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Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
ISSN: 1479-1420 (Print) 1479-4233 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rccc20
Border (In)Securities: Normative and Differential Belonging in LGBTQ and Immigrant Rights Discourse
Karma R. Chávez
To cite this article: Karma R. Chávez (2010) Border (In)Securities: Normative and Differential Belonging in LGBTQ and Immigrant Rights Discourse, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7:2, 136-155, DOI: 10.1080/14791421003763291
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14791421003763291
Published online: 21 May 2010.
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Border (In)Securities: Normative and Differential Belonging in LGBTQ and Immigrant Rights Discourse Karma R. Chávez
This essay demonstrates the ways in which some lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or
queer (LGBTQ) rights and immigrant rights organizations enact a form of cultural
citizenship that relies upon normative belonging with their depiction of LGBTQ and
immigrant rights. It also shows how other groups engender what Aimee Carrillo Rowe
refers to as ‘‘differential belonging,’’ by directly confronting normative and exclusionary
discourses. This paper first justifies linking these two issues by establishing the notion of
the ‘‘stranger’’ as a way to describe how both migrants and queers threaten the way the
nation state sees itself. It then unpacks both the normative and differential discourses of
belonging in relation to two prominent neoliberal values: family values and good
citizenship. Finally, this essay considers the implications of differential belonging as a
strategy of cultural citizenship that may confront the exclusions that currently constitute
the way the US nation-state imagines belonging.
Keywords: Family Values; Good Citizenship; Cultural Citizenship; Coalitional
Subjectivity; The Stranger
Most immigration and LGBT rights organizations have steered away from publicly
linking their issues or commenting on the ‘‘other’s’’ issue.1 Some organizations have,
however, illuminated certain connections between these communities by emphasizing
the rights of bi-national same-sex couples who family reunification immigration laws
currently exclude.2 One widely-distributed 2006 report, Family, Unvalued, produced
by the Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality implies that the central
Karma R. Chávez is currently at the University of New Mexico, but she will be an assistant professor of rhetoric
and culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She wishes to
thank Sara McKinnon, Greg Wise and the blind reviewers for help on this manuscript. She also thanks Sarah
Amira De la Garza, Dan Brouwer, H.L.T. Quan, and Eithne Luibhéid for additional support. Funding for some
of this research was provided by Arizona State University’s Graduate and Professional Student Association.
Correspondence to: Karma R. Chávez, Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
53706 USA. E-mail: [email protected]
ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) # 2010 National Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/14791421003763291
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2010, pp. 136�155
concern LGBT rights proponents should have with immigration pertains to legal
residents and US citizens’ ability to legally sponsor their partners for immigration. A
secondary concern relates to the rights of LGBT asylum seekers to be able to receive
refuge in the United States. The report’s silence on the plight of undocumented
migrants, the rights of migrants generally, as well as their emphasis on bi-national
couples, suggests that immigration should only be a concern for LGBT people
because US LGBT citizens, especially white middle class citizens, are having their
rights violated under current immigration law.3 It offers little reason for immigrants
or immigration activists to support LGBT rights. In this way, these large, national and
mainstream LGBT, immigrant and human rights organizations enact a particular
kind of cultural citizenship that attempts to ameliorate the threat LGBT people and
their immigrant partners pose by utilizing normalizing discourses of belonging to
frame the issues*a strategic move with potentially significant consequences.
On the other hand, some queer and immigrant activists refuse normalizing
discourses of belonging. For example, queer immigrant activists in New York,
Chicago, and San Francisco have built coalitions and alliances that emphasize the
labor exploitation that migrants often endure. Additionally, activists in Southern
Arizona have long understood the related threat that queers and migrants4 pose to
borders within the US nation-state. Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community
Center and Coalición de Derechos Humanos (CDH), a Tucson-based grassroots
immigrant and human rights organization, have worked together for many years
confronting what they perceive as anti-migrant and anti-queer oppression. Unlike the
urban organizations, which are primarily promoted by and for queer immigrants,
Wingspan and CDH largely consist of constituencies that are queer and citizen on the
one hand, and migrant or migrant advocate and non-queer on the other. Although
each individual organization focuses primarily on its ‘‘own’’ issue, the mission and
constituency of the other group always remain present in the actions in which they
each engage. When warranted, these two organizations team up in ‘‘coalition’’5 in
order to create a unified front to challenge all kinds of policy, treatment, or ideologies
that migrants and queers face in Southern Arizona, thereby constructing different
possibilities for belonging.
These latter strategies work to create what Aimee Carrillo Rowe describes as
‘‘differential belonging,’’6 an alternative mode of cultural citizenship, which can
challenge the national social imaginary that figures queers and migrants as threats to
family values and the good citizen. Instead of bargaining, compromising, or
representing the interests of few, differential modes function by coalescing
differently-situated groups and demanding that policy address the deep causes of
interlocking oppressions. Manifestations of differential modes are important to
examine because they provide clear examples of what it means to do politics without
compromise (or guarantees).
In this paper, I provide an analysis of three sets of statements on LGBT and
immigration issues. I begin with a critique of normative belonging through
discourses of family values and good citizenship in Family, Unvalued. I then unpack
modes of differential belonging through analyzing a statement from Queers for
Border (In)Securities 137
Economic Justice called ‘‘Queers and Immigration: A Vision Statement,’’ and two
statements produced by Wingspan and CDH before and after the 2006 election titled:
‘‘Joint Statement: Stand against Racism and Homophobia,’’ and ‘‘Joint statement:
Continued stand against racism and homophobia.’’ Although each statement could
be said to envision a kind of cultural citizenship that forms the basis for inclusions
(exclusions) and rights, the differential strategies evidenced in these latter statements
challenge normative belonging by formulating the modality of relationality and locus
of belonging as radically other than the desire for normativity. I then consider the
implications of differential belonging as a strategy to confront the exclusions that
currently constitute the way the US nation-state imagines belonging.
Strangers and Exclusions
Queers and migrants have always been excluded from fully belonging to the US
nation-state.7 This particular historical moment, constituted by neoliberalism and
post-9/11 insecurity, has re-emphasized the importance of secure borders*moral
and national ones. Migrants and queers emerge as the prototypical threats to those
borders, in part because they are figured within the national social imaginary as
strangers. Borrowing from Zygmunt Bauman, who argues that the ‘‘undecidable
generated by the friend/enemy binary is the stranger,’’ Shane Phelan contends that
‘‘strangers disrupt seemingly natural boundaries and borders.’’8 In addition to being
strange because queer people are often citizens who do not possess the rights of other
citizens, queer people in the US live within and among the heteronormative citizenry
and cannot always be easily identified.
