Abstract
From the mid-2000s, the United States and South Africa, respectively, experienced significant pro-migrant and anti-migrant mobilizations. Economically insecure groups played leading roles. Why did these groups emphasize politics of migration, and to what extent did the very different mobilizations reflect parallel underlying mechanisms? Drawing on 41 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 119 interviews with activists and residents, I argue that the mobilizations deployed two common strategies: symbolic group formation rooted in demands for recognition, and targeting the state as a key source of livelihood. These twin strategies encouraged economically insecure groups to emphasize national identities and, in turn, migration. Yet, they manifested in different types of mobilization due to the varying characteristics of the groups involved, and the different national imaginaries and organizing legacies they had to draw upon. The analysis demonstrates the capacity of economically insecure groups to make collective claims. It also shows that within the context of anti-migrant nationalism, economic insecurity amplifies the significance of national belonging, citizenship, and migration as important terrains of collective struggle.
Keywords
Introduction
In the second half of the 2000s, the United States and South Africa both experienced major events involving foreign-born residents. In spring 2006, massive protests for migrant rights traversed the United States. Between February and May, three to five million protestors – primarily Latino migrants – protested HR4437, legislation that would have made it a criminal offense to be in the country without legal documentation (Bloemraad et al., 2011). Two years later, in May 2008, xenophobic violence spread through the impoverished urban townships and informal shack settlements of South Africa. Black South Africans physically attacked foreign-born Black Africans, chased them from their homes, looted their property, and demanded they return to their countries of birth. The attacks left more than 60 people dead, many more injured, and up to 100,000 displaced from their homes (Misago et al., 2010). The two events were unique in size, but not in form. On smaller scales, pro-migrant protests continued in the United States, while anti-migrant attacks continued in South Africa.
These mobilizations appeared to have little in common. One set of mobilizations took place in a wealthy country of the Global North (United States), the other in a middle-income country of the Global South (South Africa). Whereas foreign-born residents, including many low-wage workers, propelled the protests in the United States (Pulido, 2007), native-born residents, including large numbers of unemployed, led the attacks in South Africa (Misago et al., 2010). Significantly, the United States mobilizations sought to include migrants, while the South African mobilizations sought to exclude them. Despite these differences, however, there was a fundamental similarity: both forms of mobilization focused on migration as the object of struggle. In this sense, they converged on common political terrain, even if that politics manifested in different specific forms. This article aims to explain the convergence. To what extent did parallel underlying mechanisms propel pro-migrant protests in the United States and anti-migrant attacks in South Africa?
To address this question, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists and residents in sub-national regions where the two mobilizations were especially prevalent: California, United States; and Gauteng, South Africa. The main protagonists in each case – foreign-born workers in California, unemployed and insecurely employed citizens in Gauteng – lacked the structural power needed to significantly challenge employers or disrupt the economy. In response, I argue, these economically insecure groups deployed two common strategies: symbolic group formation rooted in demands for recognition, and targeting the state as a key source of livelihood. These twin strategies for building power led to mobilization around ethnic and national boundaries and, in turn, migration. Yet, the mobilizations took different specific forms due to the varying characteristics of the two groups, and the different national imaginaries and organizing legacies they had to draw upon.
Given their multiple differences, the pairing of pro-migrant protests in California and anti-migrant attacks in Gauteng is unorthodox. The payoffs of such a pairing, however, are significant. On one hand, the contrast provides a valuable lens into the political and economic dynamics of each context, helping to expose features that one might overlook in a single case study. Specifically, I will use the case studies to illuminate interactions between nation-building efforts, the labor market, and patterns of collective organization. On the other hand, and more importantly, the contrast is useful for identifying processes that are likely to be especially significant. I wrestle with the differences between the two cases to reveal parallel underlying processes, which may be operating in other cases. My assumption is that commonalities between such different cases will be relevant more broadly.
Substantively, the two case studies are relevant to debates regarding working-class agency. Recent scholarship points to rising economic insecurity, stemming from global economic integration, widespread market-oriented policies, and especially the global expansion of precarious and informal labor (Davis, 2007; Standing, 2011). While this scholarship is pessimistic about possibilities for working-class agency under such conditions, others highlight ongoing collective resistance by economically insecure groups (Agarwala, 2013; Auyero, 2003; Chun, 2009). The two migration-oriented mobilizations discussed here were prominent examples of the latter. Demonstrating how two very different economically insecure groups deployed similar underlying strategies, the case studies begin to explain how working classes are managing to mobilize and make collective claims in the contemporary era of economic insecurity.
Even more centrally, the two cases provide a crucial window into current politics and mobilization around migration. Xenophobia came to the fore in 2016 with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump in the United States. Yet, anti-migrant attitudes, organizations, policies, and actions are prevalent worldwide (UN Third Committee, 2016). Politicians and lay persons alike frequently scapegoat migrants for perceived problems, and border enhancement, migrant surveillance, and deportation are common institutional features across the globe (De Genova and Peutz, 2010). Migrants and their supporters are increasingly mobilizing in opposition (Monforte and Dufour, 2011). As two of the world’s premier migration destinations, the United States and South Africa embodied these trends. Through case studies of very different migration-oriented mobilizations in these two places, the analysis contributes to our understanding of why migration is often central to popular politics. I suggest that specific strategies for countering economic insecurity may lie beneath both popular xenophobia and pro-migrant mobilization.
In highlighting the connection between deepening economic insecurity and politics of migration, this study is consistent with a long line of sociological research that shows how economic competition and conflict reinforce ethnic boundaries and tensions around migration (Bonacich, 1980; Lamont, 2000; Wimmer, 2013: 82). Yet, there are many sources of migration-oriented mobilization, from global economic integration and labor degradation to growing international migration, bureaucratic migration control, and populism. It is beyond the scope of this study to thoroughly address all the many sources. My aim is more modest: to show that economic insecurity, marked especially by workers’ limited power with respect to employers, amplifies the significance of national belonging, citizenship, and migration as important terrains of collective struggle.
Mobilizing against economic insecurity
The migration-oriented mobilizations in the United States and South Africa involved three overlapping social processes: contentious collective action, assertions of working-class agency, and ethnic identification. Drawing largely unremarked parallels between the three associated literatures, I identify two common threads: symbolic demands for group recognition, and efforts to secure livelihood through state institutions (Table 1). Taking each body of literature in turn, I argue that declining worker power and growing economic insecurity encourage mobilizing strategies that revolve around migration.
Elements of migration-oriented mobilization.
Social movement scholars trace the emergence of collective action to three central factors: framing, opportunities, and mobilizing structures (McAdam et al., 1996). Including diagnosis of problems and solutions as well as construction of collective identities (Polletta and Jasper, 2001), framing involves the presentation of ‘action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of a social movement organization’ (Benford and Snow, 2000: 614). In contrast, opportunities refer to external features of the political environment that either encourage or discourage mobilization (Meyer, 2004). They may include institutionalized opportunities, such as popular access to the state and patterns of repression (McAdam, 1996), or more amorphous discursive structures, including broader patterns of culture and ideology (McCammon et al., 2007). Mobilizing structures refer to various forms of organization – such as social movement groups, unions, churches, and informal networks – which help activists to exploit existing opportunities and promote frames that ‘resonate’ with target individuals.
