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Practicing Citizenship: Bolivian Migrant Identities and Spaces of Belonging

in Washington D.C.

Christopher Strunk

Department of Geography, Augustana College

Post print version of article published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies (2015, 36 (5): 620-

639). Full article can be found at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07256868.2015.1072910

Abstract

Using a case study of Bolivian migrants in Washington D.C., this article examines the contested

nature of citizenship and construction of migrant identities. Bolivian migrants both reinforce and

challenge the exclusionary nature of the U.S. citizenship regime through practices and discourses

that develop an expanded notion of belonging to communities in Washington D.C. and

Cochabamba. While cultural activities such as soccer and folkloric dance fit easily within a

multicultural framework of citizenship, they can also challenge accepted norms through quiet

struggles over the control of public space. Bolivians also employ language from the U.S.

immigrant rights movement that highlights their contributions to the United States and contrasts

“good” and “bad” immigrants, but they also depart from mainstream discourses by describing

local belonging in terms of transnational connections and contributions to Bolivian villages.

Bolivian citizenship practices and narratives demonstrate how identities are always constructed

simultaneously in multiple places even while migrant belonging is limited by restrictive

immigration policies and irregular legal status.

Keywords: citizenship; belonging; Bolivian migration; immigrant rights; Washington D.C.;

hometown associations

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Introduction

Immigration has long been at the center of debates around national identity and belonging

in the United States. In recent decades, expanded immigration from the global South and

changing settlement patterns have resulted in renewed debates over the place of immigrants in

local communities and the nation more broadly. As migrants have moved beyond traditional

gateways to new destinations in the suburbs and rural areas (Singer et al. 2008; Marrow 2011),

they have encountered restrictive national immigration policies and widely divergent local

contexts of reception (Walker and Leitner 2011). Institutions at a variety scales can promote or

hinder civic engagement, but migrants also have made claims of belonging based on their

presence and contributions to communities in a variety of places. The variegated landscape of

migrant settlement and immigration policy requires that we examine debates about immigration

through a place-based analysis that acknowledges the always dynamic and contested nature of

citizenship and identity.

In this article, I examine the politics of immigration and belonging in the suburbs of

Washington D.C. Although Washington D.C. has not been a traditional destination for

immigrants, it emerged as an important new gateway beginning in the 1980s (Price and Singer

2008). Drawn by work in both the high-skill and low-wage service sectors, more than one

million foreign-born residents (21 percent of the region’s total population) currently live in the

metropolitan area. Migrants from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America are dispersed

throughout the District of Columbia and the multi-ethnic suburbs of Northern Virginia and

Maryland (Vicino et al. 2011). This is an increasingly common pattern in U.S. metropolitan

areas, but Washington D.C.’s immigrant population is unique in its diversity and high

concentration in the suburbs.

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Bolivian migrants are particularly representative of this suburbanization trend. Bolivians

first arrived in Washington D.C. in the 1950s, with most early migrants coming from the

country’s small white elite. They settled near their work at the Bolivian embassy and

international development institutions in the District of Columbia. The Bolivian population

expanded significantly in the 1980s and 1990s as new migrants came from the city of

Cochabamba and the prominent rural sending region of the Valle Alto. By then, most Bolivians

were settling in the Northern Virginia suburbs, especially the inner-ring suburb of Arlington just

across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia. In the 1990s, gentrification along the

Ballston metro corridor and cheaper housing costs in the outer suburbs caused many Bolivians to

leave established neighborhoods in Arlington, although it remains the symbolic center of the

community. Bolivian restaurants are clustered along several main arteries and key soccer and

folkloric dance events are frequently held in the county even as Bolivians have dispersed into

Maryland and the outer suburbs of Virginia.

Bolivian immigrants tend to have more formal education than other Latin Americans in

the region (Price 2006), but Bolivian population is highly diverse in terms of ethnicity,

socioeconomic class, and legal status. In 2013 U.S. Census Bureau reported that 45,000

Bolivians currently live in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, which is almost half of the

total Bolivian population in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2013) but a substantial

underestimate according to some Bolivian researchers (Soldado 2000; Peredo 2004). While a

significant number of Bolivian migrants are undocumented, most have been in the United States

for a number of years and have developed extensive social and work networks in the Washington

D.C. metropolitan area. Bolivians in the construction industry, the most prevalent occupation for

men, are able to find jobs through connections established by earlier migrants or the successful

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Bolivian business community (Price and Chacko 2009) and generally avoid more contingent

work as day laborers. Bolivian women tend to work as domestic laborers and in the food service

and cleaning industries, often alongside Central American immigrants. Despite the prevalence of

work in the low-wage service sector, Bolivians also work in international development and other

high-skill service industries that have expanded across the Washington D.C. metro area in recent

decades.

