Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities by Karma R. Chávez (review)

In Queer Migration Politics, Karma R. Chávez probes the convergence of queer and migration politics to expand the possibilities for activism. She identifies key contemporary sites where radical notions of coalescence serve to create new possibilities for imagining political efficacy. This series of “coalitional moments” “broaden[s] the resources for rhetorical invention” and challenges the problematic nature of inclusionary politics and normative imaginaries (149).

Chapter 1 argues for the manifesto as a site of coalitional possibility that exceeds inclusionary aims and resists purely utopian ones through the creation of what Chávez calls differential vision (23). She productively brings Chela Sandoval’s “differential consciousness” into conversation with Carolyn Rowe’s “differential belonging” to unpack the rhetorical effectiveness of four manifestos: Audre Lorde Project’s “No One Is Illegal,” Queers for Economic Justice’s “Queers and Immigration: A Vision Statement,” Wingspan and Coalición de Derechos Humanos’ two “Joint Statements,” and Horizontal Alliance of Very [or Vaguely or Voraciously] Organized Queers’ “Undoing Borders: A Queer Manifesto.” Each of these statements gestures toward coalitional subjectivities, which link orientations to the world with modes of belonging in the world, thereby providing “the agency to resist in ways that are not bound by fixed identities or subjectivities as people learn to politicize their belongings and adopt impure stances that allow for further connection between individuals and groups who are very different” (27). In this view, difference becomes a resource, not an obstacle. These manifestos also make an important move to recenter their politics around those who are the most vulnerable. Such a shift clearly challenges normative political orientations, but in so doing, addresses the needs of a much wider range of individuals. This work both critiques and intervenes in problematic “family values” discourse and “illegality” migration discourse by rhetorically enacting broader definitions of family and citizen. The differential vision of these manifestos underscores the call for openness in counterhegemonic resistance—a fabulist gesture of willingness to continually reflect on and acknowledge the potential for sustained connections among diverse vulnerable peoples.

Chávez’s second chapter investigates Yasmin Nair’s forceful cyber activism to illustrate the rhetoric of radical interactionality. This concept builds on intersectional articulations of identity and draws attention to the multi-plicitous and complex nature of oppression beyond individual instances. Borrowing Soyini D. Madison’s definition of a radical act as “the confrontation with the ‘root’ of the problem,” Chávez points to Nair’s work as a productive move away from the politics of the instance and toward a more abstract structural critique that encourages coalition through shared experiences of oppression. For example, Nair openly censures the mainstream LGBT movement’s tendency to rely on anecdotal rhetoric and personal narrative in their assimilatory efforts to achieve legislative reform. In her Queercents blog entry opposing the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), Nair argues that galvanizing around one “good story” of a binational queer couple obfuscates the reality of millions of others, whose experiences and realities would not be benefitted by the narrow agenda of UAFA (63). Chávez’s turn to Nair is a useful one because the rhetoric of radical interactionality provides a much-needed method for expanding the ways we think about activism—resisting the teleological nature of inclusionary legislative reform and offering resilient responses that critique the root of oppressive neoliberal structures. As Nair’s work suggests, “it is only from interrogating the roots of problems that meaningful coalition is possible” (67).

Chapter 3 explores the tactical strategies of migrant youth activism. Chávez positions Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act activism, as well as the “undocuqueer” and anti-DREAM activism it has incited, as important coalitional moments for understanding the ways activism can move from inclusionary and/or utopian politics, to “politically impure” alternative possibilities (81). Migrant youth activists’ appropriation of the LGBTQ rhetoric of “coming out” and the establishment of events like...