The dream of undocumented immigrants in the United States

In the spring of 2006, several million people took to the streets of major American cities to defend the rights of undocumented immigrants. These massive demonstrations, interpreted as a sign of the awakening of “ sleeping giant » Hispanic, reflect the mobilization capacity in the public space of the movement for immigrant rights. Six years later, however, the same calls to demonstrate have neither the scale nor the unity of the previous movement. If the comparison between the two events could invite us to question the vigor of the current movement, reading the work of Walter J. Nicholls, professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, does not allow us to doubt it. . The DREAMers invites, in fact, to take stock of the fluctuations but also of the dynamism and recent reconfigurations of the fight for the rights of undocumented immigrants in the United States. The author traces the history of the emergence of new actors, invisible before the 2000s and today essential in the debate on immigration: young undocumented immigrants or, as they call themselves in reference to the immigration project. law that they support for the “ Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors » (DREAM Act), THE DREAMers.

Nicholls’ investigation takes this rise in power of young undocumented immigrants in the public space as a starting point to ask a now classic question in the study of the mobilizations of dominated groups: how to understand the emergence “ unlikely », to use the term used in French-speaking literature, of the movement of DREAMers in a context hostile to immigrants, particularly towards those who are described as “ illegal » ? The author’s thesis is contained in a few propositions that can be summarized as follows: if the hostile political environment faced by undocumented immigrants is characterized by the closure of most political opportunities, there nevertheless remain flaws and contradictions, which constitute “ discursive niches » (“ niche openings “) as so many openings from which certain groups possessing certain characteristics can engage in protest. The whole question then being how, from these discursive openings, these groups manage to constitute themselves as a legitimate voice in the public space. How and at what cost do they manage to produce a discourse and a public image that counters stigma, resonates in the public space, encourages people to rally around the cause and, thus, transforms a discursive opening into a political opportunity for change? ?

THE DREAM Act, a discursive opportunity

The protests of young undocumented immigrants do not arise out of nowhere. They are the product of the strategic orientations of the movement for immigrant rights which emerged in a context of growing hostility from the end of the 1980s.

Nicholls returns to this period in order to show how, from the social construction of “ Latino threat » to its translation into policies to strengthen borders, this protest movement was characterized by the narrowing of its field of action. Faced with what is seen as the closing of prospects for massive regularization, the national organizations of this movement will reduce their demands and adopt a strategy focused on achieving specific advances. In 2001, following this logic, they launched a national campaign supporting the passage to Congress of DREAM Acta bill whose objective is to recognize young undocumented immigrants who arrived as children in the United States the right to live normally there and to access permanent resident or citizen status. THE DREAM Actbecause it makes it possible to put an end to the situation, described as absurd, of nearly 1.5 million children who came with their parents and grew up in the United States without papers, is then presented as progress towards streamlining the immigration system.

In 2001, from the launch of the campaign with Congress, which resisted them, the organizations involved in the campaign DREAM Act will put their resources at the service of training the group of young undocumented immigrants who then have no political visibility. Through meetings, information sessions and then training, these support organizations will ensure the political socialization of those who will become the DREAMers. Based on the account given by several young people of their “ coming out », Nicholls shows how a network is formed within which the absence of migratory status, often hidden and a source of shame, becomes a vector of politicization and solidarity between individuals who share the same social experience.

At the same time, because it is placed under the supervision of support organizations, this process of forming the group proves to be a means of putting young undocumented immigrants at the service of the cause as defined by the organizations. beacons of the movement. It is not only a question of producing a generation of young activists but also of controlling both the message and the messengers. THE DREAMers thus learn to tell “ their » story, configuring it so that it corresponds to the narrative expected by the organizers who form them and which, according to the latter, corresponds to the expectations of the media and the values ​​of the American public. Beyond the singularity of experiences that they are therefore invited to leave behind the scenes, the DREAMers present themselves as young Americans normal and attached to the values ​​of the country in which they grew up, students exceptional unfairly excluded from the scholarship system and individuals innocent since they never chose to live illegally.

“ Undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic »

If this process of creating and controlling DREAMers undeniably generates order and effectively produces, and in a very short time, a generation of young activists disciplined and devoted to the cause, Nicholls shows that it has the effect of revealing tensions and divisions around the definition of issues of the struggle and its control. Several activists from DREAM Act thus denounce their subordination to national organizations. They are accused, at best, of having a paternalistic attitude towards undocumented immigrants, at worst, of having exploited young people in a political and media game aimed, not at emancipating those they claim to be help, but to capitalize on them in order to increase their legitimacy in the field of immigration policies. In the wake of the spring 2006 protests, DREAMers dissidents turn away from national organizations and, taking up the radical posture of the grassroots organizingdevelop a critique of what they call the “ non-profit industrial complex “, there “ social justice elite ”, or even the “ poverty pimps » (p. 95).

By breaking with the leaders of the movement, the DREAMers engage in a struggle in the fight for their recognition as political equals capable of influencing the strategic orientations of the movement. They thus bring about the transition from a struggle where the representation of interests by third parties must make it possible to achieve an end, to a struggle where the representation and definition of interests is an end in itself. With the support of a network of local organizations that was then formed, they multiplied the actions – symbolic march from Miami to Washington, occupations of the senators’ offices and Barack Obama’s campaign offices, hunger strikes, road blockades , demonstrations –, captured media attention and managed, in 2010, to bring back the DREAM Act at the forefront of the political scene and on the agenda of those involved in the movement.

Initially conceived by the national organizations that control the immigrant rights movement as a way to advance the struggle in a context where the prospect of a regularization program seems inaccessible, the DREAMers have managed, over the years, to gain their autonomy and bring their cause to the public space, thus marking a turning point both in the movement and in public debate. In the words of Nicholls, “ for the first time in the immigrant rights movement, undocumented immigrants had developed their own leaders, assembled their own network for supportive allies, and developed their own messaging campaign. » (p. 91). In this sense, the history of DREAMers goes beyond the cause of young undocumented immigrants: it is that of a national reconfiguration of the movement for the rights of immigrants in the United States, that, to put it briefly, of the passage of an organization top-down to an organization bottom-up of a struggle which now seems to acquire a second youth.

To date, The DREAMers is undoubtedly the most comprehensive book on the undocumented youth movement in the United States. Nicholls has managed to capture and synthesize more than a decade of building this movement in a way a priori convincing. One of the strengths of the work is to have been able to place the movement at the intersection of several stories: those of these young undocumented American immigrants who are becoming activists. ; those of immigrant defense organizations thanks to and against which the DREAMers were built ; that of these local groups which, turning away from the supervision of national organizations, today embody, with young undocumented immigrants, the spearhead of the fight against the implementation of policies hostile to immigrants.

On the other hand, one of the weaknesses of the analysis is due to the poor exploitation of the conceptual tools of the sociology of social movements. Indeed, if Nicholls’ marked interest in the question of discourse, its production and its legitimation is reflected in the problematic of the work and is confirmed by some references to the promoters of the analysis of frames of action collective (David Snow, Robert Benford, etc.) and the analysis of Storytelling in the mobilizations (Francesca Polleta), the work never enters into dialogue with these references. But this remark, of course, does not invalidate the quality of this research which advances the understanding of the dynamics underway in the American space of the mobilizations of undocumented immigrants and their supporters.