Enacting Citizenship through Radical (Self-)Care: How Migrant Campaigners in London Assert Their Rightful Presence

When migrants are denied legal citizenship, scholarship sees participation in political life as an alternative way to claim citizenship. This paper argues that migrant campaigners’ practices of radical self-care could be interpreted as a form of claiming citizenship as self-care asserts their rightful presence.

Based on 14 in-depth interviews with migrant campaigners in London and participant observation in the two migrants’ rights groups they organise with, this paper looks at how campaigners with experience of precarious immigration status assert their political subjectivity within and beyond professional campaigns.

For some participants of this study, professional organising offers a space to use their own story to address structural issues whilst simultaneously drawing on professional organisers’ knowledge of the ‘system’. In line with existing scholarship, this shows that professional organising spaces can offer an opportunity for migrant campaigners to claim citizenship.

However, this study also demonstrates that particularly for those continuing to experience precarious immigration status, self-care as a politics of survival is a more accessible form of political participation. In a context where their presence is put into question through denial of legal status and their existence is being precaritised through exclusion from state support, I interpret migrants’ self-care practices as an act of claiming citizenship. This citizenship act, however, tends to go unrecognised in professionalised campaigning spaces. In order to involve migrant campaigners more equitably in professionalised campaigning spaces, self-care should be recognised as a citizenship claim.