Undoing Border Imperialism. Harsha Walia
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our kinship and movement networks based on shared affinities as well as responsible solidarities.
Why No One Is Illegal?
What would be the implications of acting out of love rather than the dictates of the nationalistic mind?
—Shivam Vij, “Of Nationalism and Love in Southasia”
I have been active in the migrant justice movement, specif-
ically through No One Is Illegal (NOII) groups in Canada, for over a decade. NOII is a migrant justice movement that mobilizes tangible support for refugees, undocumented migrants, and (im)migrant workers, and prioritizes solidarity with Indigenous communities. Grounded in anticolonial, anticapitalist, ecological justice, Indigenous self-determination, anti-imperialist, and antioppression politics, NOII groups organize and fight back against systems of injustice through popular education and direct action.(16) NOII groups exist across Canada, but are organized autonomously as a loose network with shared values and some ad hoc coordination. It was only in 2012 that the existing NOII groups drafted a joint statement of unity, in which we describe ourselves as “part of a worldwide movement of resistance that strives and struggles for the right to remain, the freedom to move, and the right to return.”(17)
Mapping the currents of NOII’s mobilizing and movement-based practices is critical for five reasons. First, NOII offers a systemic critique of border imperialism. This stands in contrast to more mainstream immigrant rights movements that ignore the centrality of empire and capitalism to the violence of displacement, migration, and border controls. Second, NOII’s systemic critique, as an organizing framework, facilitates a convergence of a range of social movements. Links are forged between antidetention and antiprison activists, between antipoverty movements and nonstatus communities to ensure public access to basic services, between local anticolonial organizing and anti-imperialist international solidarity organizing, and between gender justice movements’ defense of our bodies and environmental justice movements’ defense of the land.
Third, the work of NOII is multilayered. While organizing from an antistate framework, NOII also strategically navigates the state apparatus in order to win tangible victories for those facing detention and deportation. This kind of mobilizing cannot easily be dismissed as simply being reformist since it ensures that we are engaging with people who are directly impacted by the injustices of border imperialism. Being rooted and relevant in such a way amplifies the struggle for structural change and collective freedom. The careful and thoughtful balance of strategies is explored throughout this book as it is foundational to earning trust and respect for NOII’s organizing among affected community members and radicals alike.
Fourth, the mobilizing of NOII provides lessons on maintaining principled political positions while expanding communities of resistance through effective broad-based alliances. A major corporate newspaper begrudgingly acknowledges the force of NOII: “The once fringe community group . . . has grown in popularity. . . . Its crusade for undocumented migrants have made headlines and earned it recognition in the mainstream.”(18) In a time of the expansion of the nonprofit-industrial complex, NOII is an example of all-volunteer, radical, and grassroots community organizing that is sustainable, with a growing ability to capture people’s imaginations and a capacity to win victories. After nine years of grassroots organizing, for example, NOII-Toronto has not only popularized migrant justice issues but also mobilized to make Toronto the country’s first Sanctuary City, where city services are guaranteed to all regardless of their citizenship status. In an effort to discredit the cross-country popularity and effectiveness of NOII, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney recently denounced NOII in Parliament as “not simply another noisy activist group but hard-line anti-Canadian extremists.”(19)
Finally, returning to the words of Kelley, NOII offers a prefigurative vision for a different kind of society. The very name and its various invocations, such as “No Human is Illegal,” “Personne n’est illegal,” and “Nadie es illegal,” emphasize that all humans are inherently worthy and valuable, and that policies that illegalize human beings are legal and moral fictions. Undoing border imperialism requires that we undo power structures, while prefiguring the social relations we wish to have and the forms of leadership we wish to support. Within NOII, we take leadership from marginalized communities, particularly communities of color and Indigenous nations impacted by state controls and systemic oppression. Such methods of organizing within NOII aim to reflect our vision of antioppressive, egalitarian, and noncoercive societies.
For these reasons, an analysis of NOII’s decade-long history offers relevant insights for all organizers on effective strategies to overcome state-imposed borders as well as the barriers within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities.
About This Book
I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend—to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing.
—bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress
Undoing Border Imperialism merges different forms of theory that tend to be relegated to separate spheres: academic, movement, and experiential theories. While societal structures legitimize academic discourse as the most rigorous and objective type of theory, all three kinds of theory are invaluable. Together these forms help us to understand systemic injustice from different angles, and empower us to take action against authoritarian and oppressive systems. This book is primarily embedded in movement theory, which stems from the praxis of organizing, and experiential theory, which is based in lived realities and resistances.
The first chapter, “What Is Border Imperialism?” relies on academic theory. Drawing on critical race theory, feminist studies, Marxist analysis, and poststructuralism, this chapter theorizes and evaluates border imperialism from within intersectional pedagogy. I argue that the violence of border imperialism is a direct result of the violence of colonial displacements, capital circulations, labor stratifications in the global economy, and structural hierarchies of race, class, gender, ability, and citizenship status. Rather than victim blaming and racist stereotyping that punish migrants for irregular forms of migration and render them “illegal,” this chapter rigorously challenges the inhumane ideology of border controls that denies migrants their freedom and self-determination.
The second chapter, “Cartography of NOII,” maps out NOII’s response—as an anticapitalist, anticolonial, and antiracist migrant justice movement—to border imperialism. This is not a comprehensive history or even a summary of all NOII campaigns; rather, the chapter offers my perspective on some of the strongest formulations of NOII’s movement-based analysis and practice over the past decade. I outline the analyses and practices of direct support work, regularization of legal status for all migrants, abolition of security certificates, Indigenous solidarity organizing, and collaboration within anticapitalist movements. The strategies described in this chapter are relevant to other social movements grappling with how to be accountable to communities that are impacted by the systems we are confronting, how to strengthen alliances, and how to expand movements to effect tangible as well as transformative change.
The third and fourth chapters rely on social movement theory. Describing social movement theorizing, radical queer activist Gary Kinsman notes, “Activists are thinking, talking about, researching and theorizing about what is going on, what they are going to do next and how to analyze the situations they face, whether in relation to attending a demonstration, a meeting, a confrontation with institutional forces or planning the next action or campaign.”(20) In these chapters, I share the knowledge generated from these kinds of engagements within NOII. Rather than abstracting principles onto social movements, which can feel artificial and top down, these chapters generate principles from social movements, for a more grounded and pertinent discussion.
In the third chapter, “Overgrowing Hegemony: Grassroots Theory,” I address social movement strategies and tactics, antioppression practice, and group structure and leadership. Within these three areas, I explore current social movement debates, including building broad-based alliances while maintaining radical political principles, fostering antioppressive leadership while opposing hierarchies, and affecting tangible change while prefiguring transformation.