Much of this literature is silent on questions of social structure, political orientation, and dynamics of capitalism and class struggle (Hetland and Goodwin, 2013; Walder, 2009). One way to fill this gap is to consider shifting patterns of working-class agency. Workers have traditionally relied on two sources of power: structural power, based on their position within either tight labor markets or chains of production, and associational power, based on collective organization (Silver, 2003: 13). While not obsolete, both sources of power are currently collapsing under the weight of globalization, economic restructuring, and rising economic insecurity. Not only are labor surpluses and flexible labor regimes eroding structural power, but also unions – the traditional vehicle of associational power – are stagnating or in decline throughout much of the globe. In explaining contemporary resistance by economically insecure groups, labor scholars highlight two alternative sources of power: symbolic leverage and state leverage.
Symbolic leverage emphasizes framing processes and demands for group recognition. Strategic framing is central for economically insecure individuals, who may seek to compensate for their limited structural power by attempting to ‘build public empathy’ from ‘a broader set of societal actors’ (Fine, 2011: 613). Drawing on case studies of the United States and South Korea, Chun (2009) shows how low-wage workers built ‘symbolic leverage’ by making persuasive moral claims for public recognition, including efforts to ‘rebuild the dignity and social worth of subordinated social actors who have been disenfranchised, devalued, and deemed inferior’ (Chun, 2009: 18; see also Auyero, 2003). Not only are recognition, dignity, and respect important ends in themselves, especially for those who feel devalued or invisible, but they may also facilitate collective struggles for economic resources. Recognition and redistribution are mutually reinforcing (Butler, 1998; Fraser, 2000).
In contrast, state leverage uses public institutions to secure a better livelihood. This requires collective actors to exploit specific opportunities, whether institutional, discursive, or both. Not only is the modern state popularly responsible for protecting individuals within its territory, but in an era of global flows and heightened capital mobility, it is the ‘one actor that cannot escape’ (Agarwala, 2013: 30). This makes the state a crucial resource for workers without a stable employer, including the unemployed. As structural power declines and tactics such as strikes and collective bargaining become elusive, economically insecure groups are increasingly turning to public institutions, rather than employers, to address their basic livelihood needs (Agarwala, 2013; Fine, 2011). For Agarwala (2013), this shift underscores the importance of citizenship status, which actors may use to build power with respect to the state. More than just a mobilizing tool, however, national membership may also become an object of struggle itself.
Two qualifications are necessary. First, these strategies are not unique to the current period, as symbolic and state leverage have long been part of working-class struggles (Tilly, 1978). Currently, high levels of economic insecurity may nonetheless amplify their significance. Second, while the pursuit of symbolic and state leverage may facilitate collective action by economically insecure groups, they are not necessarily effective sources of power. Critics might suggest that structural power is still necessary to achieve significant outcomes. I return to this matter in the conclusion.
Studies of ethnic identification complement this analysis of working-class agency. Building symbolic leverage, for example, frequently involves the formation of ethnic identities, which actors may deploy strategically to restore a sense of order, security, and dignity. In her comparative study of the United States and France, Lamont (2000) shows how working-class men responded to economic insecurity by affirming their moral superiority to racial and national others. Echoing Chun’s analysis of symbolic leverage, Lamont (2000) concludes that ‘resistance is often the unintended consequence of workers defending their dignity and attempting to gain respect’ (p. 245). Crucially, both Chun and Lamont show how economically insecure groups make moral claims and construct identities that align with national cultures and political legacies. Such identities intersect with, but are not reducible to, class and the division of labor.
Ethnic identification is not only symbolic. Individuals and groups draw ethnic boundaries to advance their material interests with respect to existing institutions and hierarchies (Wimmer, 2013: 93). Crucially, the modern state provides incentives for ethnic boundary-making, which may legitimate the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups from the national polity and associated resources. Seeking to integrate territorially defined populations into single polities of equal citizens, modern states typically construct and assert a common national identity (Lie, 2004). Not only do modern states adhere to ‘the principle of ethnonational representativity of government – that like should rule over like’, but state actors use ethnic boundaries to define the limits of the polity (Wimmer, 2013: 90–91). As Calhoun (1997: 76) notes, ‘nation building … help[s] to make the people who would constitute the basis of an increasingly democratic sovereign state’ (76, original emphasis).
Not only is the management of migrants central to nation-building efforts, but migrants themselves are prototypical national outsiders (Lie, 2004). Ethnic boundary-making processes frequently emphasize migrants, for whom sharper boundaries often mean fewer opportunities (Alba, 2005). National insiders and migrant outsiders may deploy different strategies. Wimmer (2013: 49–63, 73), for example, distinguishes five broad strategies: making boundaries more inclusive (expansion) or exclusive (contraction), re-ordering the hierarchy of groups (transvaluation), re-positioning groups within existing hierarchies (positional move), or emphasizing other boundaries (blurring). Consistent with the contraction strategy, native-born citizens or other majorities may ‘discriminate against minorities … and feel justified, if not encouraged, to do so because they have become dignified as representing “the people” of a particular state’. Conversely, using a positional move strategy, migrants may seek to ‘cross the boundary into the national majority … or, to the contrary, divert the stigma associated with their minority status through boundary blurring’ (Wimmer, 2013: 91).
Not all struggles around ethnic boundaries have economic roots. Politicians may exploit ethnic boundaries for political gain, majority group members may defend them for cultural reasons, and minority group members may challenge them in their pursuit of physical security and a sense of belonging. My argument here is that economic insecurity, and especially workers’ declining structural power, is an additional factor that interacts with these other sources of ethnic boundary-making. To the extent that economic insecurity amplifies the significance of symbolic leverage and state leverage, it also encourages emphasis on national identities, nation building, and, in turn, migration. To be effective, economically insecure groups must construct symbolic frames and ethnic identities that align with their own characteristics and interests, and they must connect claims on the state to nation-building efforts. Migration-oriented mobilizations, therefore, will necessarily vary across groups and national contexts. The migration-oriented mobilizations in the United States and South Africa illustrated such variation.
Divergent foundations
As premier destinations for international migration, the United States and South Africa were both prominent sites of anti-migrant nationalism. In both countries, hostile discourses treating migrants as a threat to the nation intermingled with repressive policies and practices of migration control, including surveillance, detention, and deportation (Chavez, 2013; Peberdy, 2009). Yet, they nonetheless represented very different contexts. Building on the theoretical discussion above, and with a focus on California and Gauteng, I highlight their divergent working-class configurations, national imaginaries, and organizing trajectories.
Working-class configurations
The two places had very different levels of economic development. While South Africa boasted one of the most advanced economies on the African continent, after 1990, the country’s per capita income remained less than 15 percent of per capita income in the United States. The contrast between California and Gauteng – the regional focal points of this study – illustrates some of the consequences. Both were economic hubs, and sites of rising inequality, flexible labor, and international migration. Yet whereas in California an influx of migration from Latin America and Asia met increasing demand for low-wage labor, in Gauteng, not only did most migrants originate within South Africa, but they also confronted a dearth of unskilled employment opportunities. As shown in Table 2, rates of unemployment and working poverty in Gauteng were more than double the comparable rates in California. Conversely, foreign-born residents and noncitizens comprised a much greater proportion of the workforce in California than they did in Gauteng. In the latter, ‘internal’ migrants (43%) from other provinces were more prevalent than foreign-born migrants (13%). At an aggregate level, then, economically insecure groups had different characteristics and resources in the two places.
