Assembling insurgent citizenship: immigrant advocacy struggles in the Washington DC metropolitan area |
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| Authors: | Helga Leitner Christopher Strunk |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Geography, University of California, 1255 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524, USAhleitner@geog.ucla.edu;3. Department of Geography, Augustana College, 639 38th Street, Rock Island, IL 61201, USA |
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| Abstract: | This article examines the political and spatial registers of struggles against exclusionary local immigration policies and for more welcoming policies in the Washington DC metropolitan area, one of the hotspots for both local anti-immigration policies and immigrant advocacy in the United States. We conceptualize immigrant advocacy not simply as an alliance, but instead as an assemblage that brings together a diverse set of differently positioned actors and nonhuman actants. The assemblage enacts a diverse politics that deploys different forms of activism, while engaging different publics (e.g., religious communities, unions, the larger public sphere in public spaces, etc.) and the state in complex ways. From acting outside the state to engaging in claims-making towards the state, immigrant advocates are making claims and actions that challenge and go beyond dominant conceptions of citizenship rights and liberal democratic politics. The spatial register is similarly diverse. The immigrant advocacy assemblage is confronted with and enacts a different politics of place in central cities and inner- and outer-ring suburbs. Contestations of exclusionary local policies, however, are not simply about a local politics of place. To the contrary, some actors and actants in the assemblage are actively involved in extra-local networking, collaborating across jurisdictional boundaries—between central cities and inner-and outer-ring suburbs within the Washington DC metropolitan area and across the United States. The complexities of these contestations call into question post-political narratives of “proper” politics, underscoring the need for an empirically grounded critical theory of democracy. This article contributes to this task by providing a geographically and historically sensitive analysis of the immigrant advocacy assemblage. |
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| Keywords: | insurgent citizenship assemblage “proper” politics immigrant advocacy exclusionary immigration policies |
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