Border (In)Securities: Normative and differential belonging in LGBTQ and immigrant rights discourse

Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 136-155

  Chávez, Karma R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

Coalitional Subjectivity; Cultural Citizenship; Family Values; Good Citizenship; The Stranger

Indexed keywords

EID: 79960468981     PISSN: 14791420     EISSN: 14794233     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14791421003763291     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. There are of course exceptions. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force openly requests that gay people support immigration rights, and the United Farm Workers openly advocate for marriage equality.
2. Eithne Luibhéid, "Queer/Migration: An Unruly Body of Scholarship, " GLQ 14, (2008): 169-90.
3. Yasmin Nair, "Nair Views: Gay Immigration (and) Inequality, " Windy City Times (2007, July 1), http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID_15470.
4. Nair, 'Viewpoints: Queer Immigration: Change the Paradigms,' Windy City Times (2008, January 9), http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID_17177 (accessed June 1, 2008).
5. I use "migrant" to refer to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers whether they have documents or not. When organizations use "immigrant, " I utilize their language. "Queer" refers to LGBT people and others such as prostitutes or "welfare mothers" who fail to conform to the conventions of heteronormativity. For a more elaborate discussion on the use of these terms, see: Eithne Luibhéid, "Introduction: Queer Migration and Citizenship, " in Queer Migrations: Sexuality, US Citizenship, and Border Crossings, ed. Eithne Luibhéid and Lionel CantúJr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), ix_xlvi. When referring to mainstream organizations that I argue engage in normative discourses of belonging, I generally refer to them using the acronym LGBT. This is a political choice as the term "queer" is not one that these organizations generally espouse to describe their identities or their modes of activism. I use the acronym LGBTQ, where the Q stands for "queer" when that is the term organizations use in their writings, or in times when I am referring to both mainstream and progressive organizations.
6. Much debate has long existed within feminist theory about the terms "coalition" and "alliance. " To remain consistent with the language that activists in CDH and Wingspan use, I use the term "coalition" to describe their relationship.
7. Aimee Carrillo Rowe, "Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation, " NWSA Journal 17, (2005)
8. Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 15-46.
9. For example, Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002)
10. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)
11. Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)
12. Siobhan B. Somerville, "Notes toward a Queer History of Naturalization, " American Quarterly 57 (2005): 659-75, Somerville, "Sexual Aliens and the Racialized State: A Queer Reading of the 1952 US Immigration and Nationality Act, " in Queer Migrations: Sexuality, US Citizenship, and Border Crossings, ed. Eithne Luibhéid and Lionel CantúJr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 75-91.
13. Shannon Minter, "Sodomy and Public Morality Offenses under US Immigration Law: Penalizing Lesbian and Gay Identity, " Immigration and Nationality Law Review 15 (1993-4): 428-74.
14. Margot Canaday, "Who Is a Homosexual?': The Consolidation of Sexual Identities in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Immigration Law, " Law & Social Inquiry 28 (2003): 351-86.
15. Lionel CantúJr., The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossings and Mexican Immigrant Men, ed. Nancy A. Naples and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (New York: New York University Press, 2009)
16. Bettina M. Fernandez, "HIV Exclusion of Immigrants under the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986, " La Raza Law Journal 5 (1992): 65-107.
17. Eithne Luibhéid, "The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act: An 'End' to Exclusion?, " Positions 5 (1997): 501-22.
18. Shane Phelan, Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001), 29.
19. Katarzyna Marciniak, Alienhood: Citizenship, Exile, and the Logic of Difference (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2006), 9. David Cole also extends a version of these arguments in his discussion of the "enemy alien" in post-9/11 US. See, David Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (New York: The New Press, 2003). The notion of the stranger in connection to immigrants and nonwhite racial others in Western social theory has a long history. See, Robert Ezra Park, "The Concept of Social Distance as Applied to the Study of Racial Attitudes and Racial Relations,' Journal of Applied Sociology 8 (1924): 339-44.
