Undocumented people struggles: between prescribed community, actual dispersion and democratic deepening

Abstract

By focusing on the framework of Patricia Hill Collins’ black feminism thought, the article analyzes the various dimensions of the status and dispersion of undocumented people, related to the intersectional dynamic of the systems of oppression. The undocumented people constitute a community «on paper». For this, the collective activist experience is very important as a precondition for a mobilized group. However, as hundreds of observations show, within two struggles of undocumented people in France, the activist matrix becomes ambivalent. On the one hand, by joining available forms of activism led by its allies (coercion, autonomy, negation), undocumented people face a process of dispossession as to the direction of their struggles. On the other hand, failures should not hide the emergence of real communities of activism within which diverse dynamics of democratic deepening crystallize in the ideological, practical and ethical domains.

Keywords

• sin-papeles
• militancia
• interseccionalidad
• feminismo negro