Migrant protests as acts of cosmopolitan citizenship. Issue 8 (17th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Caraus, Tamara
• Is Part Of: Citizenship studies. Volume 22:Issue 8(2018)
• Page Start: 791
• Page End: 809
• Publication Date: 2018-11-17
• Subjects: Migrants -- activism -- citizenship -- cosmopolitanism; Citizenship -- Periodicals; Political participation -- Periodicals; Human rights -- Periodicals; Civil rights -- Periodicals; 323.605
• DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2018.1530194
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1362-1025

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The protests by migrants and refugees are a new form of activism on the global political stage. The most articulated approaches of migrant activism point to the ways in which migrant activism reconfigures citizenship through acts of citizenship. This paper argues that migrants' acts of citizenship are inherently cosmopolitan since protesting migrants reject the monopolization of political subjectivity by the nation-state and take back the legitimate political subjectivity, liberating it from the confines of the nation-state and launching it for the use in the world as a whole. Without a cosmopolitan perspective, the scholars of migrant activism are condemned to an endless acknowledging of a paradox of migrant activism: migrants contest the citizenship of the nation-state, but their requests for papers and legalization reinforce the authority of citizenship. However, the failure is not only of migrant activism but also of political theories that do not offer alternative, non-statist ways of understanding and addressing migrants' claims. Framing migrant protests as acts of cosmopolitan citizenship could already be a form of pre-institutionalizing cosmopolitanism, and migrant activism could be seen as instituting new forms of acting beyond the nation-state.