Bolivian migration to the United States slowed considerably since 2001 as both men and

women shifted their migration patterns to Spain, Italy, and other European countries with less

strict immigration controls while the U.S. implemented new restrictions on migration following

9-11 (Hinojosa 2009). Despite the noticeable decline, Bolivians are continuing to migrate to

Washington D.C., most recently from the lowland city of Santa Cruz, which tends to be

wealthier and whiter than mestizo (mixed-race) and indigenous Andean Bolivia. Although

Bolivian cultural organizations often describe themselves as representative of a unified and

cohesive community, there are a number of divisions. In addition to ethnic and political tensions

between highland and lowland organizations, class and ethnic differences also exist between

middle-class urban migrants and campesinos (peasants) from rural Bolivia. While some social

and religious institutions have attracted a diverse membership across social and geographical

divisions, the leadership of migrant organizations tends to be dominated by upper-middle class

Bolivians. In response, bilingual Spanish-Quechua speakers from the rural Valle Alto have often

developed their own social institutions in the Washington D.C. area.

Drawing on a transnational ethnography of Valle Alto hometown associations, this article

examines the construction of Bolivian migrant identities through citizenship practices and

discourses performed in both the United States and Bolivia. In the second section, I explore the

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geography of citizenship in the context of international migration and the everyday social and

organizational practices of immigrants. While the United States is often described as a “nation of

immigrants,” it has often excluded certain immigrant groups from formal citizenship rights (Ngai

2004). In spite of this constitutive exclusion, scholars have argued that citizenship is always a

contested social formation that can be challenged and occasionally expanded by marginalized

populations (Marston and Mitchell 2004). Citizenship remains firmly attached to the nation-state,

but citizenship claims tend to be based around connections to particular places within and across

international borders. Indeed, migrants in the United States and Europe have sometimes been

able to engage in the political process through bureaucratic institutions and migrant civil society

organizations regardless of their legal status (Theodore and Martin 2007). At other times,

migrants have used more everyday practices to construct cultural spaces of belonging within

local communities (Staeheli et al. 2012).

The third section provides an overview of Bolivian migrant organizations and citizenship

practices in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. I argue that Bolivians strategically make

themselves visible to the broader society and construct migrant identities through a variety of

citizenship practices, most notably soccer and folkloric dance. Although these activities tend to

fit easily within a multicultural framework of citizenship common to U.S. cities, they can

sometimes challenge accepted norms through quiet struggles over the control of public space

(Miraftab 2012) as well as practices and discourses developed in more private spaces. The fourth

section examines the narratives used by migrants to highlight their contributions to multi-scalar

communities located in the United States and Bolivia. I note that while Bolivians in Washington

D.C. often employ language from the U.S. immigrant rights movement, they depart from

mainstream discourses in important ways by describing local belonging through a transnational

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lens. Ultimately, I argue that Bolivian citizenship practices and narratives demonstrate how

national identity is always constructed simultaneously in multiple places and at multiple scales

even while migrant belonging is limited by restrictive immigration policies and irregular legal

status.

This article is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Washington D.C.

metropolitan area and the Valle Alto of Cochabamba. During 2010-11, I conducted more than 50

interviews with hometown associations (HTA) members while also conducting participant

observation at HTA meetings, soccer games, folkloric dance performances, and other Bolivian

cultural activities. I also carried out a broader survey of Bolivian organizations in the

Washington D.C. region and interviewed returned migrants and family members during a

research trip to the Valle Alto.

Migrant civil society and “the right to the city”

Citizenship is generally understood as a formal legal status with a set of rights and

responsibilities attached to it. Although citizenship initially emerged in ancient Greek cities, its

modern form has become synonymous with the nation-state (Isin 2002). Especially in liberal

democratic regimes, membership is assumed to be universal within national boundaries. In

practice, however, countries have systematically excluded individuals and groups, most notably

women and minorities, from membership or certain citizenship rights (Isin and Turner 2002).

Furthermore, while the exclusion of foreigners at the edges of the national territory is

constitutive of citizenship (Bosniak 2006), countries like the United States have a long history of

viewing certain immigrant groups within the nation-state as more or less permanent outsiders

(Ngai 2004). Perhaps most notably, the construction of Mexican immigrants (and, often by

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extension, others from Latin America) as “illegal” – the product of racial stereotypes and the

first-ever restrictions on Latin American migration to the United States in the 1965 Immigration

and Nationality Act – demonstrates the dynamic and socially constructed nature of citizenship

(de Genova 2005).

In spite of these longstanding and constitutive exclusions, citizenship scholars have

argued that individuals and groups are able to expand the boundaries of membership and claim

new rights through mobilization and other forms of political action (Isin and Turner 2002;

Staeheli et al. 2012). The movement of people across national borders and the presence of large

numbers of non-citizens within nation-states is a particularly important challenge to national

citizenship regimes (Benhabib 2004; Bosniak 2006). But while the nation-state model of

citizenship has been undermined in some ways, it has not resulted in placelessness or the creation

of new citizenship regimes based on universal human rights predicted by some scholars (Soysal

1994). Instead, as people move between countries they continue to hold strong attachments to

national, regional, and local places, often to multiple countries simultaneously (Levitt and Glick

Schiller 2004).

Geographers have noted that the physical spaces in which people claim rights and carry

out responsibilities shape how individuals and groups construct identities and belonging (Nelson

and Hiemstra 2008). Even as nation-states in the global North have exerted greater control over

national borders in recent years, cities have continued to be especially important sites of

struggles over citizenship and belonging (Isin 2002). Scholars have drawn on Henri Lefebvre’s

concept of “the right to the city” to present cities as strategic arenas for the development of new

citizenship regimes based on inhabitance rather than formal legal status (Smith and McQuarrie

2012; Purcell 2003). In this framework, all urban residents, regardless of their place of birth or

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formal citizenship status, are understood as citizens with the right to participate in decisions

about the use of resources and public space in the city. While marginalized urban residents have

often engaged in organized collective action to demand the right to housing, water, and

livelihoods, others have sought to expand citizenship regimes through more ordinary and

everyday practices. Notably, these practices tend to take place on the margins of cities.