Percentage of workforce with select characteristics, California and Gauteng, 2011.
Source: Paret (2016: 92, 94).
Includes individuals aged 16–64 years who were either working or eligible for work. The ‘working poor’ included those who earned less than the United States minimum wage, with the Gauteng figures adjusted to account for Purchasing Power Parity.
It is worth noting as well that foreign-born workers in California had varied socioeconomic backgrounds. While the majority worked in low-wage sectors, more than one-quarter of college graduates in California were foreign-born. Foreign-born status thus marked a potential bridge between low-wage workers and more economically advantaged groups. Conversely, the urban poor in Gauteng were more isolated. Reflecting the apartheid legacy, economically insecure groups concentrated in impoverished townships and informal shack settlements, which frequently lacked basic infrastructure such as electricity and piped water within households. Such conditions of poverty and unemployment did not provide an obvious bridge to middle classes, which concentrated in more affluent areas.
National imaginaries
Comparative studies of the United States and South Africa highlight their common histories of legalized racial oppression and black resistance movements (Marx, 1998). In both places, Black movements forced significant moments of national re-imagination and transition to more inclusive and democratic regimes. Yet, these parallel breakthroughs interacted with different national imaginaries, with important consequences for foreign-born migrants. First, while both countries implemented draconian policies of migration control in the 1990s and 2000s, the foreign/native divide manifested differently. In the United States, the civil rights movement and inclusive reforms peaked during a period of low migration and related anxieties. When mass migration later exploded in the 1980s, policymakers extended civil rights reforms and constitutional protections to the foreign-born. Children of migrants, born in the United States, also obtained citizenship by birthright (Bloemraad, 2015).
Conversely, the democratic transition in South Africa took place against the backdrop of growing migration and urbanization, stemming partly from elimination of the infamous ‘pass laws’ in 1986. Concerns about the potential negative impact of foreign-born residents were present from the very beginning of the democratic era in 1994. The post-apartheid nation-building project centered on a shared national history of division and oppression, which included all racial groups but not those from outside the country (Peberdy, 2009). The new constitution did not protect against discrimination based on nationality or provide for birthright citizenship. Compared to their counterparts in the United States, one could argue that foreign-born residents in South Africa had a much more tenuous relationship to the imagined nation.
Second, the two countries developed different ideologies of inclusion. In the United States, individualism and notions of equal opportunity were especially prevalent. The popular notion of the ‘American Dream’, for example, portrayed the country as a meritocratic land of opportunity where effort translated into well-being (Hochschild, 1995). Lore about the successes of past migrants, especially from Europe, reinforced these themes. Civil rights activists sought to extend equal opportunity to all racial groups, and these efforts eventually led to anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies. In turn, discourses of civil rights and equal opportunity became important ‘symbolic resources that immigrant-origin groups [could] use to make claims and challenge exclusion’ (Bloemraad, 2015: 70).
While affirmative action policies also proliferated in post-apartheid South Africa, discourses around redistribution and welfare had greater popular resonance. This stemmed from widespread poverty and unemployment, as well as the long-standing presence of socialist and social democratic ideas. Sections 26 and 27 of the new constitution reinforced the latter by enshrining the right to adequate housing, health care services, sufficient food and water, and social security. Reinforcing popular expectations that the post-apartheid state would lift the black majority out of poverty, the African National Congress (ANC) – leader of the liberation movement and ruling party after 1994 – consistently promised to provide a ‘better life for all’. The ANC’s first macroeconomic policy, the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), promised to deliver housing, water, electricity, toilets, and garbage removal, as well as better access to telephones, food, transportation, health care, and social security.
Organizing trajectories
Divergent trajectories of collective organization also underpinned the different forms of migration-oriented mobilization. One point of divergence pertained to cross-border solidarity movements. During the 1980s, churches and other organizations in California spearheaded the sanctuary movement, which focused on providing refuge to Central American migrants fleeing civil war and opposing United States foreign policy and intervention in the region. This movement generated ‘various refugee and immigration organizations’, integrated pro-migrant and religious messages, and ‘mobilized new activists, including middle-class Americans with no personal experience with migration’ (Bloemraad et al., 2011). This movement laid a crucial foundation for later pro-migrant activism, including solidarity between migrants and non-migrants.
In South Africa, the alliance of Frontline States – newly independent countries in southern Africa that supported the anti-apartheid movement – was the closest parallel. Yet, this movement primarily emerged from outside the country, and did not generate a similar proliferation of pro-migrant organizations. It was instead the Black labor movement, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) founded in 1985, which provided the most significant basis for solidarity between migrants and non-migrants. Not only did the growing Black unions embrace migrant workers from rural areas, both inside and outside of the country, but they also adopted an outward-looking form of ‘social movement unionism’, which featured support for both local struggles around basic livelihood and opposition to apartheid.
Labor movements, however, marked another point of divergence. Confronting declining union densities, especially in the private sector, the United States labor movement increasingly embraced foreign-born workers and community-based struggles beyond the workplace. Due primarily to efforts by California labor activists, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) made a landmark shift toward pro-migrant politics in 2000, paving the way for heavy union support of migrant rights. The rise of ‘worker centers’ – non-profit organizations that organized low-wage migrant workers in sectors such as day labor, domestic work, restaurants, and garment manufacturing – paralleled and complemented the embrace of migrant workers and migrant rights within the traditional union movement (Fine, 2011). Representing an alternative wing of the United States labor movement, worker centers were especially prominent within California. These efforts to link labor and migrant rights resembled the earlier ‘social movement unionism’ in South Africa.
Meanwhile, however, COSATU turned inward. This stemmed partially from organizational changes, including rapid membership growth in the 1980s and 1990s; the growing prominence of workers in stable, full-time employment; and the weakening of shop steward organizing. The labor federation’s formal partnership with the ruling ANC also mattered. While COSATU continued to champion pro-worker and pro-poor policies, relying heavily on privileged access to the ANC-led state, the labor movement grew distant from proliferating local struggles. Resembling township struggles under apartheid, the latter revolved around issues of public ‘service delivery’, including especially the state provision of housing, electricity, and water. Characterized by fluid and often spontaneous organization, service delivery struggles were frequently detached from unions and worker struggles. Crucially, they also emanated from the very same impoverished and unemployment-wracked areas as anti-migrant attacks.
The two migration-oriented mobilizations thus drew on very different organizational legacies. In California, a strong alliance of unions, worker centers, churches, and migrant-led organizations emerged in defense of migrant workers and migrant rights. There were some parallels in Gauteng, where unions and churches also tended to support migrant inclusion. More relevant to the rise of anti-migrant mobilizations, however, was the detachment of these organizations from local struggles around service delivery. The democratic transition of the early 1990s involved the widespread demobilization of popular forces, with the expectation that the ANC would carry forward the liberation movement within the state. Labor’s inward turn was part of this broader process. As a result, the urban poor had to wage struggles on their own, without the popular organizational resources developed under apartheid. This reinforced the localization of popular resistance, amplifying the significance of local political dynamics.
