(Net)roots of Belonging: Contemporary Discourses of (In)valuability and Post-Racial Citizenship in the United States

Abstract

Neoliberalism has gained a foothold in U.S. policy and practice, and maintains the advantages of those already privileged within the global community. In this essay, I argue that national discourses of (in)valuability, informed by and in the service of neoliberalism and post-racial citizenship, (1) establish cultural understandings that invest the (white) U.S. nation with increasing levels of worth, (2) demonstrate migrants' value as investors and protectors of such privilege, and (3) devalue U.S. minorities. Ultimately, many migrants' personal stories about their value participate in national narratives assigning worth to some bodies and burden to others in ways that reinforce existing social hierarchies.

Keywords:

• Migrant
• Whiteness
• Post-Racial
• Neoliberal
• Citizenship

Notes

[1] A few examples of such efforts spanning a variety of social movement interests, include campaigns such as Testimony: Take a Stand, It Get's Better, Define American, and Welcoming stories.

[2] Though the name of the storytelling campaign has since changed to “Keeping Families Together,” I use the original name of the campaign, “We Are America,” throughout this paper, as this was the phrasing under which all stories I analyze were collected.

[3] Other organizations whose stories are available through the We Are America campaign include: I am From Driftwood, Welcoming Stories, Shelbyville Multimedia, SEIU Faces of Immigration Reform, Restore Fairness and Define American.

[4] Because I was interested in collecting narratives that broadly addressed immigration (and the desire for citizenship), I did not draw from the website's smaller collections with narrow topical themes (such as “Deportation Stories,” or “Dream Stories,”). Instead, I opted for the two largest and most general collections: “Immigration Stories Archive,” and “Featured Video Archive.”