Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities

Conclusion

Conclusion departmentofHomelandSecuritySecretaryJanetNapolitanoannounced in late September 2012 that gay and lesbian couples would be regarded as“familyrelationships”inimmigrationdeportationproceedings.1 Thismeans thatcertaingayandlesbiancoupleswillbetreatedlikemarriedorengagedheterosexualcouplesasofficialsevaluatedeportationcases .Putsimply,aqueermigrant ’sfamilialconnectionsintheUnitedStateswillbetakenintoconsideration as federal officials make a decision about whether to deport. This decision will likely help some binational same-sex couples to remain together in the United States,andthisisnodoubtimportantforthoseexceptionalcouples.Afteryears of labor by organizations like Immigration Equality; in the midst of a lawsuit by binational same-sex couples challenging DOMA; and, more recently, under the urging of dozens of Congress members, Napolitano made this change. Immigration Equality and advocates for binational same-sex couples should see this as a victory resulting from decades of focused work. In light of the activist rhetoric in QueerMigrationPolitics, however, it should be clear that it is a victory in a very narrow sense. I have offered coalition here as a productive alternative to the inclusionary andnormativepoliticsofthemainstreamLGBTandLGBTimmigrationmovementsandalsototheutopianpoliticsadvocatedinsomequeertheory .Activist rhetoric that both derives from and constitutes queer migration politics offers insightintocoalitionalpossibilities.Coalition,asIofferit,sometimesinvolves inclusionary and utopian approaches and does not deny that there is value in them, particularly for those who espouse them. Reorienting toward coalition providesadifferentperspectiveonthepresentandthepossibilitiesforalivable life that people are working to make a reality in the here and now, which has been especially clear in the last two chapters. Moreover, while coalition has often been theorized as only a temporary and strategic relationship designed to achieve specific goals, I have built upon María Lugones to contend that coalition should not be thought of merely in theseterms.Coalitionisapresentandexistingvisionandpracticethatreflects an orientation to others and a shared commitment to change. Coalition is the “horizon” that can reorganize our possibilities and the conditions of them. Coalition is a liminal space, necessarily precarious, and located within the intermeshed intersticesofpeople’slivesandpolitics.Usingtheanalyticofthe coalitional moment, I have emphasized coalition less as an existing thing or relationship, as in “a coalition,” and more as a possibility for coming together within or to create a juncture that points toward radical social and political change.We canidentify thispossibilitywhentwoormoreseeminglydifferent and separable issues or groups come in such contact. These moments reveal and build alternative parameters for politics, belonging, and being. The activist rhetoric of queer migration politics has provided an appropriate lenstoviewandunderstandthecomplexityandvarietyofcoalitionalmoments. The rhetoric has also supplied a way to witness the possibilities that coalitional momentsengenderforpracticingandenvisioningpoliticsandmakinglivesmore livable. The level of inventing arguments and creating rationales for action and publiclypronouncingpositions—therhetoricallevel—isanidealsitetoexamine how activists respond to national social imaginaries. National social imaginaries , themselves rhetorical constructions, frame and create the parameters for thepossibilityofbelonging,being,andchange.Withinthecoalitionalmoments discussedhere,activistsdrawuponahostofrhetoricalandideologicalresources. Theseresourcesrangefromutopianlongingsandinclusionarystrategiestoradicalanalysesofintermeshingandinterlockingoppressionsandsystemsofpower , aswellastheinnovativeapproachestorelationshipsfoundinqueerandfeminist politicsandcommunities.Activistsdevelopanddeployrhetoricalvisionssuchas the differential vision of the queer migration manifestos and Yasmin Nair’s use of radical interactionality. Activists also manufacture and adopt tactical strategies such as migrant youth activists’ appropriation and extension of coming out or CDH’s and Wingspan’s everyday practices and processes of rationalizing and engagingincoalitionalpolitics.Anumberofimplicationsoftheseanalysesexist for politics, theory, and possibility. 146 • ConClusion First, it is important to explicate the implications of offering coalition in place of normative/inclusionary and utopian politics. More than anything else, coalition features the messiness, the impurity, and the multiplicity of subjectivity, agency, and politics that these two approaches often miss. Coalition is always in our vision, and yet as a horizon it is simultaneously beneath our bodies. Horizons are temporally and spatially tangible, and yet as thresholds between two potentially divided things they are sites of tension; they are queer. Coalition cannot be easily categorized, fit into an identity, or fixed on a map. Coalition is not comfortable. It is not home. It is scary and unpredictable. Unlike those subjects invested in inclusionary politics, coalitional subjects refuse to accept normative aspirations as the only channel for belonging and life. Like some of those espousing inclusionary politics, coalitional subjects recognize that compromise might be necessary, reform is a part of revolution, and small victories are worth celebrating. Unlike those inviting us to take up utopian politics, coalitional politics is oriented toward the present, emphasizes realms that are not only aesthetic, and refuses what cannot be practiced—while expanding the very limits of the practicable. As with utopian politics, coalitional subjects believe in the vitality of broadening imaginaries that will open possibilities for livable life. As Judith Butler remarks, “Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.”2 Coalitionoffersawaytorethinksubjectivity,agency,andpossibility.Aimee Carrillo Rowe writes, “The sites of our belonging constitute how we see the world, what we value, who we are becoming. The formation of the subject is...