James Holston (2008) argues that residents of favelas (informal settlements) in São Paulo

have challenged both the exclusionary nature of Brazilian cities and the national citizenship

regime through “insurgent citizenship” practices of constructing illegal homes and demanding

access to municipal services. Similarly, Daniel Goldstein (2004) demonstrates how rural-to-

urban migrants in Cochabamba’s peri-urban neighborhoods have demanded to be included as

citizens through spectacular performances of folklore and public displays of violence against

suspected thieves who exploit that lack of a state presence in marginal neighborhoods. In both

cases, the margins of society become critical spaces where alternative understandings and

practices of citizenship can be produced and dominant conceptions of belonging can be

challenged (see also Bayat 2010). While the suburbs of Washington D.C. are different from

informal settlements in South America in important ways, it is notable that Bolivian migrants are

located on the margins of dominant power structures concentrated in and around the District of

Columbia. Bolivians live and work throughout the suburbs of Northern Virginia and Maryland,

often in close proximity to some of wealthiest neighborhoods in the country as well as powerful

government institutions. Despite some measures of economic success and social mobility,

however, Bolivians are vulnerable to external shocks such as the 2008 recession and foreclosure

crisis, which caused many migrants to lose their jobs and homes immediately prior to my

fieldwork in 2010. Bolivians also inhabit very different social spaces from Washington D.C.’s

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upper middle class even when they share public parks, community centers, and other places

within the metropolitan area. As a result, the construction of Bolivian understandings of

citizenship and belonging in the Washington D.C. incorporates a variety of spaces and practices

that are fundamentally different from the dominant citizenship regime.

Insurgent citizenship can also be defined in terms of the practices used to challenge

exclusionary citizenship regimes. Holston and Bayat note that rather than challenging the state

directly through organized collective action in formal politics, residents of global South cities

frequently use ordinary livelihood practices to encroach on public space and, in some cases,

transform the established order. These types of practices are present, to a certain extent, in the

Washington D.C. suburbs, although they are generally associated with Central American day

laborers rather than Bolivian migrants. The presence of male day laborers in parking lots and on

sidewalks in the outer-ring suburbs has made immigration and the exclusionary nature of suburbs

more visible, particularly during several local efforts to exclude day laborers in the mid-2000s

(Leitner and Strunk 2014). Bolivians tend not to be employed as day laborers because of their

more established position in the construction industry, but they still inscribe their presence in

Washington’s multi-ethnic suburbs through a variety of cultural activities, most notably soccer

and folkloric dance performances. Bolivian cultural activities are, for the most part, organized

and officially sanctioned through permits to use public spaces, but there also important

exceptions when spaces are occupied without permission.

The use of less confrontational strategies can be particularly important for migrant

communities with tenuous legal status. In recent decades, migrants in the United States have

confronted increasing restrictions on their mobility and belonging as a result of heightened

border security and internal enforcement measures (Coleman 2007). Immigrants without U.S.

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citizenship are prohibited from voting in most jurisdictions (and in all federal elections), and

non-citizens without legal residency are often confined to insecure jobs in the informal sector

(Mahler 1995). Although unauthorized migrants have always lived under the threat of

deportation, ramped-up immigration enforcement measures have made insecurity a constant

feature of their lives in recent years. As a result, many have limited travel outside of their homes

in order to avoid contact with law enforcement officials (Coleman 2011). Thus, as Susan Coutin

(2000) has noted, undocumented migrants can be surprisingly immobile.

Within this restrictive legal and political environment, migrants with and without legal

status can be reluctant to participate in highly visible activities that potentially expose them to

law enforcement and immigration officials. This fear is reflected in the response of some

immigrants to restrictive immigration ordinances in Prince William County (Virginia) and

Frederick County (Maryland), which experienced population declines in the years following their

implementation (Capps et al. 2013). More generally, research suggests that formal citizenship

status and local institutional environments have an important influence on migrant civic

engagement (Blomeraad and Gleeson 2012). At same time, scholars of immigrant mobilization

have demonstrated that institutional structures do not always fully determine migrant actions or

their sense of belonging. Memorably, millions of migrants, including undocumented immigrants,

mobilized in 160 cities around the country during the 2006 immigrant rights protests through an

informal and contingent network of non-profit social service and advocacy organizations,

churches, and Spanish-language media that Nina Martin and Nik Theodore (2007) have called

“migrant civil society” (see also Cordero-Guzmán et al. 2008; Voss and Bloemraad 2011;

Gonzales 2014). While most organizations were focused on local politics in the United States,

migrant hometown associations (HTAs) also mobilized for the immigrant rights demonstrations

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as they simultaneously participated in home country elections and development projects (Bada

2014; Sites and Vonderlack-Navarro 2012). Contrary to assumptions of linear immigrant

assimilation, therefore, transnational connections can occur alongside and even strengthen ties to

receiving countries at a variety of scales (M. Smith 2007; M. Smith and Bakker 2008).

