Transformations of the undocumented youth movement and radical egalitarian citizenship (2016) (original) (raw)

In the past decade, a movement of undocumented migrant youth has emerged in the United States to struggle against their criminalization and discrimination. Whereas it was first described as a movement of 'Dreamers, ' portrayed as hardworking students and cultural Americans who deserve rights despite their illegalized status, the direction of undocumented organizing shifted and moved beyond the Dreamer narrative. Based on fieldwork in California, I argue that the transforming movement of undocumented youth has the potential to emerge as a counter-hegemonic project, in that they reject discourses that reproduce the criminalization of undocumented migrants, which enables a division of the undocumented community into the 'good immigrant' versus the 'bad immigrant. ' Moreover, they move beyond a narrowly defined struggle for legislative reform and citizenship status by organizing undocumented communities in regard to intersectional power structures. In their political struggles they negotiated formal, national-cultural and meritocratic citizenship. Referring to debates on radical democracy and insurgent citizenship, I describe this political practice as radical egalitarian citizenship.