Relatedly, Katarzyna Marciniak suggests that migrants, figured as aliens, are also
strangers who ‘‘disrupt the clear-cut national identification of rightful citizenry.’’9
Migrants live like citizens, they are often in relationships with citizens, and yet they
are not citizens. Phelan further explains, ‘‘strangers are not just ‘not like us,’ as
enemies are, but may ‘pretend’ to be like us. In fact, the more the stranger attempts to
become ‘like us’ the more threatening s/he becomes, and the greater the potential for
betrayal as relevant boundaries are seemingly crossed.’’10 Strangers, especially queers
and migrants, can easily become a common national threat that must be prevented
from both material and imagined belonging, which often proves essential to unifying
the rest of polity.11
Because strangers disrupt discourses of citizenship, many queer and immigration
scholars have applied the notion of cultural citizenship to understand how strangers
function within and outside the mainstream.12 Aihwa Ong describes cultural
citizenship as ‘‘the cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the
often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that
establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory.’’13
Cultural citizenship, then, refers to the ways that people, regardless of legal status,
maneuver in relation to existing norms. Because stranger groups are variously
strange, however, Aihwa Ong has used the notion of ‘‘variegated citizenship’’ to
describe the ways in which cultural and legal citizens are differently disciplined within
138 K.R. Chávez
a given context due to their ability to adapt to cultural (i.e., racial, familial, and
linguistic) norms or their flexibility as a result of significant wealth.14 No matter how
well particular groups may be able to accommodate given norms through their
enactment of cultural citizenship, some groups remain strange. Because of their
positioning as stranger, many mainstream LGBT and immigrant rights organizations,
especially well-funded national ones who purport to represent large constituencies,
adopt normative discourses of belonging to ameliorate the threat they pose to secure
national and moral borders. Importantly, just as queers and migrants are strange to
the nation, they are strange to each other. In this next section, I uncover how such
discourses function in Family, Unvalued.
Normative Belonging
Family, Unvalued is the first comprehensive report on the rights of bi-national same-
sex couples, and one of the first detailing an important intersection between LGBT
and immigrant rights in the US.15 Published by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a
progressive international human rights organization committed to ending human
rights abuses, and Immigration Equality (IE), a US-based organization that seeks to
end LGBT and HIV discrimination in US immigration law, several large LGBT and
immigration rights organizations financially supported its preparation, including: the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education
Fund, Amnesty International and UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute.16 Moreover,
it is published on the websites of prominent immigration sites such as the American
Immigration Lawyers’ Association and asylumlaw.org, and prominent LGBT groups
including the Human Rights Campaign.
Family, Unvalued clearly seeks expedient political change for a particular group of
people. The document is thus a calculated one, and no doubt the exclusions that it
perpetuates are an intentional strategy to accomplish the desired legislative objectives.
Moreover, the normalizing strategies utilized will prove familiar and expected to those
who use queer theory and study immigration and cultural citizenship. Nevertheless,
since it received wide distribution, and also serves as one of the few available texts
about the connections between immigration and LGBT issues, assessing the
representations within the text is especially important. Moreover, although the text
may appear to subvert norms that oppress all LGBTs, HIV positive people and
immigrants, in actuality, this seems merely a strategy to placate radicals and
progressives who may be reading it. Since the goal of the report is to advance federal
legislation, Family, Unvalued advocates only for the rights of LGBT US citizens. This
statement positions immigration politics as subservient to LGBT politics.
Family Values
Discussions of family values as a powerful national discourse or ideograph have long
concerned communication and cultural studies scholars.17 Many scholarly critiques
emphasize the ways in which (neo)conservatives and members of the religious right
Border (In)Securities 139
deploy ‘‘family values’’ through both policy and rhetoric in order to exclude certain
kinds of people from national belonging. Some queer critiques emphasize the way in
which gay people have succumbed to the ‘‘family values’’ discourse by accepting its
general premises rather than challenging them. Referring specifically to the focus on
military and marriage rights within the mainstream gay movement, Lisa Duggan calls
such normalizing moves examples of ‘‘the new homonormativity,’’ which is a politics
with conventional citizenship as a goal that upholds heteronormative ideas and
institutions and also promises a ‘‘depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity
and consumption.’’18 Duggan uses this concept to critique the more conservative
wings of the gay community, but liberal and progressive human and civil rights
organizations such as HRW and IE also deploy homonormativity, especially in
relation to family values.
Family, Unvalued uses a strategic homonormative discourse of middle class family
values to accomplish a number of objectives that foremost include: (1) introducing
the reader to the serious harm that bi-national same-sex families endure as a result of
the current immigration laws; and (2) making recommendations for different bodies
of the US government on how to remedy the aforementioned problems, specifically
emphasizing the necessity of passing the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA). This
piece of federal legislation would change the word ‘‘spouse’’ to ‘‘permanent partner’’19
in the language of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the primary document that
constructs immigration law.
Happiness to Hardship
The central narrative of Family, Unvalued features the stories of a number of bi-
national couples, mostly coded as middle (and sometimes upper) class, and many
pictured throughout the text embracing each other and/or their children. Such visual
rhetoric constructs normal families with whom a legislator or decision maker may
identify. Each story includes one US American citizen or legal permanent resident
(LPR) and their partner who is a citizen of another country. The narratives share a
similar structure, one that the intended audience will find initially familiar as each
begins with the couple’s meeting, and their decision to spend their lives together as a
family. These narratives, however, conclude with the ensuing and ongoing difficulties
couples have faced as a result of discriminatory US immigration laws. For example,
one story features Will, a US citizen, and his partner Stefano, an Australian-Italian
dual-citizen.
The couple fell in love while Will was working in Sydney on a business visa. ‘‘We
met at a dance party with fifteen thousand people there, gay and lesbian Mardi
Gras. We danced till 6 a.m., exchanged phone numbers using the eyeliner of a drag
queen at the coat check, and have been together ever since.’’
They live in the United States now, where Will works for a large corporation, and
have adopted a child. But, they have had a perpetual struggle to keep Stefano in
status so that Will can keep his job here, and they can stay together.20
140 K.R. Chávez
Although this story involves some queer slippage, as the two scribbled numbers with
a drag queen’s eyeliner, the transition to their lives in the US quickly reiterates the
normative narrative as they struggle to provide for their child and do whatever they
can to keep their family together. Will and Stefano clearly have the cultural flexibility
and financial stability to provide for their family; the difference between these
homonormative family stories and heteronormative ones is that most of these stories
end with a proclamation of a loss of faith in the values of the US such as freedom or
democracy, a plea for the US government to change its laws, or the announcement of
the couple’s intent to try to (reluctantly) relocate elsewhere so that they can be
together. Family, Unvalued does not comment on the class privilege implied with
couples having the financial resources to relocate as hardship is defined strictly in
relational and legal terms.