Still, migrants often choose not to engage in the formal political process. This is

particularly the case in new destinations in the outer suburbs and rural towns which lack an

established social service infrastructure and experience with diverse newcomer populations, but

even there immigrant-serving organizations and local bureaucrats have facilitated migrant

involvement in local communities through job training, legal assistance, English-as-a-second-

language, and citizenship classes. Helen Marrow (2011) has argued that this “bureaucratic” form

of migrant incorporation can sometimes be more effective than more formal political processes,

particularly in new destinations. This expanded notion of incorporation helps us see the ways in

which migrants – both with and without legal status – can claim spaces within communities by

demonstrating their long-term residence and contributions to that place, including working,

purchasing homes, participating in cultural and recreational activities in public spaces, and

sending their children to local schools (Miraftab 2012; Stephen 2007). Focusing on these

everyday citizenship practices demonstrates that migrant subject positions are shaped by formal

citizenship but also by gender and family life, ethnic and racial identities, work experiences, and

cultural activities.

Practicing citizenship in (sub)urban Washington D.C.

Even though Bolivians live and work across the sprawling Washington D.C. metropolitan

area, they gather together for cultural, sports, and other events on most nights and weekend days.

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In the process, public parks, churches and even empty parking lots become important cultural

and social spaces where Bolivian identities and communities are created and performed. And

while these spaces can often be temporary, Bolivians have also become firmly rooted in North

American society by working, starting businesses, building homes, and developing other more

permanent connections to local communities. In this section, I demonstrate how Bolivians are

constructing identities and engaging in communities at multiple scales through local and

transnational activities. I focus particular attention on soccer leagues and folkloric dance troupes

as vehicles for the creation of spaces of belonging and identities that overlap at local, regional,

and national scales.

Bolivian cultural activities are characteristic of what Zelinsky and Lee (1999) called

“heterolocalism,” the formation of relatively cohesive migrant communities across large

metropolitan areas through activities that are often located in separate areas from migrant

residences. In some cases, cultural activities are organized primarily by Bolivians from the same

community of origin, while in others migrants are from multiple regions in the home country. As

migrants interact in these spaces, they construct identities at a variety of different scales and for

multiple audiences (Price and Whitworth 2004). My fieldwork focused primarily on two soccer

leagues composed of players from a single municipality in the Valle Alto, which created local (at

the village scale), regional (at the scale of the Valle Alto) and national (Bolivian) identities for

players. The Bolivian League, on the other hand, attracts migrants from each of the country’s

major cities as well as many fans from the Valle Alto and seeks to construct a more explicitly

national identity. Soccer leagues also serve to make migrants visible as Bolivian (or more

generally as Latino/a) to outsiders as players wear jerseys from Bolivian, Argentinian and

Spanish professional teams while spectators wave team flags or large banners. At important

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games, organizers from the Valle Alto play Bolivian music and speak both Spanish and Quechua

over loudspeakers.

Soccer leagues also facilitate migrant civic engagement by requiring Bolivian

organizations to develop connections with local institutions across the Washington D.C.

metropolitan area. In order to gain access to public parks, migrant leaders must go through a

number of bureaucratic steps such as filling out forms at a county office, contacting relevant

officials, and even purchasing health insurance for players, a requirement when playing

organized sports in some counties. Even though Bolivians now live throughout the metropolitan

area, they often continue meeting in the same parks and community centers in the inner-ring

suburbs because of their comfort with familiar spaces and local institutions.

In recent years, however, these long-term relationships have been threatened by

economic development and gentrification. As Washington D.C.’s population has expanded

rapidly since the 1980s, space has become more limited for recreational activities. Local

jurisdictions have installed field turf at a number of soccer fields in order to expand access, but

this has often resulted in significant increases in the cost of renting fields. In some cases,

Bolivian leagues have been forced to relocate to distant parks in the outer suburbs as a result of

these fee increases. Bolivians have also shifted their organizational practices as they have

become more dispersed across the metropolitan area, a result of sharply increasing housing costs

in Arlington and the booming housing market in the outer suburbs during the mid-2000s. As

space has become more limited, Bolivian soccer league organizers have placed a greater

emphasis on developing positive relationships with officials and now routinely visit government

offices in multiple jurisdictions as well as attending cultural celebrations and political events in

Virginia and Maryland. In one case during my fieldwork, hometown association leaders signed

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petitions and spoke at public meetings in order to (successfully) convince officials to allow them

to continue meeting at a community center where they had gathered for more than 20 years. As

Marrow (2011) has suggested in the context of rural North Carolina, these types of sustained

interactions with local officials represent a form of bureaucratic incorporation into local

communities that does not depend and can occur largely outside of electoral politics.

In other cases, though, Bolivian migrants go beyond bureaucratic norms in order to claim

cultural spaces within the Washington D.C. suburbs. Once during a soccer game in a small

Northern Virginia park, Bolivian players were confronted by a local official for playing an

“organized” soccer match, which is prohibited by the county in certain parks. As the captains led

the players off the field, some of the spectators quietly asserted their claim to the park by saying

to each other, “This is our field. We have been coming here for 20 years.” As they dissected the

county’s policy, which is designed to privilege children’s use of the fields, one migrant pointed

to the second-generation Bolivian children running around, asking, “but aren’t our children

here?” The players decided that they would continue to use the park on other nights when

officials are less likely to visit the park, but chose not to directly challenge the parks official or

the county policy on organized games. In this way, Bolivian soccer leagues represent ordinary,

but generally not confrontational, encroachments onto public spaces.

