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

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 illegalization.

In this seminar, based on a paper co-authored with Stijn Oosterlync, Thomas Swerts argues 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.

He explores these processes through an action research on CollectActif (CA), an undocumented-led anti-food waste collective that accommodated refugees during the ‘migration crisis’ in Brussels. He shows that CA members generated solidarity and ‘performed’ their civic deservingness by behaving as active citizens.

Yet, despite increased visibility, recognition in civil society failed to ensue. These findings show that recognition depends on establishing ‘equivalence’ to prevailing norms and forms of civic organization.

Gaining ‘equality’ as an actor with equal rights to being and speaking within that field, however, requires a redistribution of status between established and challenging actors. Based on these findings, we argue that tensions between equivalence and equality help to explain the political ambiguities of active citizenship.

About the speaker

Thomas Swerts is an Assistant Professor in Urban Sociology at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the nexus between irregular migration, political sociology and urban studies. His book manuscript, Citizen X: Undocumented migrants as activists (under contract at the University of Chicago Press), is a comparative ethnographic study of undocumented activism in Chicago and Brussels. His most current research focuses on the dynamic of civil society in deprived neighborhoods.