Methodology
The goal of this study was to examine the political and organizational dynamics of mobilization by economically insecure groups in California, United States, and Gauteng, South Africa, with a focus on foreign-born workers in the former and the urban poor in the latter. The research included three components. First, the core of the study included 41 months of fieldwork, including 17 months in California between 2011 and 2013, and 24 months in Gauteng between 2010 and 2015. During this time, I participated in rallies, protests, public mass meetings, smaller organizing meetings, and community outreach activities. I had hundreds, if not thousands, of informal conversations. In California, my fieldwork focused on the various communities involved in organizing and mobilization around migrant rights, especially in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, though I also observed activities in other areas such as Santa Ana and Santa Rosa. In Gauteng, I concentrated on the impoverished, Black, peri-urban townships and informal settlements surrounding Johannesburg. I focused on areas with recent histories of both local protest around public service delivery issues and anti-migrant attacks.
Second, I conducted formal interviews with 119 activists and residents in the two places. The interviewees did not comprise a representative sample. I focused on individuals who were actively involved in organizing and mobilizing efforts, though in Gauteng I also interviewed individuals who were less involved in activism but lived in areas where protests took place. I identified interviewees primarily through the ethnographic research, and to a lesser extent snowball sampling. The interviews concentrated on interviewees’ economic situation, their histories of political participation, their understandings of current organizational and political dynamics, and their goals, aspirations, and motivations. In short, I sought to understand the politics of mobilization by talking to everyday participants. The interviews typically lasted between 30 minutes and 2 hours.
Third, I supplemented fieldwork and interviews with secondary sources and archival materials, including fliers, websites, press releases, newspaper reports, and memorandums. These sources enabled me to corroborate information from the other sources, and to fill in details.
Group recognition
Struggles for recognition by economically insecure groups provided a foundation for both pro-migrant mobilizations in California and anti-migrant mobilizations in Gauteng. Symbolic recognition was both an end itself, and a potential source of leverage in more concrete struggles for improved livelihood. Propelled by very different groups, however, the respective recognition struggles emphasized different themes. Whereas low-wage migrant workers in California highlighted the contributions of migrants as workers and their familial ties, unemployed and insecurely employed citizens in Gauteng underscored their status as national insiders. In both instances, migration politics enabled symbolic demands for recognition.
California: recognizing workers and families
The first major wave of collective migrant resistance in California centered on opposition to Proposition 187, a ballot initiative passed in 1994 but eventually struck down as unconstitutional, which sought to exclude undocumented migrants from public services and resources. Over time, however, migrant struggles shifted away from access to public resources and toward issues of legal status and immigration law enforcement (Paret and Aguilera, 2016). An early sign of the coming resistance was an annual Immigrant Pride Day in San Francisco during the late 1990s and early 2000s. As one of the organizers explained, it was about ‘highlighting the positive things about being immigrant. Our culture, our food, our music’ (Interview, 21 February 2013). The event was also political. In 1996, the organizers held an Immigrant Referendum, which prompted a ‘Papers for All’ campaign to extend legal status to undocumented migrants (Interview, 21 February 2013).
In southern California, the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Worker Organization Network (MIWON) – a network of worker centers focused on extending workplace struggles to address broader issues of migrant rights – reinvigorated May Day as an annual showcase of migrant resistance. As one Los Angeles activist explained, ‘In the process of addressing [a local workplace] issue the members get engaged, and they get involved in a process where they get politicized … [and] involved in the bigger struggle for immigrant rights’ (Interview 16 May 2012). In the late 2000s, the May Day tradition extended beyond Los Angeles to the rest of California. More than one million people protested across the state on May Day in 2006, and the day continued to be significant for collective identity formation in subsequent years. One MIWON activist remarked that ‘It’s just become a tradition … that’s definitely the space to talk about whatever it is that’s going on … that’s when everybody comes together. It’s like the family reunion’ (Interview, 14 May 2012). Outside May Day, organizing and protests around workplace and legal status issues continued to proliferate year-round.
On 17 February 2012, more than 200 ex-workers of Pacific Steel Casting Company and hundreds of supporters marched from downtown Berkeley to their former employer. The company had fired the workers following an audit or ‘silent raid’ by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Some had worked at the company for more than two decades, and many had difficulty finding new work due to their undocumented status. As one worker leader explained, the march centered on a demand for dignity and recognition:
We know that this march is not going to get us our jobs back. We are calling this the March for Dignity, because now that they have kicked us out, we want them to see that we are not the kind of people that are just going to let this go. We are not delinquents. We are in this country so we can work. (Lartaud, 2012)
The march was symbolic. Rather than making concrete material demands, as they had little leverage to do so, workers focused instead on reclaiming their dignity and self-worth. Just over two months later, the Pacific Steel workers led the pro-migrant May Day march in Oakland. Building on the previous march, organizers billed the May Day event as a march for ‘Dignity and Resistance’. They called for abolishing various forms of immigration law enforcement, as well as ‘papers for all’. These frames echoed prominent themes within pro-migrant activism.
Demands for recognition resounded during May Day protests, where symbolic assertions of dignity and respect intermingled with concrete demands for drivers’ licenses, legalization, and an end to deportations that often separated family members. Angelica Salas, a long-time migrant activist with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA), explained,
[May Day] was a common space where people could actually stand together in support of legalization … you were seeing immigrants coming together, coming out of the shadows … saying this is who we are, and we demand our rights, and we believe that we’re contributing to this country and that we’re here. (Osuji, 2010: 104)
Seeking to make migrants visible, May Day protests demanded that Americans respect them as contributing members of society. Laura, a young activist from Central America who had initially worked cleaning houses, but later became a paid worker organizer, echoed this sentiment:
It’s not that we’re asking for handouts … We’re here now, we want to contribute to this society. But then we also want to be respected and be part of it as such … Immigrant rights need to be addressed, and respected. (Interview, 14 May 2012)
Migrant demands for recognition resonated in signs and chants, such as the popular slogan: ‘Aqui estamos y no nos vamos, y si nos echan, nos regresamos [We’re here, and we’re not leaving. If they kick us out, we’re coming back]’ (Field notes, 29 September 2012).
For some activists, these demands paralleled the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Laura asserted that ‘we need another Martin Luther King’, and when comparing current migrant struggles to struggles against slavery, she noted, ‘We weren’t physically brought here, but … if you think about it, it’s not big of a difference … it’s very, very similar’ (Interview, May 14, 2012). Cindy, a labor activist who focused on organizing migrant workers, similarly described the 2006 uprising as an ‘I Am A Man moment’, linking pro-migrant protests to the slogan used by Black men during the civil rights movement to demand recognition and respect. She explained, ‘To be respected as a whole, you have to be respected as a worker and a human being … People were just demanding that, “I am a human being, I shouldn’t be treated in this dehumanizing way”’ (Interview, 24 October 2012).
