Paper short abstract:

In the offices of an association in Lisbon, alienation and lack of recognition mirror each other in the figures of the migrant and the front-line worker, punctuated by moments of social connectivity and a sense of achievement. How might this change the way we think about the migrant citizen divide?

Paper long abstract:

In the offices of a Luso-Cape Verdean association in the Lisbon area, precarity and burn-out mirror each other in the figures of the (undocumented) migrant and the front-line worker providing legalization, job and citizenship applications and other outsourced services for the state. At one level, an intersectional analysis guards against identifying a common experience of alienation. Yet both migrants and front-line workers experience precarity and burn-out, albeit to different degrees, for diverse reasons and in different contexts. The paper draws on the empirical data collected though the observation of appointments between January and July 2024 in which reflexive dialogue was possible with both migrants and front-line staff, illuminating their commonalities of experience. Beyond their socio-economic disparities, there is a mutual sense of alienation and lack of recognition. In the case of migrants, this is due, in part, to their undocumented and/or unemployed status as well as due to experiences of racism and exploitation. In the case of the association staff, it is due, in part, to limited financial and human resources for the outsourced services they provide and a sense of how their skills might be put to better use. However, these feelings of estrangement are also punctuated by moments of social connectivity and a sense of achievement, when, for example, needs for sociability and recognition are met informally through encounters in the appointments and when migrant rights are upheld. The paper concludes questioning how these insights may change the way we think about the migrant citizen divide.