Each story also justifies and describes the relationship along traditional notions of
the American family. For example, like Will and Stefano, many stories feature
children. Additionally, many discuss the sacrifices they have made just to be with their
families. One US citizen, Barbara, proclaims:
We just want to be able to have a normal life as a family, just get past this and do
what normal people do, just have the freedom to be like everyone else, and not have
the government so bigoted against our rights to not have that. We’d rather spend
our energy helping the kids with their homework, seeing a movie, worrying about
normal financial issues, not these overwhelming questions.21
These sad stories evidence the hardships of maintaining a bi-national, same-sex
relationship and are strategically useful. As narratives of cultural citizenship, these
same sad stories also support a normative discourse on belonging that centers
coupled, family-oriented relationships.
Minimizing Threats
The familiar family narratives feature most prominently in this text, and also work
to minimize the threats posed by those who are undesirable. Importantly, the
report discusses the ban that, until January 2010, prevented HIV positive people
from immigrating to the US in an early section that succinctly details the history of
sexuality-based exclusions within US immigration. HIV only briefly appears in
other parts of the text. Moreover, while the report calls for the repeal of the HIV
ban, it does not identify any of the foreign nationals or US citizens in its pages as
HIV positive. Such a strategy keeps the questions of sex and potential non-
monogamy from consideration. Additionally, with very rare exception, the report
only discusses asylum and the undocumented when a US citizen has a partner who
either seeks asylum or lives in the US without legal papers. Here, the report
carefully minimizes the visibility of those immigrants who might be the poorest,
the strangest, or the largest threat to mainstream acceptance of their inclusion as
normal families.
Border (In)Securities 141
The commitment to a normative discourse of belonging that supports ‘‘family
values’’ is especially upheld in the recommendations that this report makes for
alterations to federal law. The report’s authors begin by espousing a fairly progressive
position on immigration, including many rights for the undocumented. They also
suggest that although they support full marriage rights, the quest for rights for same-
sex bi-national couples is not the same as the quest for civil marriage rights in the US.
They then offer their recommendations, which all begin with the rights for same-sex
couples. For instance, the authors foremost call US Congress to pass the UAFA and to
repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), both because of the negative impact
these laws have on same-sex couples and their families.22 Secondarily, they urge
Congress to pass laws that ensure the human and labor rights of undocumented
people, and to end the HIV ban.23 By placing these latter recommendations second,
the authors placate progressives, at the same time that they continue to center middle
class couples and their families.
Good Citizenship
If, as Ong suggests, citizenship is a ‘‘cultural process of ‘subject-ification,’’’ not just
any subject should be produced; rather, the desired citizen manifests all the ideal
characteristics found within the established citizenry.24 ‘‘Good citizens,’’25 then are
personally responsible, financially stable people who work hard to achieve the
American Dream. Amy L. Brandzel explains that LGBT activists have picked up on
this discourse, and that those who are capable*white, middle class, coupled*have
engendered these ideals.26 Immigration organizations also adopt the rhetoric of
immigrants as personally responsible, good citizens.27 Immigration Forum, one of
the leading national immigration organizations in the US and a proponent of UAFA,
describes its vision as: ‘‘to create US immigration policy that honors our nation’s
ideals, protects human dignity, reflects our country’s economic demands, celebrates
family unity and provides opportunities for progress.’’28
Family, Unvalued targets an audience of influential US citizens, especially
lawmakers who might be most persuaded to take action if other US citizens’ rights
are violated. The narrative centers so precisely on US citizens, that the text often does
not refer to immigrants or foreign nationals as such, but as ‘‘foreign partners.’’ This
rhetorical strategy suggests that immigrants have only a relational subjectivity.
Although perhaps politically expedient, because of this framing of the issue of LGBT
immigration, the report only expresses concern for immigrants coupled with US
citizens. Even when stories use an immigrant’s voice, it remains only a relational
voice, one that would disappear with the severing of the relational bond to a US
citizen. Although the text clearly centers US citizen-subjects, both immigrants and US
citizens get positioned as embodying all the characteristics of good cultural citizens
and believing in the values of the US. These cultural characteristics, not the inherency
of affording rights to all, provide the justification for changing laws.
142 K.R. Chávez
Personal Responsibility
Characteristics such as personal responsibility and financial stability/ability as well as
a desire to exist within the mainstream are all hallmarks of good citizenship. A
number of the narratives express upholding these values at the same time that they
reject undesirable qualities that would disqualify them from belonging as good
citizens. These narratives are both racializing and class-based. One woman, Anji,
decries the immigration system: ‘‘You can’t get around the [US] immigration system.
We try to let people know that we didn’t mess this up; we’re not lazy or stupid . . .’’29
Anji, a white, middle class woman with a partner from Britain, eventually relocated to
Spain. Her comments tellingly evidence both her expectation to be able to ‘‘get
around’’ the system, and her perceived entitlement to mobility since she and her
partner are not ‘‘lazy or stupid,’’ which might make them undeserving of immigration
rights. A US citizen named Brian reveals: ‘‘My partner and I are law-abiding people
that simply want to live our lives together, which means we need the immigration
benefit provided to married couples. We’re not asking for the whole world to
change.’’30 The use of the phrase ‘‘law-abiding’’ not only positions this couple as
personally responsible, good (potential) citizens, but it also creates a distinction
between people like them and those who do not abide by US laws. In this instance,
their upstanding status provides the impetus for deserving rights. The Other upon
which their claim to rights lies are undoubtedly the undocumented border crossers
from Mexico and Central America who break US laws. Further affirming this
normative judgment, with the exception of overstaying visas in order to remain with
partners, no one featured in the report appears to have committed any type of offense
that shows up on their record.
The importance of responsible citizenship is further emphasized in the recom-
mendations the report makes pertaining to undocumented immigrants. The report’s
authors urge lawmakers to remember that within the Constitution, all people on US
soil are granted the same rights as citizens. This plea for rights for the undocumented,
however, is quickly dropped, as the report goes on:
Yet US citizens (and permanent residents) are equally victims along with their foreign national partners. Solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, they find their relationships unrecognized, their families endangered, their lives shadowed by separation and dislocation. Often, their relationships are wrecked, or driven underground.31
Interestingly, none of the undocumented stories include people from Mexico or
Central America. Because of the immense amounts of hatred spewed at Mexicans and
Central Americans for ‘‘flooding’’ across US borders, it should not be surprising that
this statement reinforces anti-Mexican/Central American sentiment as the presence of
migrants from such regions would likely subvert the goals of Family, Unvalued.
