inconclusive on its perils and promises. While some scholars see it as symptomatic of the moral economy that makes legal recognition dependent on demonstrating civic deservingness, others argue that it represents a potential site of contestation against illegalisation. In this paper, we argue that we need to focus on the complex processes that drive undocumented migrants' quest for recognition in order to understand the political ambiguities implicated in how they civically engage themselves. We use the case of CollectActif (CA), an undocumented-led antifood waste collective in Brussels, to argue that methods of participatory action research (PAR) are better placed than ex-post analyses to show how recognition processes unfold and evolve over time. We show that recognition depends on establishing 'equivalence' to prevailing norms and forms of civic organisation. Hence, CA members generated solidarity and created new publics by behaving as active citizens. Yet, despite increased visibility, CA struggled to be recognised by established actors in the field as actors with equal rights to being and speaking. Based on these findings, we argue that tensions between equivalence and equality help to explain the political ambiguities of active citizenship.

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Gaining a Voice: Storytelling and Undocumented Youth Activism in Chicago*

Cited by 24 publications

References 3 publications

Immigrant rights and social movements

Immigrant rights and social movements

Creating Space For Citizenship: The Liminal Politics of Undocumented Activism

In search of recognition: the political ambiguities of undocumented migrants’ active citizenship

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