Worker centres and coming out politics in migrant struggles

Abstract

ABSTRACT Through an ethnographic account of an immigrant worker centre in San Francisco, this paper examines their role in brokering the practice of citizenship among undocumented workers through strategies of visibility and recognition. Positioned as critical brokers in migrant struggles, worker centres aim to build the collective ‘political muscle’ of those denied formal rights. Unlike previous research that documents the evolution and scope of worker centre activities, and their contribution to a worker-centred moral economy, this article focuses on how these representational brokers contribute to migration governance, particularly of precaritized workers who rely on them for their livelihoods. Drawing on critical citizenship and migration perspectives, it considers migrant activisms that are neither entirely voluntaristic nor particularly emancipatory. Instead, these mediated enactments are situated alongside a broader, increasingly normative (and assimilationist) process of ‘coming out of the shadows’ – a process that is widely celebrated and encouraged as it is assumed to mark an ontological shift from anonymity, nonbeing, and shame to defiant resistance. Here, the concept of ‘coming out’ emphasizes the highly laborious, selective, and normalizing nature of coming out politics. In the context of the worker centre movement, ‘coming out of the shadows’ entails heightened exposure and risk-taking among those with precarious immigration statuses and labour prospects, thereby contributing to an institutional culture of compulsive (and compulsory) self-disclosure.