Bolivians also use more spectacular activities such as folkloric dance to construct migrant

identities and spaces of belonging in local communities. Folklore has become increasingly

popular both in Bolivia and migrant communities abroad in recent years (Himpele 2007).

Throughout the year but especially during the summer and fall, more than 30 folkloric dance

troupes perform in public spaces across the Washington D.C. metro area. Folkloric groups

organize a large Bolivian Festival every Labor Day weekend and are also a mainstay of local

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civic events like Fourth of July parades and Hispanic Month celebrations. Dance troupes also

hold practices in a variety of public and private spaces like schools, community centers, and

churches. Like soccer leagues, dance troupes consistently struggle to access spaces for practices

and performances, and often must practice in school and church parking lots. While these

activities can often be somewhat hidden from outsiders, they occasionally often attract attention

from drivers and neighborhood residents as dozens of dancers move to a folkloric song playing

in a continuous loop from a boombox or, in some cases, larger speakers powered by a generator.

Performances at local civic parades, festivals, and dance competitions serve several

important functions for Bolivian cultural activists. First, folklore helps to create unifying

experiences for migrants from different regions and socioeconomic backgrounds. This is

particularly the case for the 1.5 and second generations, although many first generation migrants

also report that they did not dance in Bolivia and had to learn about Bolivian cultural practices

only after coming to the United States. The embodied practice of dancing – or being a spectator

at these events – replicates shared activities associated with Bolivia and help to create Bolivian

spaces within a cultural landscape dominated by North American traditions (i.e. Grimson 1999;

Pallares 2005). Dance troupes employ images that evoke a deep connection to Bolivia, most

notably by including words like sangre (blood) or alma (soul) in the names of many dance

troupes. At the same time, folkloric groups embody the dual identity of 1.5 and second

generation Bolivians by also including “U.S.” in the dance troupe names and American flags in

their logo, and younger dancers occasionally use American pop songs and dance moves at the

beginning of performances.

Second, folklore is a crucial part of Bolivian efforts to present a positive image of a

culturally unique and unified community to the host society. Folkloric dance performances

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showcase appealing cultural traits like traditional costumes, music, and in some cases food that

fit easily within the multiculturalism that is increasingly common in U.S. cities. These cultural

performances are on display in localities that openly value diversity and the contributions of

immigrants such as Arlington County, as well as in outer suburbs that have adopted restrictive

immigration ordinances like Prince William County, which hosts the annual Bolivian Festival.

Folklore is also used to differentiate Bolivians from other Latin American groups, especially the

Central Americans who make up the majority of the region’s Latin American immigrant

population. But while folklore is rarely transgressive of the social order in the United States, it

can simultaneously contest and reproduce dominant conceptions of multiculturalism and

citizenship (Veronis 2007).

As I describe in more detail in the following section, migrant leaders appropriate

neoliberal understandings of accountability and responsibility in their representation of the

Bolivian community as hardworking, upwardly mobile, and (mostly) law-abiding. While

immigrants and other social groups have long portrayed themselves in a positive light to the

broader host society, Bolivian discourses are also representative of what scholars have called

neoliberal governmentality (Dean 2010), which enforces particular kinds of acceptable behaviors

through self-governance. When Bolivians describe their contributions to the host society

primarily in terms of labor and consumption, this constructs a narrow vision of belonging and

limits other types of contributions. Belonging is also defined in terms of personal responsibility,

most notably through contrasts with negative stereotypes of criminality associated with other

Latin American immigrants. In speeches at cultural events, folklore dancers are routinely lauded

for practicing hard, doing well in school, and staying away from drugs and gangs, a common

representation of Central American immigrant communities in the region.

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But even as these narratives reinforce narrow views of citizenship and belonging in

certain ways, Bolivian discourses and practices can also contest dominant representations of

immigrants and Latinos. By participating in the same festivals, parades, and soccer leagues over

many years, Bolivian organizations present themselves as engaged and long-term residents of

local communities. These practices help to shift narratives of belonging beyond economic

contributions, which remain essential, to also include presence in community spaces as a critical

aspect of belonging. More broadly, folklore echoes the notion of cultural citizenship described

by Flores and Benmayor (1997) in which Latinos define themselves as culturally different from

the dominant U.S. culture through everyday practices while also claiming rights and space within

the nation-state. By occupying soccer fields, residential neighborhoods, public streets, and

parking lots, therefore, Bolivians are carving out cultural spaces and negotiating their belonging

within the multi-ethnic Washington D.C. suburban landscape.

While the presence and visibility of Bolivians in public spaces is a key aspect of

citizenship practices, the activities of Bolivians in private spaces are also crucial. In the case of

folkloric dance troupes, rehearsals are held in a variety of spaces, including churches, privately-

owned parking lots, and individual homes, that are essential to successful performances in public

spaces. Dance troupe and soccer league organizers also tend to prepare for weekend events

behind closed doors, either in restaurants, community centers, or individual homes. At these

meetings and other less formal interactions in private spaces, migrants develop discourses around

citizenship and belonging that shape Bolivian activities and claims in more public spaces.

