Citizens of the City: Undocumented Latinx Migrants Organising Politically in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Abstract

Abstract Across the globe marginalised urban residents have organised for improved access to rights nominally afforded them as citizens. While studies of such insurgent citizenship movements mostly focus on formal citizens, I examine here how undocumented migrants have drawn upon past labour to organise for improved working conditions and the “right to the city” free of deportation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Latinx migrants who worked in post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans, Louisiana, this study identified wage theft, work injury, and potential deportation as shaping their political activism. As reconstruction ended and immigration enforcement hardened throughout the 2010s, these workers framed their past labour as a moral and economic contribution worthy of rights and recognition. Key US industries such as construction rely on undocumented workers. These findings thus contribute to a growing literature on how undocumented migrants are also insurgent citizens by shifting analysis to labour’s importance in movement building.