Imperceptible Politics: Illegalized Migrants and Their Struggles for Work and Unionization

Abstract: This article argues that illegalized migrants carry the potential for social change not only through their acts of resistance but also in their everyday practices. This is the case despite illegalized migrants being the most disenfranchised subjects produced by the European border regime. In line with Jacques Rancière (1999) these practices can be understood as ‘politics’. For Rancière, becoming a political subject requires visibility, while other scholars (Papadopoulos & Tsianos, 2007; Rygiel, 2011) stress that this is not necessarily the case. They argue that political subjectivity can also be achieved via invisible means; important in this discussion as invisibility is an essential strategy of illegalized migrants. The aim of this article is to resolve this binary and demonstrate, via empirical examples, that the two concepts of visibility and imperceptibility are often intertwined in the messy realities of everyday life. In the first case study, an intervention at the ver.di tr

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Social Inclusion ; 6 (2018) 1 ; 157-165

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Politik

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2018
• Creator: Wilcke, Holger

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/si.v6i1.1297
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2019080413010070112991
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:45 PM CET