Struggles at the Boundaries of Neoliberal Citizenship: Theorizing Immigrant-Led Movements in Contemporary Europe

Abstract

This chapter aims to explore from a theoretical point of view the potential for social transformation entailed by migrant struggles directed against neoliberal migration governance and citizenship regime in contemporary Europe. In order to let the transformation potential of migrant struggles emerge, I will stress in particular the processes of political subjectivization through which migrants, especially but non exclusively undocumented one, construct themselves as autonomous political subjects to whom ‘the right to have rights’ is due by co-citizens and institutions. In this chapter, I will present a classification of migrant struggles inspired by the protest events which took place in Europe since the 1990s, with a special focus on those occurred during the economic crisis. I adopt as classification criteria the claims raised by struggling migrants against the different mechanisms which enact, from their critical point of view, neoliberal migration governance and citizenship regime. Three main fields of contention emerge and interconnect with one-another: freedom of movement against bordering mechanisms; right to stay and to choose where to live against irregularization and precarization mechanisms; right to free and decent work against exploitation mechanisms. Those claims, addressed to local, national and European authorities, anticipate an alternative idea of society based, among others, on a cosmopolitan, i.e. truly universal access to membership and rights linked to residence rather than nationality or legal status, within an exploitation-free model of economic development, and a real democratic and pluralistic conception of the political community.