The minimization of the unauthorized crossing also strategically turns attention
away from illegality and towards a seemingly lesser offense. Implicitly, then, the
report issues a normative judgment on those who engage in clandestine crossings of
the US border. Much like conservative declarations against ‘‘illegal aliens’’ and for
Border (In)Securities 143
‘‘border security,’’ the careful framing of this report espouses a normative and
restrictive perspective on national belonging, one that does not threaten the
personally responsible status of those featured on its pages. The sort of cultural
citizenship advanced in Family, Unvalued strategically emphasizes normativity as a
pre-requisite for cultural or legal belonging. As Toby Miller suggests, very often,
cultural citizenship fails at working toward a more equitable world because of its
advocates’ collusions with neoliberal, liberal, and national ideations.32 While Family,
Unvalued accomplishes a number of strategic goals, it also succumbs to Miller’s
critique.
Differential Belonging
Alternative constructions of belonging and arguments through cultural citizenship
can also be made. The theory of differential belonging emerges from feminists of
color such as Marı́a Lugones, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Chela Sandoval who challenge
simplistic ideas about identity, subjectivity, and political action based on the lived
experiences and subjectivities of oppressed people.33 In describing political strategies
of US third world feminists, Sandoval advances a ‘‘differential consciousness,’’ which
describes how these feminists had to and chose to shift ‘‘between and among’’
ideological positions as the basis of their political enactment ‘‘like the clutch of an
automobile, the mechanism that permits the driver to select, engage, and disengage
gears in a system for the transmission of power.’’34
‘‘Differential belonging’’ extends Sandoval’s notion. Carrillo Rowe advocates a
‘‘politics of relation’’ in order to theorize the politics of our belongings.35 Differential
belonging asks people to acknowledge how ‘‘we are oppressed and privileged so that
we may place ourselves where we can have an impact and where we can share
experience.’’36 This perspective implies that one does not have to ‘‘be’’ in terms of
being a certain identity in order to do political work. Who someone is, is constructed
by where they already belong, and where they choose to belong. Differential
belonging also compels us to be longing, as in, to desire relations across lines of
difference. The result is a coalitional subjectivity that provides the agency to resist in
ways not bound by fixed identities or subjectivities as one learns to politicize her/his
belongings and adopt impure stances that allow for connection between people and
groups who are very different. As a politics of cultural citizenship, differential
belonging is a strategy where variegated groups choose to belong across seemingly
strong lines of difference at the same time that groups demonstrate the fiction of
divisions upheld within normative constructions of belonging. In this particular
instance, differential belonging engenders a refusal to make a perceived audience
comfortable by privileging mostly white and middle class citizens. Instead differential
belonging involves a commitment to political alliances based on human and labor
rights/violations, and connections built around overtly challenging racism, xeno-
phobia, and homophobia. Here, possessing certain cultural characteristics does not
serve as a prerequisite for deserving political and economic rights.
144 K.R. Chávez
Enacting Differential Belonging
In response to events of 2006 including the movement for so-called comprehensive
immigration reform, the historic immigration marches, the proposal and failure of a
federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, an increase in LGBT activism
to advocate for gay marriage, and several ballot measures targeting either LGBT or
immigrant rights around the country, some LGBT or queer and immigrant/human
rights organizations offered alternative positions on belonging that challenged
normativity. Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ), a radical New York-based
organization led mostly by people of color, that seeks economic justice within the
context of gender and sex liberation, published Queers and Immigration: A Vision
Statement. Although only about four pages long, activist organizations including
the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, as well as numerous blogs and
academic listservs distributed the statement. Additionally, the Audre Lorde
Project, Chicago LGBTQ Immigrant Alliance, and Love Sees No Borders all
endorsed it.
Specifically in response to measures put on the Arizona ballot that targeted LGBT
rights (Proposition 107) and immigrant rights (Propositions 100, 102, 103, and
300),37 Tucson-based organizations CDH and Wingspan joined together to produce
pre- and post-election statements linking queer rights with migration rights.38
Activists distributed these statements locally over Tucson-based listservs and posted
them on organizational and personal websites. Both the QEJ and Tucson statements
offer an alternative mode of belonging that de-emphasize family values and good
citizenship as discourses that should simultaneously bring migration and queer issues
together, and discipline migrants and queers. These reports in no way received the
same attention or financial support as Family, Unvalued. They were, however,
produced at virtually the same time, and they represent some of the only other
publicized statements pertaining to both queer and migrant issues. The fact that
they received less attention and support will be taken up in the conclusion of this
paper.
Shifting Modalities of Belonging
Queers and Immigration begins by affirming that in the US there is little analysis of
the intersections between queer rights and immigration. It then critiques normative
belonging by explaining how LGBTQ immigrants are invisible within both move-
ments. The statement begins with a critique of both movements’ emphasis on
conventional, partnered relationships and conceptions of normality. Queers and
Immigration not only challenges those discourses of belonging, but it also promotes
an alternative that centers LGBTQ immigrants no matter their relationships. In this
way, while the modality of belonging to the nation-state in Family, Unvalued centers
traditional family values, Queers and Immigration shifts the modality to other
affective and relational registers.
Border (In)Securities 145
Queering Belonging
The layout of Queers and Immigration provides a short section on each of the issues
emphasized, which begins with the HIV ban. While Family, Unvalued also has an
early section on the HIV ban and recommends repealing it, HIV positivity is
generally minimized throughout the rest of the document. In placing the HIV ban
first in the list of issues, Queers and Immigration acknowledges both the long-
standing impacts that HIV has had on queer communities, particularly queer
communities of color, and the unmerited criminalization of a specific group of
immigrants. Rather than utilizing a normative discourse of belonging that tries to fit
LGBT people in the framework of family values, QEJ enacts differential belonging by
outwardly choosing to belong to HIV positive queers/immigrants. Additionally, this
statement critiques the ban for offering waivers ‘‘on the basis of qualifying familial
relationships.’’39 Rather than calling for inclusion of any kind of queer kinship, the
statement advocates reinstating waivers for individual instances of hardship. In this
version of cultural citizenship, who one already belongs to or who one chooses to
belong to in their personal life do not set the parameters for national belonging.
A critique of heteronormative family values infuses the entire text, yet ‘‘family’’ is
also one of the primary issues that the statement argues needs to be addressed by both
LGBTQ and immigrant rights communities. Although Family, Unvalued simply tries
to demonstrate how LGBT families are essentially the same as heterosexual families,
Queers and Immigration challenges the generally exclusionary definitions under
immigration law, which not only impact same-sex bi-national couples, but also
extended family members such as cousins. Thus, they do not ask for inclusion, but a
broadening of the narrow definitions of family. This rhetorical tactic enacts
differential belonging by challenging the definition of who can belong in a family.
