Making memory without papers: Continuities, amnesia, and memory infrastructures in Belgian mobilizations (2004–2021)

This article examines undocumented migrants’ mobilizations in Belgium (2004–2021), focusing on collective memory as a political infrastructure. Based on long-term ethnographic research and a diachronic analysis of three key sequences of mobilization (Union de Défense des Sans-Papiers, Sans-Papiers Belgique, Coordination des sans-papiers de Belgique), we show that memory is not merely a symbolic backdrop but a decisive strategic lever to stabilize struggles, build continuity, and sustain collective capacity to act in a context marked by precarity and structural illegitimacy.