The incremental citizenship of undocumented migrants: a case study on the ‘We Are Here’ group in Amsterdam

Through everyday practices, undocumented migrants strive for citizenship incrementally. This undermines citizenship as a categorical distinction between who is ‘in’ or ‘out’. Based on a case study in Amsterdam, this article evidences the piecemeal struggles of undocumented migrants, for which we introduce the concept of ‘incremental citizenship’. Incremental citizenship results from claim making (appeals to human rights, the use of (limited) legal rights, identity politics) and ‘claim-placing’ (the occupation of (public) space to carve out political presence). We demonstrate that an incremental process of ‘claim-making’ and ‘claim-placing’ – leads to an increased recognition as political subjects. We show how undocumented migrants claim – discursively and spatially - ‘the right to have rights’, without necessarily having a formal citizenship status. This finding suggests a need to nuance both re-nationalization views of citizenship as well as post-national and ‘citizenship of residency’ views.