Transnationally Contextualized Citizenship: Multi-layered Factors Affecting Chinese Immigrant Workers’ Political Participation in NYC

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 12. Global and Transnational Perspectives

Abstract

This article investigates undocumented immigrants’ citizenship practices in global cities. The extant literature on urban citizenship predominately assumes that local authorities are favorable to undocumented immigrants while the literature on transnational citizenship pays too much attention on high-skilled immigrants to the neglect of the undocumented, and usually low-skilled, ones. This case study of the political activities of Chinese nail salon practitioners in New York City against allegedly unfair state regulations suggests that undocumented immigrants’ citizenship practices are shaped by multi-layer factors of interpersonal networks, urban governance, national migration controls, and global forces from home countries. Engaging with the ideas of urban citizenship and transnational citizenship, this study proposes an analytic framework of transnationally contextualized citizenship that underscores immigrants’ embeddedness within four-rung spheres of influence. Using data collected from in-depth field interviews, on-site observations, media reports, government policies, and other forms of archival records, this study reveals that practice of citizenship of undocumented migrants, who are no less embedded in a transnational field than their more skilled counterpart, is simultaneously defined and shaped by multi-layered forces: at the individual level, their knowledge about citizenship from home and host societies and their pre-migration practices of citizenship play an important role in their post-migration practices of citizenship; at the urban or local level, the cities’ enabling or inhibiting policies that affect undocumented immigrants may also affect their ability to appropriate urban spaces; at the national level, the intensified repressive migration controls and the illegality as a result of such controls influence undocumented immigrants’ political participation; and lastly, at the global level, the home country’s “hard” policies and “soft” channels like education and media.

Author

• Tianlong You, Arizona State University