Imagining transnational belonging

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Much like the performance of soccer and folklore, Bolivian migrants in Washington D.C.

also construct identities through narratives about their long-term presence in and contributions to

local communities in the United States and Bolivia. Directly challenging the dominant discourse

around unauthorized immigration in the U.S., Bolivians argue that their work and performance of

responsibilities outweigh any transgression of immigration laws, which are seen as unfairly

excluding the vast majority of South Americans without the resources or connections to apply for

visas. At the same time, migrants crucially depart from mainstream immigrant rights discourses

by highlighting their continued transnational connections to rural Bolivia. In this section, I argue

that Bolivian routes of migration and a history of settlement in Argentina, Europe, and the

United States allow migrants to imagine a more expansive form of belonging beyond the narrow

constraints of national citizenship even as restrictive immigration laws in the United States and

Europe limit this belonging in practice. In other words, while migrants develop ties to specific

communities through long-term presence in and contributions to Northern Virginia or Maryland,

migrant civic engagement and belonging is always shaped by interconnected processes in

multiple places and countries.

In response to arguments that immigrants are a burden on host countries, immigrant

rights advocates have often highlighted migrant contributions to local communities. In these

narratives, which revolve primarily around the issues of work, consumption, and taxes,

immigrants are presented as “hardworking” individuals who do the labor intensive jobs that

native-born Americans no longer want (Voss and Bloemraad 2011). Scholars and advocates have

also pointed to concrete economic contributions in the form of sales and income taxes paid by

immigrants regardless of their legal status (Grenier 2014). As Alfonso Gonzales (2014) argues,

immigrant advocates tend to publicize stories about hardworking immigrants with family

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members in the United States, which reinforces the “good immigrant – bad immigrant binary”

that drives much of the national conversation around immigration.

In recent decades, the expansion of immigration enforcement has often been justified on

the grounds that undocumented immigrants are a threat to the security of U.S. borders.

Immigrants, particularly those without legal status in the United States, are blamed for a variety

of social ills such as increased crime, burdening local schools and hospitals, abusing the welfare

system, and taking jobs away from local residents. These fears have been increasingly

accompanied by the criminalization of immigration law, or the construction of civil immigration

violations as criminal acts. Most notably, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant

Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) expanded the criteria for the deportation of non-citizens, including

legal residents, and established the framework for federal-local immigration enforcement

partnerships. Since 9-11, new and expanded migration control policies have resulted in sharply

increasing rates of detention and deportation, particularly under the Obama administration. In

response, many immigrant advocates – but not all – have made the tactical decision to support

enforcement policies as long as they are directed towards “real” criminals (Gonzales 2014).

While Bolivian migrants are not frequent participants in immigrant rights protests despite

their proximity to the District of Columbia, many have appropriated the language and message of

the mainstream immigrant rights movement. Most notably, Bolivians demonstrate their

contributions to the United States through references to everyday practices of consumption. As a

long-term migrant named Francisco1 showed me around his recently renovated house in

Northern Virginia, he argued that, “We [Bolivians] are always supplying this county. We supply

it with taxes, with our work, our effort. We are consuming with our money. We go to markets,

we buy clothes. We are not taking the money directly to Bolivia, we are investing in this country,

1 All migrant names in the article are pseudonyms

20

benefiting this country.” Although migrants (and non-migrants) often complain about the very

high cost of living in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, Francisco’s narrative suggests that

consumption is also a source of pride and a way to challenge claims that immigrants are less than

fully invested in the United States. This is expressed through common narratives about taxes and

local consumption, or materially in the homes built or owned by Bolivians in Washington D.C.,

which are frequently used for large gatherings and represent concrete proof of migrant success

and social mobility in the United States.

At the same time, and much like mainstream immigrant rights discourses, Bolivian

narratives rely on this key division between “good” and “bad” migrants (Gonzales 2014).

Francisco, for instance, draws a clear distinction between legitimate and illegitimate activities,

even though it rests on a different premise than anti-immigration arguments: “We don’t take

money from the county illegally. Everything is done under the law.” Although undocumented

migrants are often called “illegal” by U.S. politicians and the media, Bolivian migrant narratives

suggest that working and living in the United States without documentation can, in fact, be

justified. Illegal behavior, in contrast, is defined in terms of criminal activities like gangs and

drug trafficking. In some cases, Bolivians defined their own actions as morally just through a

direct comparison with Central Americans, who make up the largest foreign-born group in the

Washington D.C. metropolitan area and are sometimes the target of local anti-immigration

policies responding to day laborers and perceived overcrowding in suburban neighborhoods.

Central Americans are also held responsible by Bolivians for the negative association between

Latino/as and violence, poverty, or abuse of social services held by some native-born Americans.

By contrasting themselves with a negative stereotype of Central American immigrants, Bolivians

present themselves as successful, educated, and law-abiding. Much like the exclusionary nature

21

of citizenship, Bolivian migrants claim rights and construct identities through narratives of

inclusion that are simultaneously accompanied by a process of othering.