20. Alfred Schutz, "The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology, " The American Journal of Sociology 49 (1944): 499-507.
21. Phelan, Sexual Strangers, 31.
22. Jasbir Kaur Puar and Amit S. Rai, "Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots, " Social Text 20 (2002): 118-48.
23. Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
24. For example, Renato Rosaldo, "Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism, " in Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Space, Identity, and Rights, ed. William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 27-38.
25. Toby Miller, "Culture, Dislocation, and Citizenship, " in Global Migration, Social Change, and Cultural Transformation, ed. Emory Elliot, Jasmine Payne, and Patricia Ploesch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 165-86, 165-86.
26. Lauren Berlant, "Uncle Sam Needs a Wife: Citizenship and Denegation, " in Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002), 144-74.
27. Aihwa Ong, "Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States, " Current Anthropology 37 (1996): 738.
28. Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
29. Although some scholars have written extended texts on LGBT and immigration issues (as noted above), the first community report of this kind was: The Audre Lorde Project, "Community at a Crossroads: US Right Wing Policies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender Immigrants of Color in New York City" (New York City: The Audre Lorde Project, Inc., 2004).
30. Importantly, Family, Unvalued is also lauded by Independent Gay Forum, which is, according to Duggan, the quintessential homonormative organization. See: http://www. indegayforum.org/news/show/30952.html (accessed September 1, 2009).
31. For example, Dana L. Cloud, "The Rhetoric of BFamily Values_: Scapegoating, Utopia, and the Privatization of Social Responsibility, " Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 387-419.
32. Janet R. Jakobsen, "Can Homosexuals End Western Civilization as We Know It? Family Values in a Global Economy, " in Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism, ed. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 49-70.
33. Rebecca Dingo, "Securing the Nation: Neoliberalism's US Family Values in a Transnational Gendered Economy, " Journal of Women's History 16, (2004): 173-86.
34. Patricia Hill Collins, "It's All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation, " in Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World, ed. Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 156-76.
35. Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
36. Lisa Duggan, "The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism, " in Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 179. For other cogent and powerful critiques of normativity in relation to LGBT movements, see Cathy J. Cohen, "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Real Radical Potential of Queer Politics?, " GLQ 3 (1997): 437-65.
37. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: The Free Press, 1999).
38. The Permanent Partners Immigration Act was originally introduced in Congress in 2000. Since then, the name of the legislation has shifted to the Uniting American Families Act, though the content of the proposed act remains similar and the term "permanent partners, " remains in place. This term, "permanent partners, " presumably serves as a reminder that although these partners cannot be legally married, their relationships are in fact permanent, in spite of the likelihood that a majority of all relationships are impermanent.
39. Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under US Law (New York: Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, 2006), 61.
40. Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under US Law (New York: Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, 2006), 113.
41. Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under US Law (New York: Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, 2006), 15.
42. Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under US Law (New York: Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, 2006), 16.
43. Ong, "Cultural Citizenship, " 737.
44. See also, Toby Miller, The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject (Baltimore, NJ: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
45. David Batstone and Eduardo Mendieta, eds., The Good Citizen (New York: Routledge,1999)
46. Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging (New York: Seagull Books, 2007).
47. Amy L. Brandzel, "Queering Citizenship? Same-Sex Marriage and the State, " GLQ 11 (2005): 171-204.
