Illegalization: Intersectional. International. Interdisciplinary.
The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the noncitizen. Be it in America, where a demagogue rose to the Presidency on an anti–immigrant platform, or in Europe, where far–right political parties are gaining control over national politics. Constitutive to what injustice means for noncitizens is that the hostile political environments in which […]
Undocumental is growing and, because of this, we are looking to bring in two editors: a managing editor and a “framings editor”! Interested applicants should email a résumé and a cover letter expressing interest to sati@undocumental.com. Interviews will be conducted on Skype; however, we are open to other options. Applications will be received on a […]
In this piece, I aim to set out a rough idea on the politics of epistemic injustice. Or, in English: I want to explore the role of knowledge and truth in our current political situation, examining American politics as an example of how knowledge is weaponized to amplifying the oligarchic few while silencing the suppressed […]
As harrowing footage of the protest of Milo Yiannopoulos’s cancelled event at UC Berkeley have filled up my social media feed, reactions arguing that protest plays into his hands— many of them peddled by self-identifying liberals—abound in equal measure. I write the following as a “response to the responses” of sorts. Before I give a critique […]
NOTE: This blog post was published on The Berkeley Blogs on January 24th, 2017. You can find the original post here. -ize (verb suffix): cause to be or conform to or resemble…cause to be formed into… (2): subject to a (specified) action…treat according to the method of… — Merriam Webster Part I: Introduction As a […]
Article 6 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that “Everyone has a right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” But as the existing climate has made clear, that is far from the case. Donald Trump has ascended to the presidency on a platform that has disparaged women, Muslims, […]
“Next time you go looking for the truth, get the whole thing…It’s like a good fuck: half is worse than nothing at all.” Westworld Season 1 Episode 9: “The Well-Tempered Clavier” My personal shift to a searing focus on theories of knowledge reached overdrive in the aftermath of the election. In my previous essay […]
NOTE: This post appeared on the Berkeley Blog on December 28, 2016. You can find the original post here. “Post-truth (/ˌpəʊs(t)ˈtruːθ/) adj.: Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. 2016 Word of the Year, Oxford Dictionaries “Are you real?” “Well, […]
NOTE: This blog post was published on the Berkeley Blog on November 23rd, 2016. You can find the original post here. “Lies on the lips of a priest/Thanksgiving disguised as a feast” — Jay-Z and Kanye West, No Church in The Wild (from Watch the Throne) It has been two weeks since the election that […]
NOTE: This post was published in the Berkeley Blogs on November 14, 2016. You can see the original post here. “And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names. But you and I have never truly […]
In my senior year of high school I discovered the term anagnorisis. In ancient Greek literature, anagnorisis signifies a critical discovery; the protagonist sees things as they are, free of fantastical considerations. I hope that those in America, especially the left, have seen America as it truly is: a nation whose modus operandi is marginalization, whose […]
NOTE: I presented the following as a talk given at Columbia University as part of the “I am an Undocumented Immigrant: Let’s Talk About It!” held on April 25, 2016. My name is Joel Sati, and I am an immigrant from Kenya. I came to this country at the age of nine, in 2002. I lived in Georgia […]
NOTE: This was published in The Odyssey on Feb 8, 2016. Since I no longer write for the publication, the piece was removed from the site. I republish it here. In the season of campaigns and candidates are on the hunt – in pursuit of funding to fuel the daily work of campaigning and for […]
Immigration activism – like everything else – happens in the context of state violence, and it is naïve to think that getting legal status will shield us from the violence Black bodies, PoC bodies, and LGBTQ bodies are systematically subjected to.
Over the course of the next few months, I want to spell out what claims undocumented immigrants can make if we assume that the immigration system is just and the immigration system distributes its benefits in a procedurally fair way. For the purposes of this discussion, the benefit in question is the conferral of resident […]
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