Citizen X

Abstract In the second year of his fieldwork, Thomas Swerts drove a van full of undocumented activists across borders to attend a protest. Fariss overcame his fears during the undertaking and used his experience to mobilize others. A few months later, he was arrested and deported despite protests. How do undocumented migrants like Fariss become activists against all odds? How can we make sense of the fact that undocumented activists are powerful, resourceful, and visible yet vulnerable, precarious, and invisible at once? And why does their activism from the margins hit politics-as-usual in its core? These are the provoking questions that Swerts poses in this transatlantic ethnography. Based on years of immersion as an ally in Chicago and Brussels, Swerts offers an unprecedented inside look into the birth, growth, and demise of undocumented-led organizations. In both cities, migrants struggled to create a space from where they could speak their own truth. Lived experiences of illegality tend to reinforce feelings of powerlessness. But Swerts reveals that under certain conditions, vulnerabilities can be turned into collective strengths. By openly sharing their stories, vehemently contesting mobility restrictions, and publicly expressing their raw emotions, undocumented activists expose the hidden reality of “Citizen X.” At a time when legal avenues for migration are becoming narrower and undocumented migrants are criminalized and stigmatized, Swerts’s book discloses the fundamental inequalities and social injustices that result from unevenly distributing legal status in the world while highlighting the renewed meaning that noncitizens are giving to citizenship from the ground up.