Politics Disrupted? Collective Intentionality, Inaugural Performativity, and Institutional Receptivity in Undocumented Migrant Struggles

Abstract

Critical scholarship on “the promise‐of‐the‐political” thesis customarily understands undocumented migrant struggles (UMS) as being politically disruptive. However, the question of what gets disrupted, how, by whom, and to what effect tends to be ignored. Building on insights from the empirical literature on UMS and ethnographic research of the “Solidarity March With and Without Papers”, this paper argues that three conditions need to be in place for UMS to be disruptive. First, undocumented activists need to craft collective intentions to challenge the institutional order in and through joint action. Second, protest acts need to effectively interrupt everyday routines symbolising the status quo and instigate replication. Third, UMS need to unsettle and force a response from the order in ways that defy existing institutional logics. These findings are translated into a research agenda that proposes to investigate the relative importance of collective intentionality, inaugural performativity and institutional receptivity for UMS.

Undocumented Immigrant Activism and the Political: Disrupting the Order or Reproducing the Status Quo?

“…parents) can be fruitful strategies to build more inclusive and disruptive subjects. Finally, Swerts’ (2020) study of the Belgian Solidarity March confirmed the importance of strong internal relations and the presence of organisational infrastructure as prerequisites for political subject formation. However, all three cases simultaneously raised warning signs about the potential of existing power hierarchies and categorical fragmentation related to legal status, gender and nationality to undermine incipient forms of solidarity (also see below).…”

“…Both double vulnerability and the politicisation of emotions presuppose that the subjectivities of undocumented migrants are transformed when they become activists. A crucial aspect of this transformation entails what Swerts (2020) calls the crafting of collective intentionality, referring to the joint commitment that activists need to express and uphold towards disrupting and provoking the order. Finally, challenging the thesis that disruptive subjects always need to be situated in the margins (see Dikeç 2017), de Graauw (2020) argues that local “institutional activists” operating from within rather than outside the institutional apparatus can help realise and implement the immigrant rights movement’s long‐standing demands for equal rights.…”

“…The authors in this symposium have diverging opinions about the need to explicate this challenge as well as the most strategic registers wherein disruptive acts need to take place. Swerts (2020), Monforte (2020) and Escudero and Pallares (2020) argue that highly performative acts like marches and civil disobedience actions have the potential to defy paradigms of restricting mobility and illegality because they create a public “scene” and serve as anchoring points capable of inspiring others to act. However, Karaliotas and Kapsali (2020) argue that solely focusing on heroic, eventual acts can cause us to overlook the disruptive potential of seemingly mundane acts like living together in a migrant squat.…”

“…As Nicholls argues, the strong relations needed to produce disruptive subjects are more likely to emerge in centrally located, highly networked and more liberal urban areas than in sprawling, fractured and more conservative, suburban areas. The case of the Solidarity March described by Swerts (2020) further illustrates this point, as the marchers’ effort to scale up their network and connect to grassroots organisations in different locales was hampered by the uneven presence of politicised autonomous groups across Belgium. The importance of urban, liberally leaning environments for fostering disruptive politics also speaks to de Graauw’s (2020) analysis of inclusive immigrant rights policies in New York and San Francisco.…”

“…Similarly, Dikeç (2013:78) relied on the case of the French sans‐papiers movement to argue that the sans‐papiers “disrupt the established order of things by opening up political spaces” by “demonstrating how the established order ‘wronged’ … equality”. However, as Swerts (2020) argues in his contribution to this symposium, critical scholarship on the political and acts of citizenship presumes rather than explains the disruptive qualities of undocumented activism while “key questions of what gets disrupted, how, by whom, and to what effect tend to be ignored”.…”