Outline
Summary - “Documenting the undocumented: Toward a queer politics of no borders” by Melissa Autumn White
Questions being asked
Is the promise of migrant mobilization achievable? By what means is it worth it?
Main argument
Author argues that the fight for queer no borders is worth taking the risk despite the drawbacks of not being able to take down the entire oppressive system. She references examples from the “Let Alvaro Stay” campaign videos and Julio Salgado’s portraits to show how this type of mobility moves the community forward towards a queer no borders vision. The author then utilizes the concept of performative contradiction to critique the queer migrant activists’ strategy of methodological nationalism, which perpetuates …show more content…
“visibility politics:” “a politics of recognition, visibility and representation”
Critique: Author prefers “thoroughgoing critique of how the control and regulation of mobility and identity function as central technologies of capitalist sovereignty” (979). This means that as a result of a nation motivated by capitalist interests, communities are regularizing the right to be queer in the nation-state and documenting it in exchange for migrants’ ability to belong.
Vision of “queer without borders:” The global acceptance and identification of LGBTQ without inherent nationalist ties and rhetoric
Main Critique: “Performative contradiction”
Definition:
Advocate’s dilemma: advancing migrant rights within national contexts …show more content…
Yet, at the same time, such representational tactics – in the form of announcing a new ‘identity’ formation – risk subtending the radical potential of such convergent politics within a register of visual containment: normativizing by definition
Both the ‘Let Alvaro Stay’ campaign and the ‘I Am Undocuqueer’ project are examples of demands for regularization, a means to legalize or ‘regularize’ the status of undocumented migrants (991).
Fighting for ‘fairer’ immigration policies is not a solution to the violences that are produced and organized through the nation-state form as a motor for global
Summary - “Documenting the undocumented: Toward a queer politics of no borders” by Melissa Autumn White
Questions being asked
Is the promise of migrant mobilization achievable? By what means is it worth it?
Main argument
Author argues that the fight for queer no borders is worth taking the risk despite the drawbacks of not being able to take down the entire oppressive system. She references examples from the “Let Alvaro Stay” campaign videos and Julio Salgado’s portraits to show how this type of mobility moves the community forward towards a queer no borders vision. The author then utilizes the concept of performative contradiction to critique the queer migrant activists’ strategy of methodological nationalism, which perpetuates …show more content…
“visibility politics:” “a politics of recognition, visibility and representation”
Critique: Author prefers “thoroughgoing critique of how the control and regulation of mobility and identity function as central technologies of capitalist sovereignty” (979). This means that as a result of a nation motivated by capitalist interests, communities are regularizing the right to be queer in the nation-state and documenting it in exchange for migrants’ ability to belong.
Vision of “queer without borders:” The global acceptance and identification of LGBTQ without inherent nationalist ties and rhetoric
Main Critique: “Performative contradiction”
Definition:
Advocate’s dilemma: advancing migrant rights within national contexts …show more content…
Yet, at the same time, such representational tactics – in the form of announcing a new ‘identity’ formation – risk subtending the radical potential of such convergent politics within a register of visual containment: normativizing by definition
Both the ‘Let Alvaro Stay’ campaign and the ‘I Am Undocuqueer’ project are examples of demands for regularization, a means to legalize or ‘regularize’ the status of undocumented migrants (991).
Fighting for ‘fairer’ immigration policies is not a solution to the violences that are produced and organized through the nation-state form as a motor for global