While these discourses reinforce dominant notions about which immigrants are worthy of

a place in local communities – and which are not – Bolivian narratives of migration

simultaneously promote alternative understandings of citizenship and belonging. Most notably,

Bolivian migrants describe their long-term presence in Washington D.C. as an essential aspect of

their identity. The history of Bolivian settlement in the region is often discussed through

participation in particular spaces like soccer fields, apartment complexes, restaurants, cultural

festivals, and even worksites over decades. While many long-term migrants still see Arlington as

the center of the Bolivian community, intense development in the metropolitan area has resulted

in a high degree of residential mobility since the 1980s. Furthermore, the multi-ethnic character

of the Washington D.C. suburbs has meant that immigrant groups are dispersed across a broad

territory and tend not to be concentrated in particular neighborhoods (Vicino et al. 2011). As a

result, there are few neighborhoods in the Washington D.C. area with a long history of Bolivian

settlement.

Instead, many Bolivians describe their long-term connections to local communities and

the United States through particular places and their children. Challenging the sometimes

exclusionary nature of the term “American,” which many Latinos use to refer specifically to

Anglos and other European descendants in the United States, Bolivian migrants argue that their

children are also “Americanos.” This considerably broadens understandings of who belongs to

the United States and what types of practices are understood to be “American.” Young Bolivians

in Washington D.C. can often feel more connected to United States than Bolivia, and a number

of high school and college students have participated in activism around the DREAM Act and

22

tuition equity for undocumented residents (interview with Emma Violand-Sánchez, May 2011;

Soto and Price 2015). Even as they engage in local struggles to stay in the United States, second

and 1.5 generation migrants from the Valle Alto also regularly participate in Bolivian social

activities like soccer games and folkloric dance while occasionally inviting Anglo and other

Latin American friends to participate. Thus, Bolivian traditions and identities, as they are

practiced in the United States, are also part of an Americano identity for the second and 1.5

generation.

This use of the term Americano to describe Bolivian young people also shifts the position

and identity of first generation adult migrants. Even as Bolivians have experienced increased

anxieties about their future in the United States as a result of the recent economic recession,

foreclosure crisis, and heightened immigration restrictions, most do not see themselves as

temporary visitors or migrants with weak connections to host communities. This is particularly

the case for migrants with children in the United States. Although many adult migrants insist that

they would eventually return to Bolivia, a common narrative among Latin American migrants in

the United States, most acknowledge some reluctance to return without their children or say that

they will continue to visit their children and grandchildren in the United States.

But while migrant citizenship practices and identities are rooted in the suburbs of

Washington D.C., they are simultaneously based on transnational connections with rural villages

in Cochabamba. For migrants from the Valle Alto, the most prominent form of transnationalism

occurs through men’s soccer leagues that function as hometown associations (HTAs). HTAs are

voluntary organizations that organize social activities and support civic projects in migrant

communities of origin (Moya 2005). Each Sunday, Bolivian HTAs bring together men, women

and children from multiple sending communities in the Washington D.C. area to raise money for

23

collective remittance projects like churches, soccer fields, community centers, or plazas. These

projects, which are tend to be highly visible structures, become the physical embodiment of

migrants’ position in their communities of origin (i.e. Goldring 1998). Much like migrant

organizations from Mexico and Central America, Bolivian HTA leaders insist that their

contributions be recognized in the form of a plaque on these structures, which allows migrants

living abroad for extended periods of time to have their contributions acknowledged in sending

communities even without being physically present (i.e. R. Smith 2005; Miyares et al. 2003).

Hometown association leaders suggest that these projects represent a fulfillment of

migrant obligations to their communities of origin and are proof of the moral and trustworthy

actions taken by Bolivians in the United States. Eduardo, a long-term migrant from a large

village in the Valle Alto, argued that migrants – both with and without legal status – have

transformed his community by bringing paved roads, new infrastructure and other forms of

economic development. “Thus, we have made healthy progress [in the Valle Alto]. Maybe we

have evaded American laws but with a healthy ideology, no?” Eduardo’s emphasis on migrant

contributions to rural development has the effect of downplaying immigration laws and instead

suggests that the intent of migrants outweighs the legal permission to enter the United States, an

extremely difficult prospect for most Bolivians. Notably, the emphasis on collective remittances

as proof of migrant contributions challenges the exclusive focus of the immigrant rights

movement on contributions to the United States. HTA leaders also describe collective remittance

projects not only as an initiative of Bolivians in Washington D.C., but also as a collaborative

effort between migrants and community members in Bolivia. Even though projects are generally

financed entirely by migrants, HTA leaders communicate with peasant organizations in the Valle

Alto at various points in the process. Thus, collective remittance projects are presented as both a

24

form of extra-territorial belonging for migrants living abroad and a practice that benefits the

entire community of origin in Bolivia.

At the same time, the representation of the HTA as a unified and representative entity

obscures important conflicts within and between migrant communities (Waldinger et al. 2008).

Research on Latin American hometown associations has demonstrated that HTA leaders tend to

be well-established migrants (Portes et al. 2008) and are almost exclusively male (R. Smith

2005), which is also a characteristic of Bolivian migrant organizations. HTAs tend to have only a

small number of motivated members and have difficulty expanding beyond core leaders,

seriously limiting the scope and representation of the organization (Waldinger et al. 2008). This

is also true of Bolivian HTAs, which attract a significant number of spectators on weekends but

have difficulty encouraging young people to become more involved in the organization.

