Citizens vs' Citizenry

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Citizens vs. Citizenry

• Undocumented immigrants and Latino Cultural
  Citizenship
• By William V. Flores

http//arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/1997_images/Backg
round/History/barrio.jpg
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• Rights, Citizenship, and Membership
• Cultural Citizenship Claiming Space and Rights
• Claiming Community, Claiming Rights
• Cultural Rights and Civil Society

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Overview

• being a citizen guarantees neither full
  membership in society nor equal rights. To be a
  full citizen one must be welcome and accepted as
  a full member of the society.
• Pg 255

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Rights, Citizenship, and Membership

• Race
• Language
• Culture
• These three things are used as an impermeable
  wall, blocking Latinos from becoming full
  citizens.

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Examples

• Paul Gilroy says that even in the UK being
  English and being black are categories that are
  mutually impermeable (pg 256)
• Stuart Hall says that racism constructs
  impassable symbolic boundaries andconstantly
  marks and attempts to fix and naturalize the
  difference between belongingness and Otherness.
  (pg 256)
• Flores was Mexican even though he was born
  in the United States, had never been to any part
  of Mexico other than Baja, and spoke very little
  Spanish. (pg 257)

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Rights, Citizenship, and Membership

• Doubling is the idea of hybridity of the
  peoples, such as Latino Americans
• Idea introduced by Homi Bhabha
• The hyphen between Mexican and American
  becomes a spaceIt is a border that both
  seperates and links two worls and Latinosare
  both trapped and liberated (pg 257)

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Rights

• Citizenship is defined by 3 categories of rights
• Civic
• Political
• Social

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Rights

• By becoming citizens and gaining membership,
  these people are creating new rights and changing
  society
• Latinos have followed in the footsteps of African
  Americans for rights to desegregate schools and
  voting rights
• They have also created new rights in language
  battles throughout the South and Southwest of the
  U.S.
• They are new political subjects for whom the
  political world must now take notice of
• They challenge existing power, as well
• Also they are entering into the world of social
  movements

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Membership

• Kenneth Karst says that miorities achieve
  membership in U.S. society not by assimilation,
  but through the struggle to claim rights as
  citizens
• Patricia Williams adds that for African Americans
  the litmus test of being full citizens is
  obtaining the same rights enjoyed by white
  Americans.
• (pg 257)

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Undocumented Chicanos

• Both fellow Chicanos and Americans are fight
  for and against the rights of undocumented
  Chicanos
• The rights involve health coverage and voting
  eligibility
• In New York, Latinos argued whether the
  undocumented should have the right to determine
  how the money was spent for education
• Rights of undocumented is linked to rights of all
• Ex. repatriation in 1931 when 400,000 Mexicans
  were deported, some of these deported were U.S.
  born citizens of Mexican decent

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Cultural Citizenship Claiming Space and Rights

• Developing a belonging to the society is
  important for a belief of active citizenship
• Cultural Citizenship is a broad range of
  activities of everyday life through which Latinos
  and other groups claim space in society, define
  their communities, and claim rights. It involves
  the rights to retain difference, while also
  attaining membership in society. It also
  involves self-definition, affirmation, and
  empowerment.
• Remember the 3 categories of rights

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Cultural Citizenship

• The Latino view of America is different than
  any view of a white American
• The claiming of space is key to feeling a
  belonging because they have their own areas to do
  Latino cultural activities
• Barrios have become these areas, until they have
  been destroyed
• Communities aid in the membership into the U.S.
  society
• Cultural spaces are claimed as property to keep
  their home culture alive such as cultural
  churches

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Cultural Citizenship

• These spaces are not just places and
  geographic locales but also include
  opportunities for creative expression,
  self-representation, and engagement (pg 263)
• CC for Latinos involves the creation of a
  distinct Latino sensibility, a social and
  political discourse, and a Latino aesthetic, all
  of which flow out a unique reality of being
  Latino in the U.S. and the desire to express
  uniqueness. (pg 263-4)

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Claiming Community, Claiming Rights

