Since at least 2001, with the first introduction of the federal DREAM Act in the U.S. Congress, undocumented youth and immigrants have collectively organized themselves into one of the central social movements of the past two decades. Undocumented women and UndocuQueer individuals occupy a unique liminal space within the umbrella of the undocumented identity and how it has manifested into one of the most prominent social movements of the 21st century. Their liminality is, of course, centered first on their undocumentedness—placing them at the extreme margins of formal, legal stratification in our society. However, the history of how the stories, experiences, and contributions of undocumented women and queer individuals have been recorded, told, taught, and experienced in the Immigrant Rights Movement has only further exacerbated this liminality.
Despite almost a (hyper)visibility of undocumented women and queer folks, especially the former, within the Movement, a critical analysis of such dynamic reveals an inherent misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in the Movement’s organizing strategies and structures. Moreover, these experiences of additional exclusion are further exacerbated by other intersections of identity and positionality (e.g., UndocuBlack trans women experience all of these replicated forms of oppression simultaneously). Perhaps even more revealing, despite a rapidly growing discourse around Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality in the Immigrant Rights Movement, the “mainstream” manifestations, strategies, and frameworks of that organizing have failed to disrupt the white, cisgender, heteronormative structures they aim to challenge. This is especially true in the case of undocumented women and queer folks whose experiences and leaderships have often been watered down to simplistic, superficial narratives and caricatures.
Intersectionality then, above the clear delineations and mandates of Crenshaw, has become a misappropriated framework in immigrant rights organizing. In order to create a Movement that truly follows the praxis Crenshaw calls us to engage in through intersectionality, a Movement that identifies and organizes to address cisheteronormativity and its violence, we must engage in a process of (re)defining intersectionality.
The experiences of undocumented women and undocumented queer folks are the windows through which our Movement can come to grapple with its replication of patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia. Like Crenshaw calls on us to do, heeding the experiences and leadership of the most intersectional among us is the only way to develop intersectional movements. First and foremost, it is important to dispel any notions of passive submission on the part of undocumented women and queer folks. The reality is that undocumented women and queer folks have ignited, sustained, and advanced the movement for immigrant justice since its inception.
Nevertheless, despite this history, undocumented women and undocuQueer folks continue to have their leadership and needs overlooked writ large by the Movement. Undocumented women and queer folks, despite their visibility, are often reduced to symbols of empowerment or passive beneficiaries of others’ organizing, rather than recognizing them as the leaders who shape and sustain the Movement. Additionally, despite relying extensively on organizing strategies of undocumented women, and especially undocuQueer folks, mainstream conceptions and narratives of the Immigrant Rights Movement often relegate these individuals to structurally-disempowering roles. Subsequently, victories and triumphs of these (sub)communities come to be classified almost as a secondary phase of the Movement, facilitated by a mythicized trailblazing of cisgender, male organizing.
For instance, there is an indisputable, recorded history of the early Movement looking towards queer folks’ powerful act of “coming out” as a model for immigrant (counter)narratives, agency of their stories, and the transformative power it yielded. Despite this, the story of undocuQueer folks organizing is one told only in the after and because of seemingly straight, cisgender organizing. Moreover, as previously outlined, undocumented women have always been at the center and at the helm of our organizing. Even still, existing literature highlights how they have been policed, sidelined, and marginalized within the Movement.
The misappropriation of intersectionality, especially when it comes to undocumented women and undocuQueer folks, is an incredibly complex phenomenon. As I and others before me have outlined, undocumented women and undocuQueer folks are not invisible or made to be invisible within the Movement. On the contrary, the Movement’s origins and dependency on the leadership of women and queer folks seemingly prohibit any attempt to invisibilize them. Despite this, these (sub)communities continue to be sidelined from fully taking the helm and setting the agenda of the Movement.
Audre Lorde warns us against using the “master’s tools” to “dismantle the master’s house.” In light of the current, misappropriated definition of intersectionality, I contend that the Immigrant Rights Movement has not only replicated but centered the master’s tools of patriarchy and cisheteronormativity to stratify our community. In an incredibly convoluted dynamic, the Immigrant Rights Movement has seemingly (re)invented the ways patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia can be deployed within a society, even one that claims to resist against such systems in the first place. As a result, the Movement has stagnated in its ability and capacity to (re)imagine our demands, recalibrate our organizing, and effectively mount a challenge against global racial capitalism and patriarchy as a whole.
