Undocumented Immigration and Neighborhood Citizenship On and Off Film

The last chapter explores the convergence of four unprecedented booms in Barcelona’s central public spaces since the 1990s: immigration, gentrification, mass tourism, and surveillance. Among the populations of Iberian cities, Barcelona claims the largest percentage of documented (and most likely undocumented) immigrants, 20% in 2019. This chapter departs from two independent films that emphasize social heterogeneity and undocumented life in public space: the documentary Si nos dejan (2004) by Ana Torres and the docudrama Raval, Raval (2006) by Antoni Verdaguer. I put the films in dialogue with empirical research, personal observations, and interviews with their directors to discuss how the neoliberal city complicates undocumented life by inserting material, legislative, and symbolic barriers, all of which are entangled in Barcelona’s public spaces. Building from sociologist Saskia Sassen’s assertion that neoliberal authorities depend on a precarious transnational labor force in urban centers while simultaneously denying the transnational labor force basic rights and economic access to urban centers, I expose how this paradox unfolds spatially and from below, creating an obstacle course with individuals zigzagging back and forth from country to country, neighborhood to neighborhood, and global city to global city. Within the precarious contexts depicted both on and off the screen, I suggest that certain neighborhoods of Barcelona, with their compact, intertwining topography and rhizomatic social networks, enable temporary possibilities for survival. These include engaging in informal economies, escalating small resistance to organized political associations, and partaking in what I call neighborhood citizenship. The latter encapsulates the kinetic social bonds developed between local friends and strangers at the neighborhood level, often in the absence of documented or biological ties. Neighborhood citizenship facilitates a more accessible and flexible notion of belonging and citizenship, upholding networks of care, albeit fragile ones, as they face the looming threat of both gentrification and deportation.