48. See also, Diane Richardson, "Claiming Citizenship? Sexuality, Citizenship and Lesbian/Feminist Theory, " Sexualities 3 (2000): 255-72.
49. Richardson, "Locating Sexualities: From Here to Normality, " Sexualities 7 (2004): 39-411.
50. Richardson, "Desiring Sameness? The Rise of a Neoliberal Politics of Normalisation, " Antipode 37 (2005): 515-35.
51. See Susanne Jonas, "Decolonization from within the Americas: Latin@ Immigrant Responses to the US National Security Regime and the Challenges of Reframing the Immigration Debate, " in Latin@S in the World-System: Decolonization Struggles in the Twenty-First Century US Empire, ed. Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and José David Saldívar (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 183-98.
52. "About the Forum, " Immigration Forum, http://www.immigrationforum.org/about (accessed September 1, 2009).
53. Watch and Equality, Family, Unvalued, 91.
54. Watch and Equality, Family, Unvalued, 51.
55. Watch and Equality, Family, Unvalued, 14.
56. Miller, "Culture, Dislocation, and Citizenship. "
57. María Lugones, "Purity, Impurity, and Separation, " Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 19 (1994): 458-79.
58. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999)
59. Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2000), 6.
60. Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, 56.
61. Carrillo Rowe, "Be Longing. "
62. Carrillo Rowe, "Be Longing. ", 35.
63. Proposition 107, Protect Marriage Arizona, sought to include an amendment to Arizona's state constitution that defined marriage as between one man and one woman, and denied any non-married state employees*homosexual or heterosexual*access to domestic partner benefits. The anti-migrant measures included provisions that: (1) prohibit any undocumented person charged with a felony offense from posting bail (Proposition 100)
64. Make it impossible for undocumented migrants to receive punitive damages after winning a claim in civil court (Proposition 102)
65. Name English as the official language of the state for all official government business (Proposition 103)
66. Prevent undocumented people from taking adult education classes or getting child care assistance, scholarships, grants, tuition assistance or in-state tuition (Proposition 300).
67. During my year-long qualitative research project studying the coalition between Wingspan and CDH, I was on the committee which produced both the joint statements. As a committee member, I read drafts and inputted changes that members of the organizations desired. I offered minimal input on the direction of the statements.
68. Queers for Economic Justice, "Queers and Immigration: A Vision Statement, " http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/immigration/qej_01.htm (accessed April 22, 2010).
69. 'Coalición De Derechos Humanos and Wingspan Joint Statement: Stand against Racism and Homophobia,' Wingspan, http://wingspan.org/content/news_wingspan_details.php?story_id_353 (accessed September 1, 2009).
70. 'Coalición De Derechos Humanos and Wingspan Joint Statement: Stand against Racism and Homophobia,' Wingspan, http://wingspan.org/content/news_wingspan_details.php?story_id_353 (accessed September 1, 2009).
71. Interview with author, April 2007.
72. Justice, "Queers and Immigration. "
73. Justice, "Queers and Immigration. "
74. Justice, "Queers and Immigration. "
75. CDH and Wingspan, "Joint Statement".
76. CDH and Wingspan, "Joint Statement".
77. As a number of scholars have suggested, in the US this slippage between citizen and alien is an historically prominent one. See, Ian Haney-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996)
78. Luibhéid, Eithne, "Sexuality, Migration, and the Shifting Line between Legal and Illegal Status, " GLQ 14, nos. 2-3 (2008): 289-316.
79. This is perhaps especially difficult for Latinos/as who not only get lumped into a homogenized group, but are also racially similar to Mexicans who are imagined to be the ideal "illegal alien. " See, Eduardo Mendieta, "Becoming Citizens, Becoming Hispanics, " in The Good Citizen, ed. David Batstone and Eduardo Mendieta (New York: Routledge, 1999), 113-32.
80. Ngai, Impossible Subjects.
81. "Coalición De Derechos Humanos and Wingspan_Joint Statement: Continued Stand against Racism and Homophobia, " Wingspan, http://wingspan.org/content/news_wing span_details.php?story_id_359 (accessed September 1, 2009). As a side note, similar action steps also appeared in an unpublished statement issued by members of the People of Color Caucus of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change Conference in 2006.
82. Miller, "Culture, Dislocation, and Citizenship, " 180.
83. Aimee Carrillo Rowe, "Whose 'America'? The Politics of Rhetoric and Space in the Formation of US Nationalism, " Radical History Review 89 (2004): 115-34.
84. Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).