Migrants act, and by doing so they affirm they have a right to speak as human beings entitled to a certain treatment that involves giving them a voice. And, again borrowing from Arendt, by acting they become genuinely free, by acting they become full individuals in dialogue with others, they become polites. Polites are those who live in the city, who create links with others, who create and deliberate, social animals par excellence. For such a dialogue to set things into motion and be the beginning of something new, it has to have the occasion to occur in the first place and this is why it has to be possible even for undocumented migrants to express themselves, to address issues that affect them qua individuals.
The metamorphosis is not the one from migrant to citizen, rather from being apolitical, to becoming an active, or even activist agent (Isin, 2012). By being political, they become political.