At the same time, it also offers support for UAFA. This move most clearly
demonstrates differential belonging, as the inclusion of support for UAFA suggests
that the statement’s authors do not seek to isolate themselves from others who want
rights for LGBT immigrants, even if they disagree with their strategies and focus. QEJ
seek belonging across lines of all kinds of difference because they understand that
their issues are intertwined even as they seek different ends.
Coalitions among Strangers
Wingspan and CDH do not center their analysis on LGBTQ immigrants. Rather, in
response to the aforementioned anti-migrant and anti-queer measures on the 2006
Arizona ballot, the Wingspan and CDH pre-election ‘‘Joint Statement’’ seeks to
overtly link anti-migrant and anti-queer oppression and to demonstrate solidarity
between two seemingly separate communities. The post-election ‘‘Joint Statement
Continued,’’ notes that the end of the 2006 campaign season does not mark an end to
the joint work CDH and Wingspan conduct. Since the context for the production of
these statements emphasizes the specific cultural and political circumstances in
Arizona, these statements do not engage with issues such as the HIV ban and UAFA.
146 K.R. Chávez
CDH and Wingspan instead issue an assertive proclamation of belonging to each
other, in spite of discourses that often work very well to feature each as strange in the
others’ eyes. The joint statements emphasize the racism, xenophobia, and homo-
phobia that the two organizations suggest each of these ballot measures reflect. For
instance, ‘‘Joint Statement’’ boldly begins:
Coalición de Derechos Humanos and Wingspan recognize that propositions 100,
102, 103 and 300 are simply the latest in an ongoing, state- and nationwide
campaign of coded racist dehumanization aimed at undocumented migrants and
anyone else of color who might fit the underlying racial profile. We also recognize
that proposition 107 is a continuation of homophobic attacks aimed at lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender people of all races, ethnicities, and nations. Using an
onslaught of initiatives in multiple states, state and federal legislation, and
demonizing words and images, these campaigns of dehumanization do great
harm to all people.40
Although it might at first appear strange, this opening statement mixes queers and
migrants and people of color in such a way that they are all implicated in the
dehumanization of each other.
After locating all of the ballot measures as interwoven ‘‘campaigns of dehumaniza-
tion,’’ the ‘‘Joint Statement’’ continues with an analysis of the anti-migrant
propositions. ‘‘Joint Statement’’ takes an offensive approach that maintains that the
anti-migrant measures function to: (1) justify exploitation and mistreatment of
migrants at the hands of employers, law enforcement, and vigilantes; (2) position
migrants as a scapegoat and divert attention from the real reasons for the current
immigration situation; (3) divert attention from finding real solutions to pressing
social problems such as health care and government corruption; and (4) support a
system in which the erosion of human and civil rights is a profit-making industry.41
The analysis in the statement calls attention to issues such as border militarization,
the impacts of free trade policies on migration, economic exploitation, and the
dehumanization created using the term ‘‘illegal alien’’ to refer to people. Refusing to
defend migrants by locating them within a ‘‘family values’’ discourse makes the
alliance between LGBTQ and migrants much easier.
In the subsequent section on Protect Marriage Arizona (PMA), ‘‘Joint Statement’’
takes the ‘‘family values’’ discourse on directly. This section suggests that PMA
functions to: (1) argue that marriage is in crisis because of queer people; (2)
scapegoat queer people for a perceived decline in traditional ‘‘family values’’; and (3)
use queer people to divert attention from finding real solutions to pressing social
problems such as health care and government corruption. This analysis attends to
issues such as the problem of granting rights only through conjugal familial
relationships and the fact that ‘‘family values’’ have always only benefited a very
select few. The parallel structure of these two sections demonstrates why queers and
migrants should long to be in relation to each other; at a fundamental level, migrants
and queers are scapegoats that are easily blamed for a multitude of societal problems.
By evidencing how this scapegoating similarly works, CDH and Wingspan
Border (In)Securities 147
rhetorically craft a justification for belonging across lines of difference and a refusal to
utilize the family modality.
CDH and Wingspan choose to see their issues as always already interrelated. Their
decision to join together to write a pre-election statement that refused many of the
family values claims that both immigrant and LGBTQ groups often use as
justification for their respective inclusion in national belonging shows this
commitment. This enduring commitment invites queers and migrants into a
coalitional subjectivity that many leaders and activists already embody. Cathy Busha,
the Director of Programs for Wingspan until Fall 2007, demonstrates this subjectivity
as a progressive enactment of cultural citizenship. She explains that there comes a
point when one can no longer remember when she did not see all of these struggles as
related.42 Cathy cannot understand herself as anything other than inextricably bound
to other struggles and other kinds of subjects. Such a coalitional subjectivity, an
ultimate goal of differential belonging, furthers the ability to do the difficult work in
battling for rights without relying not rely on common, but exclusionary, modalities
of belonging.
Shifting the Locus of Belonging
Rather than the narrow locus of belonging that emphasizes US citizens and those
who embody all the characteristics of the good citizen, Queers and Immigration and
the joint statements interrogate questions of ‘‘illegality,’’ border militarization and the
general oppressiveness of all immigration laws in the US. These statements shift the
locus away from legal citizenship and toward human and labor rights. While Family,
Unvalued makes an implicit normative judgment on border crossing, Queers and
Immigration includes a significant section on ‘‘policing the border’’ that underscores
the detrimental impacts on human lives that heightened border militarization has
had, including the record number of deaths in the past several years. They also
challenge US nation-centrism by emphasizing the terrible impacts that border
militarization and proposals for border walls have for indigenous peoples whose
national borders span the US�Mexico border and whose people are currently allowed
free movement across that border.43 This discussion is especially important because it
raises questions of which citizens get to appropriately belong to the US in the first
place. Moreover, in recalling the complexities of US colonial history in relation to
indigenous peoples, the issue is not about who is good enough to belong to the
nation, but who should even be able to make these claims.
