The tactical politics of ‘humanitarian’ immigration: negotiating stasis, enacting mobility

Abstract

Inspired by autonomy of migration and acts of citizenship literatures as frameworks for understanding migration, the paper analyzes the case of Haitian migrants in Brazil. It focuses, on the one hand, on the relational processes of constructing Haitian migrants as ‘humanitarian immigrants’ and, on the other, on the (im)perceptible tactics of survival and mobility enacted by them upon arrival. We argue that the ‘humanitarian immigrant’ label negotiates stasis by instantiating an ambivalent and depoliticized subjectivity, modulated in-between the refugee and the immigrant worker. Migrants challenge this framing and the precarity of controls created by it through imperceptible tactical interventions that allow them to provisionally escape the inhospitable conditions of reception at Brazilian borders. In their attempts to resist and redefine the terms of their presence, Haitian migrants have actualized a web of solidarity networks that have fostered alternative understandings of migration management and its relation with citizenship as a site of political struggles.