Unsettling Citizenship: Queer and Undocumented Im/migrant Narratives of Movement, Migration, and Resistance in the U.S.

Abstract

This interdisciplinary research centers on 21st-century queer and undocumented im/migrant cultural production and political organizing to understand questions of rights, citizenship, and belonging in the U.S. I approach citizenship and belonging from socially, physically, politically, and economically marginalized subjectivity. By analyzing cultural, visual, and literary text produced by artists who identify as women, queer, and (dis)abled, this dissertation interpellates national narratives of belonging, complicating the story of im/migrant assimilation that has dominated North American scholarship. The project centers (dis)ability as a category intrinsically linked to im/migrant subjectivity by understanding national exclusion as an expansive project grounded on colonialism that continues to shape the daily lives of people imagined as unfit citizens or those who do not belong. Through what I term the epistemology of the unsettled, I highlight the limits and possibilities of bringing together (dis)ability and im/migrant discourse. Focusing on queer and undocumented im/migrant networks of resistance reorients assimilation narratives of im/migration to emphasize the migrant relationship to (dis)ability, presents new perspectives on citizenship, and rethinks paradigms of racial liberalism and Civil Rights.

Traditionally, discussions about U.S. immigration policies have focused on country-specific research and analysis, particularly on the U.S.-Mexico border or the Chinese Exclusion Act, limiting the ethnic and racial scope of conversations on im/migration. I contribute to existing scholarship by interweaving im/migrant subjects from different ethnicities, national origins, and linguistic backgrounds but living in the U.S. and responding to the weight of settler colonialism and capitalist exploitation of racialized im/migrants. I attend to the different migratory experiences alongside racial, ethnic, gender, and (dis)ability frameworks by contextualizing colonial and imperial histories to highlight the broader effects of white settler logic around race, citizenship, and borders beyond specific im/migration policies.