Worker identities were central to demands for recognition. Maria, an undocumented migrant who became an activist in San Francisco during the 2006 protests, recalled that ‘so many [migrants] were saying that in 2006: “we are part of this economy too”’ (Interview, 11 September 2012). This theme proliferated in mainstream media accounts:
I clean everyone’s house … Some people don’t want to do that job. We work here and live and should be treated fair. But we’re not. That isn’t right. (Reynolds and Fiore, 2006) We are here because we are needed. We do the jobs Americans won’t do…We don’t want any problems. We just want to work. (Delson, 2006)
Such accounts captured migrant demands for recognition and equal rights, due to their contributions as low-wage workers. The popular idea that ‘we just want to work’ was also consistent with research showing that migrant workers relied on an ethic of hard work to restore dignity in the face of precarious conditions (Gleeson, 2010; Gomberg-Munoz, 2012).
Arriving as an undocumented migrant from Mexico, Alicia worked in grueling restaurant jobs in San Francisco’s Mission District, and later became a prominent activist. She explained the centrality of migrant demands for recognition as workers:
That’s not even a message that people want to say. That’s more of the nature of who we are. They say we are workers, not criminals. That’s our common slogan. We are here to work. We came to work. We are good decent people who come to work. The only thing we want to do is to work. So it’s ingrained. (Interview, 13 February 2013)
As the popular slogan – ‘we are workers, not criminals’ – illuminated, many migrants wanted Americans to recognize and respect them as workers, rather than demonize them as criminals. This demand rang loud at a September 2012 rally in Los Angeles, which featured migrant domestic workers from across the state and a traveling contingent of undocumented migrant activists. A frequent chant throughout the day-long event declared, ‘No somos illegales, no somos criminales; somos trabajadores, internacionales [We are not illegal, we are not criminals, we are international workers]’ (Field notes, 29 September 2012). This emphasis on work stood alongside other frames, most importantly those around the value of migrant families (Bloemraad et al., 2011: 31).
These frames underscored both the fundamental humanity of migrants and their unique contributions to American society. Emphasizing traditional American values such as work and family, activists constructed a collective and dignified migrant identity. This migrant identity enabled low-wage workers to build symbolic leverage through claims for recognition. Groups such as MIWON and the Pacific Steel workers illustrated how symbolic struggles sometimes grew out of workplace struggles. Yet, for many low-wage migrant workers who joined May Day marches and other migrant rights protests, collective struggles around migration were the primary gateway to resistance. With limited access to workplace power, migration politics provided an alternative avenue for collective organizing and mobilization.
Gauteng: recognizing national insiders
In Gauteng, anti-migrant mobilizations were a consistent feature of the post-apartheid landscape. As early as 1994, residents of Alexandra township held a mass march to demand that Zimbabweans, Malawians, and Mozambicans return to their home countries, and gangs led physical attacks to evict migrants from the township. The 2008 attacks marked a high point, but intermittent and localized violence persisted. In 2011 and 2012, for example, residents killed 260 foreign-born residents, with at least five victims burnt alive (Landau, 2013). Anti-migrant hostility increasingly targeted small-scale traders, who operated small grocery shops with limited stock within impoverished urban areas. Between January 2005 and August 2014, there were at least 241 episodes of collective violence against foreign-born traders, including a significant increase between 2009 and 2014 (Crush and Ramachandran, 2014a: 13). Widespread anti-migrant dispositions underpinned the attacks. According to a nationally representative 2010 survey, 53 percent of residents supported deporting foreign-born migrants who were not contributing to the economy and one-quarter indicated that they would prevent foreign-born migrants from moving into (23%), or operating a business within (25%), their neighborhood. Especially revealing, only 11 percent of respondents opposed the 2008 attacks, while 54 percent supported them and 35 percent were indifferent (Crush and Ramachandran, 2014b: 17, 19, 21).
Unlike foreign-born migrants in California, unemployed and poor citizens in Gauteng could make claims based on their status as national insiders. Expressions of national privilege often reflected deep identifications with the post-apartheid state. This became clear in the wake of the 2008 attacks, when residents rationalized the violence by pointing to a state-centered project of national sovereignty. One resident asserted that ‘we are … solving the problems of our own country. The government is not doing anything about this, so I support what the mob is doing to get rid of foreigners in our country’ (Landau, 2010: 228). Such expressions reinforced official projects of migration control. They suggested that native-born residents could bolster immigration law enforcement by taking matters into their own hands. Popular understandings of the attacks thus dovetailed quite easily with official discourses, which often treated migrants as a threat to the nation (Peberdy, 2009).
Beyond collaborating on an enforcement project, some residents understood indigeneity – inscribed in formal citizenship status – as deserving of privileged treatment. Nyeleti, who lived in a small, immaculately maintained shack within an informal settlement in Soweto, captured this perspective. Having recently lost her job as a domestic worker, she was eking out a living by selling kitchen items on commission. Nyeleti’s frustration with her own economic insecurity, which she attributed to the government and especially its failure to control migration, brought her to tears. She explained,
[Government], they have to start with us, to take care of us. After, then they have to help the people from outside … Because we [are] born here, and they want us to help them, and they want our vote; they can’t go to Zimbabwe and say we want your vote. That’s why they have to help us first. (Interview, 6 August 2013)
Establishing a clear hierarchy of entitlement, Nyeleti asserted that state officials had a responsibility to provide for voting citizens before non-voting migrants. As another resident put it more poetically, ‘I think the SA government should start by tidying inside the house before cleaning outside … Who sweeps the yard and forgets to tidy the house?’ (Spitz, 2010).
Anti-migrant mobilizations combined negative and positive moments. The negative moment was most obvious and straightforward. Asserting what Fraser (2000) refers to as ‘misrecognition’, residents sought to undermine the legitimacy of foreign-born presence. In the positive moment, however, they also sought to attract attention from state officials. One resident explained that ‘Attacking foreigners sends a clear message to this government that we are serious. This government cares more about foreigners than us’ (Langa, 2011: 65). These dynamics came to fore in the aftermath of attacks against foreign-born traders in the Elias Motsoaledi informal settlement. One young resident recalled,
They looted the shops that belong to Ethiopians, not the shops of those people who belong to South Africa, so then the government can see that their life, it’s in danger … even now they will let them open their shops. They have done what they wanted … They do want them to sell, but then they wanted to attract the attention of the government. (Interview, 30 September 2013)
According to this account, rather than chasing away foreign-born traders, residents wanted to send a message to the state. Expressing their support for the very same attacks, two other residents affirmed this interpretation:
That was very good. Because we say to the government, if we march because we want a house, and [foreign-born migrants] put their own thing, we [will] fight [with] them, and we [will] take everything from them.
That was good, marvelous … That is how we pass the message to the government. How can we allow the stranger to come here? (Interview, 22 July 2013)
Not only did impoverished residents seek to deny foreign-born residents a legitimate place within post-apartheid society, but they also sought attention from the state. Recognition and misrecognition were mutually reinforcing, and they congealed within anti-migrant mobilizations.