Centering Undocumented Rights
Queers and Immigration generally centers the rights of undocumented immigrants,
and, in this context, US citizens and legal permanent residents become the ones with
relational identities. For instance, in the section on ‘‘harboring provisions,’’ the
statement notes how many laws target people who protect or assist the undocu-
mented, and this potentially impacts those who provide services to undocumented
148 K.R. Chávez
people, their friends, family or partners. Although harboring provisions are designed
to deter undocumented immigrants, this statement blurs that boundary, stating ‘‘We
oppose efforts to criminalize those who assist the immigrant community . . .’’44
Similarly, the statement’s authors oppose guest worker programs because they create
a ‘‘two-tiered’’ system of immigrants ‘‘based on their income potential and class
categories.’’45 Once again, US citizens and residents, in this instance workers, are
placed in a relational identity with immigrants. The statement suggests that guest
worker programs lead to underpaying and mistreating guest workers at the same time
that they undermine the labor movement in the US. Specifically, immigrant workers’
rights cannot be regulated, and low-skill, low-wage workers often receive the brunt of
such programs. This section places laborers in solidarity with each other, regardless of
legal citizenship by noting that no matter where one’s legal citizenship, guest worker
programs impact all low-wage workers. This alternative locus provides a rationale for
all people oppressed by capitalism to long to be in relation to one another.
Confronting Illegality
The Wingspan and CDH joint statements discuss the labor and law enforcement
crisis for immigrants, but they also spend time unpacking the term ‘‘illegal.’’ In
critiquing the dominant themes apparent in the anti-migrant movement in Arizona,
‘‘Joint Statement’’ finds ‘‘repetitive use of the word ‘illegal’ to label human beings
rather than specific actions; repeated references to undocumented migrants as
‘invaders’; implicit and explicit links between speaking Spanish, lawbreaking and
invasion; and unsubstantiated rhetorical links between ‘illegal aliens’ and ills such as
violence and drug use that in truth plague all segments of society . . .’’46 The statement
goes on: ‘‘This type of hateful language positions undocumented migrants*and
others who might be mistaken for undocumented migrants*as both dangerous and
less than human.’’47 As in the QEJ statement, this statement blurs the boundaries
between documented and undocumented in such a way that racism and xenophobia
cannot be directed only at some ‘‘foreign other.’’ The slippage between being
undocumented and ‘‘looking’’ undocumented makes any distinction between the
citizen and the other tenuous at best.48
After the 2006 election, all four anti-migrant measures in Arizona passed by a 3�1
margin, while PMA lost by roughly two percentage points. While LGBTQ
organizations around the country celebrated, few attended to the fact that the rights
of migrants in the state had been severely diminished. QEJ is one of the only non-
Arizona organizations that made this connection, and used it as an opportunity to
critique laws that hurt immigrants and advocate for ones that meet the needs of
LGBTQ immigrants. Wingspan and CDH decided to issue another joint statement in
response to the election results that would primarily speak to LGBT US citizens. This
statement does not address the needs or rights of citizens, nor does it explicitly name
this audience. Rather, ‘‘Joint Statement Continued,’’ urges LGBT, migrant and LGBT
migrant communities to refuse ‘‘divide and conquer’’ tactics just because it seems like
one rights movement has advanced while the other has regressed. The statement calls
Border (In)Securities 149
all three of the aforementioned audiences to take action by speaking out for LGBT
and migrant rights, acknowledging the scapegoating tactics used against LGBTs and
migrants, and recognizing the people who exist within both communities. However,
the specific action steps that the statement offers clearly target LGBTQ people:
(1) Don’t refer to migrants as ‘‘illegal.’’ Human beings are not illegal.
(2) Research the unfair global economic policies*often advocated by the US
government and US big business*that depress economies in places like Mexico
and lead to migration.
(3) Research the good that migrants do for the US economy and culture.
(4) Join one of the many local migrants’ rights organizations, work for social justice,
and learn about the inhumanity caused by the militarization of the US-Mexico
border.49
Some leaders in Wingspan feared that LGBT community members might be
inclined to distance themselves from migrant rights with the defeat of PMA. Thus,
the strategic centering of those individuals as an audience does not engage a discourse
of good citizenship as the locus for national belonging; rather, it recognizes that
citizens of all kinds are needed to promote human rights for all people. As a form of
cultural citizenship that does not emphasize preferred characteristics or legality, this
overt linking of (seemingly separate) groups that both get defined as strangers to each
other and to the nation shows the possibilities to subvert normative discourses of
belonging and seek other options. In this way, differential belonging functions as an
alternative politics of cultural citizenship by refusing the significance of legal
citizenship as the only mode for offering rights, at the same time that legal citizens
become a target audience as an influential group who can belong to other cultural
citizens.
Conclusions
As Miller has aptly quipped, ‘‘we are in a crisis of belonging . . .’’ Although cultural
citizenship has been advocated as a frame for both understanding how belonging
works and also for envisioning new possibilities, too often only a narrow type of
culture creates the grounds for acceptable belonging. Miller writes of cultural
citizenship, ‘‘My concern is that the cultural Left got what it wanted: culture at the
center of politics and sociopolitical analysis. But it was not Queer Nation and Stuart
Hall. It was creepy Christianity and Samuel Huntington. This outflanking has meant
that culture can be utilized to trump progressive approaches and politics.’’50 These
failures of cultural citizenship to advance progressive politics, however, need not
represent the only possibility if differential belonging is in fact a viable politics of
cultural citizenship.
Migrants and queers challenge conventional belonging because they are both
figured as strangers and threats to how the nation sees itself now, and, more
importantly, how it hopes to see itself in the future. As Carrillo Rowe contends, the
150 K.R. Chávez
nation-as-white is always constituted in and by the nation-as-heterosexual,51 so when
groups who currently challenge each of those imaginaries, such as Wingspan and
CDH, choose to belong to each other in spite of that threat (and even when they are
seen as threats to each other), they rupture the divide and conquer mentality. When
one longs to or chooses to belong to another group that is predominantly positioned
as threatening, the acts of longing and belonging directly confront the national
imaginary and hence challenge the values and discourses that have largely constituted
it. Nevertheless, considering the vast resource disparities between HRW and IE on the
one hand, and QEJ, Wingspan, and CDH on the other, the question remains: can
differential belonging offer more than localized or small-time change?
This analysis has featured two very different forms of belonging and thus two
alternative kinds of cultural citizenship. The normative form exemplified by Family,
Unvalued, received considerably more support and publicity, and is far more
extensive. The organizations that engage differential belonging are much smaller, with
fewer resources and little national political presence. Undoubtedly, these disparities
create different possibilities for staking out political positions. Herein lies the upshot
of this analysis. Differential belonging is not a mainstream form of political action
because it is located outside of most people’s affective aspirations and it is, in a word,
hard. As Lauren Berlant explains in another context, many US Americans very often
long for conventionality when it comes to their relationships.52 These conventional
longings sculpt normative belongings. To long to belong otherwise is dangerous,
threatening, and strange. To garner acceptance for such (be)longings, from others
who you also may long (or need) to be in relation to such as lawmakers and people
with power, is no easy task. If a person can approximate the normative modes of
belonging such as whiteness and heteronormativity like many who advocate for the
rights of bi-national same-sex couples, then it makes sense to rely upon and enact
normativity in order to gain some ground (for very few). These normative
aspirations coupled with social status and financial resources enable some groups
and issues to gain national regard when groups with ideologies, issues, and money
such as QEJ have not. But the middle class, white-centric and homonormative
modalities of reports such as Family, Unvalued, although undeniably strategic, do not
have to be a foregone conclusion. If differential belonging is ever to have any policy
implications, it will be in bringing people to coalitional subjectivities, where they
cannot help but see their oppression and privilege as inextricably bound to others.