• Barrios, such as Little Michoacan, have come
  together and formed ways of living and surviving
  off of the bare minimum and below the poverty
  line
• The Social capital that is used and shared within
  these barrios is used to expand their economic
  capabilities and social capabilities within the
  U.S.
• The undocumented are protected by the documented
  Mexicans
• These social networks and barrios help the groups
  of Latinos create communities

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Claiming Space and Rights

• INS raids have rallied Latinos together to
  protect the undocumented
• These various cases illustrate cultural
  citizenship through the claiming of space the
  development of a distinct Chicano perspective to
  unify Chicanos and Mexicanos and the emergence
  of Mexican undocumented and legally resident
  immigrants as political subjects, new citizens
  demanding new rights. (pg 265)

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La Clinica, Cultural Spaces and New Rights

• An example of CC and the claiming of
  spaces,rights is when in 1973 a small clinic in a
  barrio received a grant
• Because of the grant, the commission which
  granted it, wanted an agency to determine the
  number of legal and illegal aliens there were in
  the serviced community
• La Clinica and the local church became the
  meeting point for meetings to discuss how to stop
  these agencies because they wanted to protect the
  undocumented
• La Clinica and the church are examples of
  Cultural Citizens claiming cultural spaces
• The fight that these people put together is an
  example of a fight for new rights
• The slogan of this argument became Health Care
  is a Right, Not a Privilege

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La Clinica

• The people of the barrio created the clinic and
  believe that their labor and work granted them
  the right to use the clinic whether documented or
  not
• The space they created is a cultural space
  claimed by the Latinos through their work and
  their labor

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Cultural Citizenship

• Cultural Citizenship is a collective identity
• An injury to one is an injury to all. (pg 267)
• To them we were all simply Mexicans --maybe
  behind our backs they even called us wetbacks.
  We felt we had to protect them the
  undocumented. Thats what being a Chicano is
  all about, protecting your own, protective your
  community. And they the undocumented are part
  of our community. They are out hermanos y
  hermanas brothers and sister. (pg 267-8)

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Cultural Citizenship

• Again at La Clinica cultural citizenship is
  expressed through the creation of immunization of
  the undocumenteds children
• The children must have proof of immunization to
  register for school, but the undocumented were
  afraid of being detected
• The Committee for the Rights of Undocumented
  Children was created to protect these children
• The committee took care of dejados (children left
  behind when their parents were picked up at work
  or on their way home)
• parents and children transformed fear of
  deportation and dejo (abandonment) into networks
  of support. (pg 269)

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Operation Jobs

• Operation Jobs is a program put in place to
  arrest undocumented workers in May 1982
• In response to Ronald Reagans Operation Jobs
  documented Chicanos rallied together to form Raza
  Si
• This group was put together to reject this
  Operation and protect the undocumented
• The community bound together to protect the
  undocumented and mocked them with slogans and
  buttons that said Illegal Alien to mock the INS
• Green Cards were produced by the community to
  show that they belonged within the barrio

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Cultural Rights and Civil Society

• The need to link cultural practices to social
  struggles is needed for social change
• to feel as as though they belong and are
  welcome in this society, Latinos must have a
  social space for expressing their interests and
  creativity cultural citizenship. (pg 275)
• The issue within the civil society with cultural
  citizenship is that when people seek cultural
  citizenship it usually is anti-hegemonic

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Claiming Rights

• Latinos are creating their own social spaces
• Latino communities are rejecting the artificial
  boundaries established by the state to
  distinguish between citizen and non-citizen
• By their actions to include both undocumented and
  legal residents in their social movements,
  Latinos create social space for immigrants to
  emerge as subjects joining with U.S.-born Latinos
  to fight for common interests
• Through these movements new citizens and new
  social ators are emerging, redefining rights,
  entitlements, and what it means to be a member of
  the society
• Counter-narratives are emerging that offer
  alternative visions of U.S. society

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ConclusionNation and Culture

• Above all things, no matter who attacks these
  cultures and nations, they are all bound by a
  common history, language, and culture
• The nation of Latinos within the U.S. create
  social spaces and fight for new rights as a
  nation, not individually