It is difficult to dissociate these mobilizations from those around public service delivery, which were also, centrally, struggles for recognition. Service delivery protests revolved around the demands of geographically circumscribed, place-based communities. Rather than demanding recognition for the urban poor in general, they typically featured attempts to get state officials to pay attention to the needs of residents within specific local areas. To secure recognition, residents often deployed disruptive methods such as burning tires, barricading roads, or destroying property (Paret, 2015). Attacking foreign-born residents or traders represented an additional tactic within this repertoire. Such attacks typically emerged through informal networks and clandestine, underground mobilization. In contrast to the pro-migrant mobilizations in California, anti-migrant mobilizations in Gauteng were much more loosely organized, with little connection to formal organizations.
Despite their local character, mobilizations around service delivery and migration shared an overarching national political context, shaped overwhelmingly by the recent democratic transition and the promises of national liberation. Confronting economic insecurity, some residents felt that the post-apartheid state had forgotten them. Tumelo, a 23-year-old and unemployed Bekkersdal resident, illustrated this sentiment. In Bekkersdal, an old township with formal housing, attacks on foreign-born traders accompanied a string of protests around service delivery in late 2013. Tumelo participated in both. When I asked her to explain the motivations behind the various mobilizations, she expressed a sense of despair:
People are so angry, you can see the situation here … the sewage everywhere, unemployment – even parents are fed up with the unemployment rate, having to feed four or five adults in the house is just too much … people got angry and still are, because nothing has been done. Water is running around the streets, it is dirty. We do not know who to trust, where to run. (Interview, 20 June 2014)
Mandla, an activist in Soweto, similarly spoke about the emotional side of living in an impoverished shack settlement:
You know sometimes when you come from these shacks … I don’t know what [they] see, whether I am a big monkey or what, the way they look at us. Our self-esteem has been taken away from us, the way our government has treated us. It’s very sad. (Interview, 22 July 2013)
For Tumelo and Mandla, as for many others, the experience of poverty sparked frustration, shame, and a sense of neglect. Protests around service delivery and anti-migrant attacks represented two strategies for counteracting this devaluation and restoring a sense of dignity. While residents more often directed their demands for recognition and dignity toward the state, denying recognition to foreign-born residents represented an alternative strategy. Just as the migrant identity enabled symbolic leverage in California, so the indigenous South African identity enabled symbolic leverage in Gauteng. Unemployed and insecurely employed residents, who had little access to workplace organizing, used migration politics and their status as national insiders to build symbolic struggles for dignity and recognition.
State-enabled livelihood
While the migration-oriented mobilizations in California and Gauteng each had strong symbolic components, demands for recognition also laid a foundation for more concrete livelihood struggles. Furthermore, in both instances, economically insecure groups turned to the state for social protection. In line with prominent national imaginaries, however, they called on the state to protect their livelihood in different ways. Consistent with American individualism and the legacy of civil rights, in California, migrants demanded legal status and the right to work. In contrast, building on the promise of national liberation to reduce Black poverty, in Gauteng, the urban poor called on the state to enhance public resources and, in the absence of such resources, they demonized migrants for exacerbating their economic insecurity. In both instances, migration politics enabled economically insecure groups to make claims against the state.
California: legalization and the right to work
Pro-migrant mobilizations in California revolved around the demand for legal status (‘papers’) for undocumented migrants, which followed directly from struggles for recognition. As one migrant activist explained, what migrants ‘want is first recognition that they are contributing to this state, but also to the nation. But also as that recognition is given, also be allowed to have legal status with a path to citizenship’ (Interview, 9 May 2012). Not only would legalization respond to an array of vulnerabilities and exclusions, but it also provided a potential avenue for economically insecure migrant workers to leverage the state.
Claudia was a domestic worker who lived without legal status for more than twenty years. She was recently active in the push for a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, as well as broader struggles around legalization. Weaving together themes of recognition, worker rights, and legalization, she recalled a recent trip to a hiring agency:
The domestic workers, they need more dignity and respect … they don’t get that respect they really need … They wanted me to babysit, be a housekeeper and some cook for six days a week living in … that’s too many hours for little pay, $250 for six days … [If migrants] have papers, they are not going to work for $250 a week … If I had my papers, I’d go straight to the [hiring agency] and say: ‘Hey, I have my papers!’ And they have to respect. Because if I had my papers, I’m not going to work over 8 hours. I’m not … when you have your papers, everybody respects you. (Interview, 29 September 2012)
For Claudia, not only was legal status a symbol of inclusion and respect, it was also a source of power within the labor market. Conversely, undocumented status led to vulnerability and exploitation (Paret, 2014).
In the face of growing employer power and worker insecurity, low-wage worker movements – including unions and worker centers – increasingly turned toward the state. This included campaigns for improved labor standards enforcement as well as new legislation, such as living wage ordinances and laws securing protections for domestic workers (Fine, 2011: 613–614). Demands for legalization were part of this trend. MIWON’s May Day tradition, for example, grew out of a low-wage worker movement. In addition to demanding ‘true legalization … in the form of permanent legal status and citizenship’, MIWON’s (2001) founding platform – developed through deliberations between 600 low-wage migrant workers (Interview, 14 August 2012) – called for ‘greater protection and enforcement of U.S. labor laws, which will guarantee at least a minimum wage and security from blacklisting, harassment and intimidation of any kind’.
The connection between legalization and worker rights featured prominently during the 2006 uprisings, and especially on May Day, which featured a boycott of work, school, and business. The boycott sought to illustrate the centrality of migrants to the economy – particularly as workers, but also as consumers – bolstering their demands for recognition and inclusion as legal residents with equal rights. A flier advertising the boycott in Los Angeles proclaimed, ‘We will demand nothing less than full amnesty [legalization] and dignity for the millions of undocumented workers presently in the United States’ (emphasis added). The connection between work and legalization persisted beyond 2006. In addition to calling for legalization (‘Full Legalization Now!’) and an end to migration enforcement (‘Stop ICE/Police Repression!’), for example, a 2012 poster advertising a May Day protest in Los Angeles asserted that ‘Immigrant’s Rights are Worker’s Rights!’ Migrants thus sought to improve their working conditions by defending their rights as migrants.
Migrant activists consistently linked legalization and working conditions. Laura, the young activist from Guatemala, argued that legalization ‘relates to workers’ rights [because] people won’t be so afraid to ask for their ten-minute break; won’t be afraid that if they say something, they’re not going to be able to go look for another job’ (Interview, 14 May 2012). Carlos, an undocumented day laborer who became a prominent Los Angeles activist, echoed this theme:
[Undocumented workers] are losing their lives, they are losing their salaries, they are losing their families, they are losing everything. But they need to survive … How is this mess going to be stopped? Legalizing all the workers.
So it sounds like for you, the legalization struggles and the worker struggles are –
– are the same. Are the same, because it’s the struggle for good salaries. First for the right to work. (Interview, 11 May 2012).
Following the ‘employer sanctions’ provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), it was illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers. This provision weakened the bargaining power of migrant workers and enhanced their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse. For Carlos, legalizing migrant workers was necessary to eliminate this vulnerability.