Perhaps this is why the localized work of groups such as QEJ, CDH, and Wingspan
remains so important, for it is on the ground, and in the day-to-day relationships we
build with others that we learn to long to be better people, to belong to a more just
world.
Notes
[1] There are of course exceptions. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force openly requests
that gay people support immigration rights, and the United Farm Workers openly advocate
for marriage equality.
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[2] Eithne Luibhéid, ‘‘Queer/Migration: An Unruly Body of Scholarship,’’ GLQ 14, (2008): 169� 90.
[3] Yasmin Nair, ‘‘Nair Views: Gay Immigration (and) Inequality,’’ Windy City Times (2007,
July 1), http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID�15470;
Nair, ‘Viewpoints: Queer Immigration: Change the Paradigms,‘ Windy City Times (2008,
January 9), http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID� 17177 (accessed June 1, 2008).
[4] I use ‘‘migrant’’ to refer to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers whether they have
documents or not. When organizations use ‘‘immigrant,’’ I utilize their language. ‘‘Queer’’
refers to LGBT people and others such as prostitutes or ‘‘welfare mothers’’ who fail to
conform to the conventions of heteronormativity. For a more elaborate discussion on the use
of these terms, see: Eithne Luibhéid, ‘‘Introduction: Queer Migration and Citizenship,’’ in
Queer Migrations: Sexuality, US Citizenship, and Border Crossings, ed. Eithne Luibhéid and
Lionel Cantú Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), ix�xlvi. When referring
to mainstream organizations that I argue engage in normative discourses of belonging, I
generally refer to them using the acronym LGBT. This is a political choice as the term
‘‘queer’’ is not one that these organizations generally espouse to describe their identities or
their modes of activism. I use the acronym LGBTQ, where the Q stands for ‘‘queer’’ when
that is the term organizations use in their writings, or in times when I am referring to both
mainstream and progressive organizations.
[5] Much debate has long existed within feminist theory about the terms ‘‘coalition’’ and
‘‘alliance.’’ To remain consistent with the language that activists in CDH and Wingspan use, I
use the term ‘‘coalition’’ to describe their relationship.
[6] Aimee Carrillo Rowe, ‘‘Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation,’’ NWSA Journal
17, (2005); Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 15�46.
[7] For example, Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minnea-
polis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens
and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Linda
Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2006); Siobhan B. Somerville, ‘‘Notes toward a Queer History of
Naturalization,’’ American Quarterly 57 (2005): 659�75, Somerville, ‘‘Sexual Aliens and the
Racialized State: A Queer Reading of the 1952 US Immigration and Nationality Act,’’ in
Queer Migrations: Sexuality, US Citizenship, and Border Crossings, ed. Eithne Luibhéid and
Lionel Cantú Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 75�91; Shannon
Minter, ‘‘Sodomy and Public Morality Offenses under US Immigration Law: Penalizing
Lesbian and Gay Identity,’’ Immigration and Nationality Law Review 15 (1993�4): 428�74;
Margot Canaday, ‘‘Who Is a Homosexual?’: The Consolidation of Sexual Identities in Mid-
Twentieth-Century American Immigration Law,’’ Law & Social Inquiry 28 (2003): 351�86;
Lionel Cantú Jr., The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossings and Mexican Immigrant Men,
ed. Nancy A. Naples and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (New York: New York University Press, 2009);
Bettina M. Fernandez, ‘‘HIV Exclusion of Immigrants under the Immigration Reform &
Control Act of 1986,’’ La Raza Law Journal 5 (1992): 65�107; Eithne Luibhéid, ‘‘The 1965
Immigration and Nationality Act: An ‘End’ to Exclusion?,’’ Positions 5 (1997): 501�22.
[8] Shane Phelan, Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship (Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press, 2001), 29.
[9] Katarzyna Marciniak, Alienhood: Citizenship, Exile, and the Logic of Difference (Minneapolis:
University of Minneapolis Press, 2006), 9. David Cole also extends a version of these
arguments in his discussion of the ‘‘enemy alien’’ in post-9/11 US. See, David Cole, Enemy
Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (New York:
The New Press, 2003). The notion of the stranger in connection to immigrants and non-
white racial others in Western social theory has a long history. See, Robert Ezra Park, ‘‘The
152 K.R. Chávez
Concept of Social Distance as Applied to the Study of Racial Attitudes and Racial Relations,‘
Journal of Applied Sociology 8 (1924): 339�44; Alfred Schutz, ‘‘The Stranger: An Essay in
Social Psychology,’’ The American Journal of Sociology 49 (1944): 499�507.
[10] Phelan, Sexual Strangers, 31.
[11] Jasbir Kaur Puar and Amit S. Rai, ‘‘Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the
Production of Docile Patriots,’’ Social Text 20 (2002): 118�48; Lauren Berlant, The Queen of
America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1997).
[12] For example, Renato Rosaldo, ‘‘Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism,’’ in
Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Space, Identity, and Rights, ed. William V. Flores and
Rina Benmayor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 27�38; Toby Miller, ‘‘Culture, Dislocation, and
Citizenship,’’ in Global Migration, Social Change, and Cultural Transformation, ed. Emory
Elliot, Jasmine Payne, and Patricia Ploesch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 165�86,
165�86; Lauren Berlant, ‘‘Uncle Sam Needs a Wife: Citizenship and Denegation,’’ in
Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and
Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002), 144�74.
[13] Aihwa Ong, ‘‘Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and
Cultural Boundaries in the United States,’’ Current Anthropology 37 (1996): 738.
[14] Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1999).
[15] Although some scholars have written extended texts on LGBT and immigration issues (as
noted above), the first community report of this kind was: The Audre Lorde Project,
‘‘Community at a Crossroads: US Right Wing Policies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit
and Transgender Immigrants of Color in New York City’’ (New York City: The Audre Lorde
Project, Inc., 2004).
[16] Importantly, Family, Unvalued is also lauded by Independent Gay Forum, which is,
according to Duggan, the quintessential homonormative organization. See: http://www.
indegayforum.org/news/show/30952.html (accessed September 1, 2009).
