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Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political

Online ISBN:
9780231522243
Print ISBN:
9780231151283
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
Book

Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political

Anne McNevin
Anne McNevin
Monash University, Clayton Campus
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Published online:
19 November 2015
Published in print:
28 June 2011
Online ISBN:
9780231522243
Print ISBN:
9780231151283
Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Abstract

This book investigates the role of irregular migrants in the transformation of citizenship, and argues that irregular status is an immanent (rather than aberrant) condition of global capitalism, one that is formed by the fast-tracked processes of globalization. It describes how irregular migrants complicate the boundaries of citizenship and stretch the parameters of political belonging. It explains that this group is comprised of refugees, asylum seekers, “illegal” labor migrants, and stateless persons, and argues that they occupy new sovereign spaces that generate new subjectivities. The book casts irregular migrants as more than mere victims of sovereign power, shuttled from one location to the next. Incorporating examples from the United States, Australia, and France, it shows how migrants reject their position as “illegal” outsiders and make claims on the communities in which they live and work. It says that, for these migrants, outsider status operates as both a mode of subjectification and as a site of active resistance, forcing observers to rethink the enactment of citizenship. The book connects irregular migrant activism to the complex rescaling of the neoliberal state. Mapping the broad dynamics of political belonging in a neoliberal era, the book provides an insight into the social and spatial transformation of citizenship, sovereignty, and power.

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