Yet the significance of legalization extended beyond the workplace. Undocumented status, for example, left migrants vulnerable to the constant possibility of deportation and, in turn, separation from family members. One MIWON activist noted a shift in the messaging of May Day protests over time: ‘The focus has really been on immigrant workers and the rights of immigrant workers … [though] sometimes it’s been the workers’ part has even started to fall out a little bit and its really been about immigrant rights’ (Interview, 14 May 2012). In short, migrant worker struggles reached beyond the workplace, using legalization as the basis for improving their working conditions and daily lives. Migration politics thus provided a key avenue through which low-wage workers could make demands for state-enabled livelihood.
Gauteng: public resources and resentment
Like the mobilizations in California, symbolic struggles for recognition and dignity in Gauteng drew from, and fed into, material struggles around livelihood. Following the 2008 attacks, for example, residents of attack-ridden areas revealed strong concerns that foreign-born residents were using up scarce resources (Misago et al. 2010: 165–167). Struggles around housing and jobs were especially prevalent. One resident noted, ‘We don’t have houses, we don’t have jobs, we don’t have anything … So, we are fighting over the little we have’ (South African Press Association, 2008). As this quote suggests, anti-migrant mobilizations typically featured highly localized struggles over access to resources (Landau, 2010; Misago et al., 2010; Monson, 2015).
The dire employment situation in South Africa amplified negative perceptions about the labor market consequences of migration. For some residents, all foreign-born residents with jobs were thieves: ‘every foreigner who is employed has robbed a South African of that job’ (Everatt, 2009: 19). In my interviews, residents often pointed to the fact that migrants were willing to work for low wages:
They don’t [care about decent wages] these people because they are taking people’s jobs … these people are cheap labors … I work for R150 per day, these people accept R8 per day. I am South African I won’t accept that. (Interview, 31 August 2010)
A sense of labor market competition thus underpinned anti-migrant sentiment.
Beyond wage-labor, however, many residents harbored even greater resentment toward foreign-born traders, who were more visible within impoverished residential areas. Set against a sea of poverty and unemployment, traders stood out as rare instances of economic success. Attacks on foreign-born traders had an element of direct redistribution, as they often involved looting of groceries, money, or personal belongings. In some instances, native-born traders also instigated or supported the attacks to chase away their foreign-born competitors. While these raw economic motivations certainly played a role, so did broader resentments. Tumelo, the young Bekkersdal activist, recounted,
The youth felt that these Somalis are taking their jobs. They come from where they come from and they get jobs here in SA, and they come and open shops …
So do you think that those were xenophobic attacks?
They were, there is no excuse for that. The shops that were broken down were Somalis and the black [i.e. native-born] shops were not broken down or stolen from them … Some of them were even beaten up … But I will not point fingers. I was also in the strike [protest] and what we did was stupid. (Interview, 20 June 2014)
Whereas Tumelo expressed shame about her own participation, Dumisani, another young and unemployed Bekkersdal activist, was more confident. While suggesting that he opposed anti-migrant attacks, he also clearly identified with their underlying motivations, and almost seemed to endorse them as necessary:
People said, Somalis are running our community. They are busy coming in and out. So we need to start to tell them to go back home, so that we as the community can open our own businesses. So they said the only way to stop this is to loot the shops, and they did … if you tell them to leave they will not listen. So you need to do so by taking charge, looting, and that is what they did. (Interview, 12 June 2014)
These accounts suggest that economic insecurity, combined with a sense of jealousy and despair, fueled anti-migrant mobilizations. While the mobilizations manifested in highly localized struggles over economic resources, a sense of nationalist entitlement – prominent, as well, in service delivery struggles – was evident.
Struggles around housing illustrated the close connection between popular xenophobia and popular demands for state provision of resources. Free housing was a key ANC promise during the democratic transition, and residents remembered it well. While the ANC delivered three million free ‘RDP’ houses during the first two decades of democracy, a national backlog of two million homes remained (Levenson, 2017). Residents frequently lamented that they were still waiting for a house, and local protests often revolved around demands for RDP housing. While the precise historical circumstances varied across local areas, frustration with the slow pace of housing delivery and the privileging of certain areas over others loomed large. Tensions around housing came to the fore during the 2008 attacks. One resident admitted bluntly, ‘I used to sleep in a car. Now I have my own house. The problem is very simple: there is no more space for them’ (Misago et al., 2010: 62).
Frustrations about government failure to provide housing were even more important than acts of direct redistribution. When explaining anti-migrant attacks, for example, some residents fixated on the housing issue, as illustrated by a young woman from Soweto:
Government officials cause corruption, especially those from the housing department. They give RDP houses to people who pay bribery and leave rightful owners of RDP houses who applied a long time ago without houses … This [is] what causes all this fighting between South Africans and foreigners. (Everatt, 2009: 17, emphasis added)
Sello, a young activist from Bekkersdal, similarly complained about the failures of government housing delivery:
So here we have got crisis. Since I was born here I have never been happy … Let me tell you about the municipality … People who do not deserve houses get them, and those who do, they do not get them. Even the foreigners they have houses. They say they qualify, I do not know how … Nothing is happening in here. The government is failing us. (Interview, 12 March 2014)
Anti-migrant hostility thus reinforced daily struggles around access to public resources. Residents used claims that foreign-born residents were illegally occupying RDP houses to highlight government corruption and neglect.
Anti-migrant attacks often occurred alongside protests for the public provision of housing, water, and electricity. The two forms of mobilization were sometimes mutually reinforcing. Whereas local protests called on the state to expand public provision, anti-migrant attacks condemned the existing distribution of resources. In the face of government failure to provide social protection, residents thus turned against their foreign-born neighbors. The one implied the other, and both were highly localized. Just as service delivery protests focused on the livelihood needs of specific local areas, so anti-migrant attacks sought to control access to local resources, such as housing or business.
Popular explanations for xenophobic antagonism illustrated these dynamics. Following the 2008 attacks, some residents viewed the state as responsible for preventing further violence:
If the government continues to neglect us the way it has always done, this unfortunate incident [xenophobic attacks] might recur. (Misago et al., 2010:113) People have been stopped from attacking foreigners. They are relaxing and waiting to see what the government is going to do to address their problems. If government does not address the grievances of South Africans, people are going to resort to violence. (Everatt, 2009: 22)
Such explanations persisted alongside anti-migrant mobilizations. In Elias Motsoaledi informal settlement, where local protests sometimes featured anti-migrant attacks, one prominent leader remarked that ‘we don’t want this [xenophobic violence] to happen again in our country but the solution is with political parties and government to bring basic needs to the people’ (Xinhua News, 2011). In other words, if the state did not recognize poor communities and their material needs, residents would continue to address those needs by pushing for the exclusion of foreign-born residents from access to local resources.
Just as in California, migration politics in Gauteng entangled with broader issues of resource distribution and livelihood. Focused most immediately on foreign-born neighbors, anti-migrant attacks accessed the state more indirectly. Yet, state-provided resources, such as housing, represented residents’ primary goal. Through mobilization against foreign-born residents and traders, economically insecure groups sought to call attention to government neglect. Reinforcing struggles around public service delivery, migration politics represented an alternative way for residents to highlight demands for state-enabled livelihood.
