Hunger strikes in detention centers across the nation have captivated media and scholarly attention. This article examines hunger strikes as signs of the development of both alliances and collective consciousness. Based on migrant testimonies, this article centers migrants in detention as critical social analysts who are crafting life affirming relationalities and launching staunch critiques of detention. This essay posits queer migrant kinship as a lens to interpret migrant sociality in detention. Queer migrant kinship reveals the centrality of care practices and witnessing as key elements politicizing migrants. Through this interdependent sensibility, migrants perform acts of radical care such as sharing resources, promoting well-being, and providing advocacy. Through these acts, this essay argues, migrants are challenging detention as a space of death and neglect into one of insubordination.
University of California Press