Pathways: Coproducing Citizenship and Deportation Available to Purchase

Chapter 1 analyzes a 2013 bipartisan proposal for a linear pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants in the United States. It argues that the proposed pathway, as cultural logic and material infrastructure, seemed generous but nonetheless cemented interconnections between citizenship as an imagined intimacy among strangers and mandatory migrant deportability. The Report on Deportation, produced by undocumented and formerly undocumented migrants including queer people, comprised a queer counterproposal that refused the linear logic of a pathway toward an imagined future of citizenship that would likely never come for most people, while demanding an immediate end to deportations. As pathway proposals continue being debated in Congress, the Report’s arguments remain critical.