Conclusion
Despite obvious contrasts, pro-migrant mobilizations in California and anti-migrant mobilizations in Gauteng shared two fundamental similarities: collective action by economically insecure groups, and a politics focused on migration. To compensate for their lack of structural power, especially with respect to employers, both groups – low-wage foreign-born workers in California, unemployed and insecurely employed citizens in Gauteng – emphasized symbolic demands for recognition and state-enabled livelihood. While ethnonational group formation enabled them to boost the moral legitimacy of their claims for recognition and resources, for both groups, the state represented a stable and plausible target. These similarities accounted for their parallel focus on politics of migration, even if that common politics manifested in opposite ways.
The very different manifestations of migration-oriented politics stemmed from three key divergences. First, each group drew on different strengths. In California, foreign-born workers emphasized their value by identifying as diligent workers and family members, while in Gauteng, native-born residents appealed instead to their status as national insiders. Second, the mobilizations appealed to divergent national imaginaries. Whereas in California pro-migrant mobilizations drew on a strong national legacy of individualism, the American Dream, and the civil rights movement, in Gauteng, anti-migrant mobilizations referred to the recent democratic transition and the ruling party’s promises to reduce Black poverty. Third, the mobilizations built on divergent organizing legacies. In California, the legacy of the Central American solidarity and sanctuary movement, as well as the pro-migrant turn of the labor movement, facilitated ties between migrants and non-migrants. The involvement of labor organizations, including unions and worker centers, also reinforced the centrality of worker identities. Conversely, in Gauteng, the demobilization of popular forces, and especially labor’s growing distance from local struggles, isolated urban resistance from broader mobilizing structures. This amplified the importance of local organizing, power dynamics, and struggles over resources.
These divergences underpinned very different claims in the two cases. In California, foreign-born workers demanded legalization, and thus the opportunity to participate in the labor market as equals to native-born workers. Support from churches and unions helped to legitimize these claims and connect them to a broader pro-migrant movement. Conversely, in Gauteng, the urban poor demanded the expansion of public resources and the exclusion of foreign-born residents from existing local resources. While national dynamics provided an overarching framework, the localization of resistance further encouraged inward-looking struggles over local resources such as housing and small business. The two mobilizations thus deployed different boundary-making strategies, as elaborated by Wimmer (2013: 73). Low-wage foreign-born workers in California sought to improve their position within the national hierarchy, pursuing a ‘positional move’ strategy, while poor native-born residents in Gauteng sought to restrict access to the benefits of national membership, pursuing a ‘contraction’ strategy. Crucially, however, despite these differences, both approaches affirmed national boundaries.
These case studies highlight the capacity of economically insecure groups to assert collective claims for inclusion, respect, and livelihood. It is important to caution, however, against an impulse to celebrate, prematurely, the transformative potential of demands for recognition and claims on the state. In California, pro-migrant activists managed to secure state-level legislation to restrict immigration enforcement (California Assembly Bill 4, Trust Act, 2014) and allow undocumented migrants to apply for driver’s licenses (California Assembly Bill 60, Safe and Responsible Driver Act, 2015). Yet, the larger goals of legalization and dignified employment proved elusive. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provided temporary relief, but comprehensive immigration reform remained stalled at the national level. In Gauteng, the government did offer material concessions to residents who lived in areas where local protests and xenophobic attacks prevailed. These included the formalization of informal settlements, the relocation of some residents to formal housing, and the installation of new electricity grids. These concessions, however, did little to disrupt deeper structures of poverty and unemployment. While necessarily partial, this account of the consequences of mobilization nonetheless provides a useful caution. It suggests that under conditions of economic insecurity, symbolic group formation and targeting the state may be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions or strategies for asserting power. Capacity for disrupting the status quo, whether by withholding labor power or through some other means, may be an essential complement.
Rather than the success or failure of popular mobilizations, however, this study focused primarily on their political orientations. The central conclusion is that by amplifying the significance of symbolic group formation and state-enabled livelihood, economic insecurity encouraged struggles around migration. This finding implies that migration politics should be more prevalent in places where economic insecurity is also prevalent, and especially in places where economically insecure groups are forging collective struggles. Yet, the United States and South Africa, and within them California and Gauteng, were extreme cases. As economic hubs of their respective regions, they featured high levels of international migration and anti-migrant antagonism, both official and popular. These conditions laid a foundation for mobilization. Whereas pro-migrant mobilizations in California challenged nationalist exclusion, anti-migrant mobilizations in Gauteng reinforced it. Economic insecurity propelled migration politics, but within a broader context of heavy migration and anti-migrant nationalism.
Raising new questions, this qualification points to areas for further research on migration and mobilization by economically insecure groups. Assuming such mobilizations exist, what levels of international migration and anti-migrant nationalism are necessary for them to emphasize migration politics, rather than some other kind of politics? Conversely, international migration and anti-migrant nationalism may be necessary conditions for building symbolic or state leverage in the first place. Okamoto and Ebert (2010), for example, show that anti-migrant hostility and migrant-native segregation – reflecting what Alba (2005) terms ‘bright boundaries’ – lead to migrant mobilization in selected US cities. This suggests that sharp national boundaries may be a prerequisite for mobilization by economically insecure groups. With lower levels of anti-migrant nationalism or nativity-based inequality, do economically insecure groups mobilize less often, or not at all? Finally, we may ask about the politics of specific economically insecure groups. Do foreign-born migrants always refute anti-migrant nationalism, and do native-born citizens always support it? Under what conditions do opposite patterns unfold?
Answering these questions requires attention to both issues of timing and additional cases. For the former, ethnic boundaries may be both a cause and a consequence of collective action by economically insecure groups. Longitudinal and historical studies that are sensitive to timing and causality will be useful for teasing out these complex relationships. For the latter, it will be useful to extend this research to cases that differ from California and Gauteng. This means attention to places that also have high levels of economic insecurity, but lower levels of international migration, less prominent anti-migrant nationalism, and fewer struggles by economically insecure groups. The availability of such cases presents another empirical question for further research. To the extent that economic insecurity correlates positively with international migration and anti-migrant nationalism, they may be difficult to find. Their absence would underscore the relevance of the case studies presented above, and especially the conclusion that economic insecurity amplifies the significance of migration politics.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article has been a long time in the making. The many individuals who encouraged and supported this project over several years are too many to name here. The author would like to thank, especially, Michael Burawoy, Ben Scully, Kim Voss, Irene Bloemraad, Shannon Gleeson, Abigail Andrews, Fidan Elcioglu, Jennifer Chun, Emily Brissette, Laleh Behbehanian, Loren Landau, Sandra Smith, Peter Evans, Michael Watts, Peter Alexander, Carin Runciman, Wade Cole, Jessie Mandle, several anonymous reviewers, and the journal Editor for their guidance and/or feedback on previous drafts. Nhlakanipo Lukhele provided valuable research assistance and insights. The author is also grateful for support from the following: the Center for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, the Sociology Department and the African Center for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Center for African Studies and Sociology Department at the University of California-Berkeley, and the Sociology Department and the University Research Committee at the University of Utah.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.