Alexandra Délano

Invisible Victims: Undocumented Migrants and the Aftermath of September 11*

This article examines the processes of investigation and gathering evidence about victims of the September 11 attacks to better understand the inability of state and nonstate institutions to effectively deal with the invisibility of undocumented migrants in terms of providing assistance and recognition at a moment of tragedy. The failure to make the invisible visible or to address the very question of visibility publicly is explained by three major reasons: 1) A general fear of coming forward on the part of undocumented migrants or their families, partly as a result of their legal status and their lack of trust in government agencies, which was compounded by ineffective communication about available relief services; 2) different procedural requirements and logics of evidence used by government and nongovernmental relief agencies, which, in some cases, made it impossible for undocumented migrants or their families to provide proof of their presence at the site or employment in the businesses affected; 3) the context of 9/11 as a disruptive event that influenced the overall climate in which issues of victimhood and immigration status could be addressed.

Deaths, Visibility, and the Politics of Dissensus at the US-Mexico Border

This paper addresses the intended and unintended politicization of bodies of undocumented migrants beyond their death. Border activists in Arizona, California, and Texas have engaged in marches, projections, and collective acts of mourning to publicize the issue of undocumented migrants dying in their attempt to cross the desert. Nienass and Delano argue that these politics of mourning are stagings of dissensus in Jacques Ranciere’s sense, as they place these border deaths in the context of state violence and constitute a challenge to existing frames within which we sense someone as publically grievable.