[17] For example, Dana L. Cloud, ‘‘The Rhetoric of BFamily Values�: Scapegoating, Utopia,
and the Privatization of Social Responsibility,’’ Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998):
387�419; Janet R. Jakobsen, ‘‘Can Homosexuals End Western Civilization as We Know It?
Family Values in a Global Economy,’’ in Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of
Colonialism, ed. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV (New York: New York
University Press, 2002), 49�70; Rebecca Dingo, ‘‘Securing the Nation: Neoliberalism’s US
Family Values in a Transnational Gendered Economy,’’ Journal of Women’s History 16, (2004):
173�86; Patricia Hill Collins, ‘‘It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and
Nation,’’ in Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist
World, ed. Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2000), 156�76; Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United
States, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
[18] Lisa Duggan, ‘‘The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism,’’ in
Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and
Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 179. For other cogent and
powerful critiques of normativity in relation to LGBT movements, see Cathy J. Cohen,
‘‘Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Real Radical Potential of Queer Politics?,’’
GLQ 3 (1997): 437�65; Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics
of Queer Life (New York: The Free Press, 1999).
[19] The Permanent Partners Immigration Act was originally introduced in Congress in 2000.
Since then, the name of the legislation has shifted to the Uniting American Families Act,
though the content of the proposed act remains similar and the term ‘‘permanent partners,’’
remains in place. This term, ‘‘permanent partners,’’ presumably serves as a reminder that
Border (In)Securities 153
although these partners cannot be legally married, their relationships are in fact permanent,
in spite of the likelihood that a majority of all relationships are impermanent.
[20] Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial,
and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under US Law (New York: Human Rights Watch
and Immigration Equality, 2006), 61.
[21] Ibid., 113.
[22] Ibid., 15.
[23] Ibid., 16.
[24] Ong, ‘‘Cultural Citizenship,’’ 737. See also, Toby Miller, The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship,
Culture and the Postmodern Subject (Baltimore, NJ: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
[25] David Batstone and Eduardo Mendieta, eds., The Good Citizen (New York: Routledge,1999);
Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? Language,
Politics, Belonging (New York: Seagull Books, 2007).
[26] Amy L. Brandzel, ‘‘Queering Citizenship? Same-Sex Marriage and the State,’’ GLQ 11 (2005):
171�204. See also, Diane Richardson, ‘‘Claiming Citizenship? Sexuality, Citizenship and
Lesbian/Feminist Theory,’’ Sexualities 3 (2000): 255�72; Richardson, ‘‘Locating Sexualities:
From Here to Normality,’’ Sexualities 7 (2004): 39�411; Richardson, ‘‘Desiring Sameness?
The Rise of a Neoliberal Politics of Normalisation,’’ Antipode 37 (2005): 515�35.
[27] See Susanne Jonas, ‘‘Decolonization from within the Americas: Latin@ Immigrant Responses
to the US National Security Regime and the Challenges of Reframing the Immigration
Debate,’’ in Latin@S in the World-System: Decolonization Struggles in the Twenty-First Century
US Empire, ed. Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and José David Saldı́var
(Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 183�98.
[28] ‘‘About the Forum,’’ Immigration Forum, http://www.immigrationforum.org/about
(accessed September 1, 2009).
[29] Watch and Equality, Family, Unvalued, 91.
[30] Ibid., 51.
[31] Ibid., 14.
[32] Miller, ‘‘Culture, Dislocation, and Citizenship.’’
[33] Marı́a Lugones, ‘‘Purity, Impurity, and Separation,’’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture &
Society 19 (1994): 458�79; Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 2nd
ed. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999); Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2000), 6.
[34] Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, 56.
[35] Carrillo Rowe, ‘‘Be Longing.’’
[36] Ibid., 35.
[37] Proposition 107, Protect Marriage Arizona, sought to include an amendment to Arizona’s
state constitution that defined marriage as between one man and one woman, and denied
any non-married state employees*homosexual or heterosexual*access to domestic partner
benefits. The anti-migrant measures included provisions that: (1) prohibit any undocu-
mented person charged with a felony offense from posting bail (Proposition 100); (2) make
it impossible for undocumented migrants to receive punitive damages after winning a claim
in civil court (Proposition 102); (3) name English as the official language of the state for all
official government business (Proposition 103); and (4) prevent undocumented people from
taking adult education classes or getting child care assistance, scholarships, grants, tuition
assistance or in-state tuition (Proposition 300).
[38] During my year-long qualitative research project studying the coalition between Wingspan
and CDH, I was on the committee which produced both the joint statements. As a
committee member, I read drafts and inputted changes that members of the organizations
desired. I offered minimal input on the direction of the statements.
[39] Queers for Economic Justice, ‘‘Queers and Immigration: A Vision Statement,’’ http://
www.barnard.edu/sfonline/immigration/qej_01.htm (accessed April 22, 2010).
154 K.R. Chávez
[40] ‘Coalición De Derechos Humanos and Wingspan Joint Statement: Stand against Racism and
Homophobia,‘ Wingspan, http://wingspan.org/content/news_wingspan_details.php?story_id
�353 (accessed September 1, 2009).
[41] Ibid.
[42] Interview with author, April 2007.
[43] Justice, ‘‘Queers and Immigration.’’
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid.
[46] CDH and Wingspan, ‘‘Joint Statement’’.
[47] Ibid.
[48] As a number of scholars have suggested, in the US this slippage between citizen and alien is
an historically prominent one. See, Ian Haney-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction
of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Luibhéid, Eithne, ‘‘Sexuality,
Migration, and the Shifting Line between Legal and Illegal Status,’’ GLQ 14, nos. 2�3
(2008): 289�316. This is perhaps especially difficult for Latinos/as who not only get lumped
into a homogenized group, but are also racially similar to Mexicans who are imagined to be
the ideal ‘‘illegal alien.’’ See, Eduardo Mendieta, ‘‘Becoming Citizens, Becoming Hispanics,’’
in The Good Citizen, ed. David Batstone and Eduardo Mendieta (New York: Routledge,
1999), 113�32; Ngai, Impossible Subjects.
[49] ‘‘Coalición De Derechos Humanos and Wingspan � Joint Statement: Continued Stand
against Racism and Homophobia,’’ Wingspan, http://wingspan.org/content/news_wing
span_details.php?story_id�359 (accessed September 1, 2009). As a side note, similar action
steps also appeared in an unpublished statement issued by members of the People of Color
Caucus of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change Conference in 2006.
[50] Miller, ‘‘Culture, Dislocation, and Citizenship,’’ 180.
[51] Aimee Carrillo Rowe, ‘‘Whose ‘America’? The Politics of Rhetoric and Space in the
Formation of US Nationalism,’’ Radical History Review 89 (2004): 115�34.
[52] Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American
Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
Border (In)Securities 155
