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

Holger Wilcke

doi:10.17645/si.v6i1.1297

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 <em>despite </em>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 &amp; 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 trade union conference in 2003, analysis reveals that illegalized migrants transformed society in their fight for union membership, but also that their visible campaigning simultaneously comprised strategies of imperceptibility. The second empirical section, which examines the employment stories of illegalized migrants, demonstrates that the everyday practices of illegal work can be understood as ‘imperceptible politics’. The discussion demonstrates that despite the exclusionary mechanisms of the existing social order, illegalized migrants are often able to find work. Thus, they routinely undermine the very foundations of the order that produces their exclusions. I argue that this disruption can be analyzed as migrants’ ‘imperceptible politics’, which in turn can be recognized as migrants’ transformative power.

Highlights

I always compare illegalized migrants to superheroes
As those who have no part, they take their part by working in an imperceptible manner. In this sense their work can be understood as invisible politics—despite ambivalent employment conditions and moments of exploitation and disenfranchisement. This second empirical section demonstrates that both illegalized migrants working without a permit and the sharing of migrant-situated knowledge can be understood as imperceptible politics
It is interesting to note that migration processes had already somewhat changed the societal terrain, even before the political attempt to regulate migration by securing migrant workers with jobs protected by social insurance

Summary

Introduction

I always compare illegalized migrants to superheroes. We are invisible. In this article I have decided to focus on the political practices with which illegalized migrants master the art of living; they are active subjects who organize their lives under complicated conditions of disenfranchisement. They develop tactics and strategies to deal with their situation and many find ways to access the labor market, sharing information and knowledge about employers. For the everyday life of illegalized migrants the question of (in)visibility is a crucial one, as Kim Rygiel has elucidated: If visibility and voice are a key part of the struggles of some irregular migrant group...others have found It necessary to navigate the increasingly restrictive regime of border controls through strategies of disembodiment and invisibility. The two empirical sections on which this article is based comprise of a triangulation of different methods and voices

Theoretical Perspective

Trade Union Representation

Everyday Struggles for Work

The Transformative Power of Imperceptible Politics

Conclusions