The participation of HTAs in collective remittance projects also can lead to tensions

between migrants and community members in the sending country. Even though migrants are

able to interact regularly with community members in Bolivia, migrants hold most of the power

in the relationship because they contribute many more resources (Levitt 2001). Furthermore,

HTA-sponsored projects tend to serve the interests of migrants but not necessarily those in

migrant communities of origin (i.e. Waldinger et al. 2008). Much like Robert Smith’s (2005)

description of the resentment of HTA leaders from Brooklyn by local Mexican officials, I found

several instances where tensions between migrants and local officials emerged, including the

refusal of migrants to support a municipal project despite the appeal of several local officials

who were former migrants themselves, and the removal of a peasant organizational leaders at the

behest of a group of migrants in Washington D.C.

25

In spite of these tensions, Bolivian hometown associations are durable institutions for

migrant families in the Washington D.C. area that facilitate real and imagined connections to

rural Cochabamba. The centrality of these connections is reflected in the term Bolivian migrants

use to describe themselves. The term residente (literally “resident”) has a variety of meanings,

but its use (rather than as immigrants or migrants) most clearly embodies migrants’ aspiration for

legal status or residency in the United States. In most situations, the term refers to all Bolivian

migrants regardless of whether they actually have legal status in the United States, which serves

to further downplay and obscure migrant legal status. In other moments, however, residente is

used more literally and only applies to migrants with legal documents. This is particularly the

case in Bolivia, where the difference in legal status among people is most noticeable. Residentes

are able to travel to Bolivia and reenter the United States, while migrants without papers endure

long periods of physical separation from the Valle Alto (or face being deported from the United

States). Legal permanent resident status is a goal, therefore, because it creates more permanent

connections to both the U.S. and Bolivia (de la Torre 2006).

By drawing on their extensive experience with international migration to Argentina,

Israel, Spain and other countries, which often occurred before migrating to the United States,

Bolivians are able to imagine alternative citizenship regimes based on actual patterns of migrant

mobility and connections to multiple places. One returned migrant in the Valle Alto named

Samuel contrasted his experiences in the United States with a much more familiar model of

migration to Argentina:

“I was in Argentina for almost 17 years. I went and came, went and came (iba y venia,

iba y venia). I was there for eight months or a year and then I would come and be here a

month, two months, not much, and again return. Like that. . . When I go to Argentina, I

26

can be there and come back and be with my family whenever I want to, and later return.

How nice would it be (que lindo sería) if there were laws that allowed us to travel back

and forth from the United States. If we could work in construction for six months and

then be at home with our families.”

In Samuel’s case, experience with circular migration provides him with a starting point to

imagine a different relationship with the United States. Even though he left the U.S. because of

difficulties finding steady work after 9-11, Samuel continued to feel connected to Northern

Virginia and hoped to return someday. In this and other Bolivian migrant narratives, identity and

citizenship is based on residence but, perhaps more importantly, also on contributions to multiple

places. Bolivian migrants argue that they are valued members of local communities in

Washington D.C. because of their economic and social contributions to the United States

(Stephen 2007). While they acknowledge that some individuals have violated immigration laws,

Bolivians articulate citizenship as a series of everyday practices that redirect attention away from

formal legal status and towards the performance of responsibilities. As migrants contribute to

communities that are “here” and “there,” they are articulating alternative imaginaries of

transnational belonging and mobility (Lawson 2000).

Conclusion

Although citizenship fundamentally relies on the exclusion of outsiders, it is also a

contested and dynamic social formation. In this article, I have shown how Bolivian migrants in

the United States are simultaneously reinforcing and challenging the exclusionary nature of the

U.S. citizenship regime through practices and discourses that construct an expanded notion of

belonging. By participating in soccer leagues, hometown associations and folkloric dance

27

troupes, Bolivian migrants have developed multi-scalar identities based around a variety of

connections to local communities in Washington D.C. and Cochabamba. At the same time,

Bolivian identities are also shaped by immigrant rights discourses that are transmitted through

advocacy in and around the U.S. capital and the construction of national identities in Bolivia.

While these identities can often reinforce neoliberal subjectivities and the criminalization of

immigration, Bolivians also put forward alternative understandings of belonging and citizenship.

Thus, Bolivian migrant identities highlight the interconnected nature of local and transnational

migrant activities (Ehrkamp 2005), and demonstrate that migrant identities are shaped by

mobility and connections to specific places but are not necessarily rooted in national citizenship

regimes (das Gupta 2006).

Regardless of their formal legal status, places in Washington D.C. have become home for

Bolivians as a result of their migration routes and long-term settlement in the region. Pablo

expressed this after a hometown association meeting in Arlington, Virginia: “When a person

lives in a place for a long time, it becomes part of them. Arlington belongs to us now, like

Bolivia. What happens here matters to me.” In other words, migrants do not simply belong to

multiple places, but rather lay claim to and appropriate places as their own by participating in

organized and everyday activities, contributing to local economies, and putting down roots in

many other ways. As they move between different social and cultural spaces in Bolivia and the

United States, Bolivian migrants are actively making multiple places a part of their lives and

identities, and challenging accepted understandings of citizenship and belonging.

28

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