Jamie Goodwin-White (Department of Geography UCLA), David Jacobson (Department of Sociology, University of South Florida)

“’Citizenship from the outside’: Undocumented immigrants and the making of civic and political life”.

We argue that profound changes take place regarding citizenship that are not fully captured in scholarly analysis or, for that matter, in public discussion. The challenge is that conventional analytical categories are unable to account for these fundamental changes. If, instead, we view citizenship developments through a civic and social lens–rather than with the assumption of formal legal citizenship as the end-point–the question, what are we missing, becomes more straightforward to address. By adopting a social and civic lens, we argue we can reveal several key characteristics of citizenship that have been obscured by a focus on formal institutions. Citizenship is a dynamic, lived experience shaped by social interactions, cultural practices, and political contestations–even the severe ones proffered by populist leaders. We will discuss, inter alia, the following propositions: 1) Citizenship and rights develop through claims from “outsiders.” 2) The liminal is constitutive, not a marginal, deferred, or an in-between status. We witness, repeatedly, that institutions (notably, but not only, courts) are forced to take account of social and civic practices driven by undocumented migrants. If we think of it in terms of a civic lens, key derivative questions arise–notably, how should we understand “integration” in this context?