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作者

来源

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH,Vol.41,Issue3,P.379-395

语言

英文

关键字

urban citizenship; political subject formation; irregular migration; social movements; Chicago; Brussels; UNITED-STATES; CITY; IMMIGRATION; ILLEGALITY; MIGRANTS; LIVES

作者单位

[Swerts, Thomas] Univ Antwerp, Dept Sociol, Ctr Inequal Poverty Social Exclus & City OASeS, Sint Jacobstr 2-4, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. Swerts, T (reprint author), Univ Antwerp, Dept Sociol, Ctr Inequal Poverty Social Exclus & City OASeS, Sint Jacobstr 2-4, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. E-Mail: Thomas.Swerts@uantwerpen.be

摘要

Since 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 citizenship. 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 intersticesor the spaces in between legality and illegality, visibility and invisibility and formality and informalityoffer strategic opportunities for undocumented activism. I introduce a theoretical understanding of liminal politics that focuses on the spatial and symbolic practices by means of which the undocumented, who find themselves betwixt and between statuses, develop innovative methods of political expression. Based on a multi-sited 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 immigrants 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 appropriating public space. This study therefore highlights the spatiality, theatricality and performativity of emerging forms of urban citizenship.