16 Molly Land, Kathryn Libal, and Jillian Chambers The work of Bloom and these other scholars also helps us understand how to direct this responsibility. To varying degrees, they argue that responsibility arises from our deep interdependence with others, regardless of (or even as a result of ) borders. Empathy or fraternity may provide impetuous for action, but it does not necessarily help decide where action is needed.55 Bloom’s argument, however, is that responsibility is tied to impact: “A stronger noncitizen relationship gives rise to stronger claims.” This is resonant in the cases examined by Kanstroom as well. It is not undifferentiated suffering that Herrou rails against with his acts of civil disobedience – rather, it is suffering that is caused by the injustice of French law. When asked by a judge, “Why do you do all this,” Herrou described French migration enforcement as “ignoble,” explaining: “My inaction and my silence would make me an accomplice, I do not want to be an accomplice.”56 The final two contributions begin a discussion about how to move forward in constructing new bonds of belonging that can sustain political action on behalf of non-citizens. Chapter 11 by Susan Bibler Coutin, “Uncertainty and Educational Mismatch: Schooling and Life Pursuits in Contexts of Illegalization,” illustrates the precarity associated with a life without citizenship or equivalent status, and it contrasts this precarity with immigrants’ own understandings of what kinds of affiliations give rise to an entitlement to enjoy rights in a society. Coutin analyzes the complicated mismatches between the lives of immigrant youth and their families and the forms of subjectivity created through US immigration enforcement initiatives. These initiatives have subjected unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and Central America to illegalization, which gives rise to experiences of stigmatization and discrimination, as well as material precarity. Coutin focuses on the process by which individuals, families, and communities are “constituted” by the state and other actors as “illegal” and “undeserving” as an “ongoing part of daily life.” Immigrant youths’ lives in her qualitative study were rendered precarious by the state limiting access to key social institutions, including higher education, employment, health care, family, and safety. Public condemnation of undocumented immigrants for allegedly undermining the rule of law, however, differed sharply from interviewees’ senses of their own merit, who saw themselves as deserving even though they remained vulnerable to detention and deportation. Coutin’s interviews profoundly illustrate the negative effects of this process of illegalization for youth in California during two different periods (2006–2010 and 2014–2017). But the interviews also reveal that youth have created new forms of 55 P. Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (New York: Harper Collins, 2016), p. 34. 56 K. G. Brown, “France Prosecuting Citizens for ‘Crimes of Solidarity,’” Aljazeera, January 25, 2017, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/france-prosecuting-citizens-crimes-solidarity170122064151841.html. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Select target paragraph3