As migration has become increasingly political and politicized over the last two decades, it has also become a growing point of contention, including by migrants themselves. Migrants and their supporters have increasingly taken part in protests seeking rights, protesting against poor living conditions, denial of rights, or other issues along the U.S.-Mexico border, in Bangladeshi refugee camps, the capital of the European Union, and a UN community center in Libya, just to name a few examples. The demands vary, as do the details of the protesters. But what they tend to share is a language of universal human rights and a strained, uncomfortable relationship with the authorities to whom they are appealing. Why, one might ask, would a government feel the need to respond to individuals who, by definition, are not its citizens? Seen in this light, activist migrants are in a bit of a paradoxical position. Yet when they raise their voices, they tend to challenge the notion that a government exists only to serve its citizens. They instead suggest a new “cosmopolitan citizenship” that pokes holes in the traditional boundaries of statehood. Do their protests work? On this count, the evidence is not clear. Public demonstrations can certainly call attention to conditions faced by migrants, but by no means guarantee action. For instance, migrants and their allies have spent years protesting Australia’s offshoring of asylum seekers, but their campaign to get some refugees freed from years-long detention languished until tennis star Novak Djokovic was detained alongside them in a former Melbourne hotel. Sixteen years ago, hundreds of thousands of people marched in dozens of cities across the United States in support of immigrants’ rights, which may have helped stop legislation that would have criminalized the provision of medical care, housing, food, or other aid to unauthorized immigrants but was unsuccessful in achieving the wholesale reform that the activists had sought. The success of activism is difficult to measure, and it is unfair to gauge whether protest is effective by looking solely at the fate of an individual policy. Social movements are complex, and change can occur in a thousand tiny ways. Yet as legal outsiders, migrants face a disadvantage when they take to the streets.
Best regards,
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected] |
