Identifies specific network mechanisms at the individual level and illustrates how different social networks affect recruitment and individual participation in different voluntary organizations and social movement organizations. Socialization functions of social networks create an initial disposition to participate; structural‐connection functions generate practical opportunities for involvement; decision‐shaping functions affect the ultimate decision to take part. Empirical evidence comes from members of two political organizations active in the solidarity movement and the environmental movement in Switzerland, the Bern Declaration and WWF.

While numerous studies stress the crucial role of networks for social movement participation, they generally do not specify how networks affect individual behaviors. This article clarifies the role of social networks for individual social movement participation. It argues that networks perform three fundamental functions in the process leading to participation and that they intervene at different moments along this process. First, networks socialize and build individual identities—a socialization function. Second, they offer participation opportunities to individuals who are culturally sensitive to a specific political issue—a structural-connection function. Third, they shape individual preferences before individuals decide to join a move-ment—a decision-shaping function. These network functions allow us to disentangle the mechanisms at work in the process of participation. They also integrate structural and rationalist theories, which are often considered opposing explanations of individual movement participation. This article presents several hypotheses about these network functions, and uses both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (life history) data of participation in the Berne Declaration SMO to examine them.

Abstract. This article focuses on the political claims made by immigrants and ethnic minorities in France and Switzerland. We look at cross-national variations in the overall presence of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the national public space, and the forms and content of their claims. Following a political opportunity approach, we argue that claim-making is affected both by institutional opportunities and by national models of citizenship. The civicassimilationist conception of citizenship in France gives migrants greater legitimacy to intervene in the national public space. Furthermore, the inclusive definition of 'membership in the national community' favors claims pertaining to minority integration politics. However, the pressure toward assimilation to the republican norms and values tends to provoke claims for the recognition of ethnic and cultural difference. Finally, closed institutional opportunities push migrants' mobilization to become more radical, but at the same time the more inclusive model of citizenship favors a moderate action repertoire of migrants. Conversely, the ethnic-assimilationist view in Switzerland leads migrants to stress homeland-related claims. When they do address the policy field of ethnic relations, immigration and citizenship, they focus on issues pertaining to the entry and stay in the host society. Finally, the forms of action are more moderate due to the more open institutional context, but at the same time the action repertoire of migrants is moderated by the more exclusive model of citizenship. Our article is an attempt to specify the concept of 'political opportunity structure', and to combine institutional and cultural factors in explaining claim-making by immigrants and ethnic minorities. We confront our arguments with data from a comparative project on the mobilization on ethnic relations, citizenship and immigration.A great deal of work on contentious politics during the past three decades has followed the political process approach in trying to account for the emergence, dynamics and outcomes of social movements, both comparatively across countries and over time (e.g., McAdam 1999;McAdam et al. 2001;Tarrow 1998;Tilly 1978). The central concept in this perspective is that of political opportunity structures (Brockett 1991;Della Porta 1995;Kitschelt 1986;Kriesi et al. 1995;McAdam 1996;Tarrow 1998), which refers to political-institutional aspects of the movements' context such as the relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political system, the stability or instability of that broad set of elite alignments that typically undergird a polity, the presence or absence of elite allies, and the state's capacity and propensity for repression (McAdam 1996).

A considerable number of studies in the social movement literature stress that social networks are a key factor for those participating in political protest. However, since empirical evidence does not universally support this thesis, we propose to examine three core questions. Do networks really matter for participants in political protest? Are social networks important for all types of protest? Finally, what are social networks and in which ways are they important? By answering these questions this paper aims to provide three contributions to social movement literature: first, we want to put networks in their place and not reifying their influence on participation processes; second, we describe and explain variations of networks influence on protest participation; third, to pursue the theoretical reflection initiated by Kitts, McAdam, and Passy on the specification of network effect on contentious participation, that is, to disentangle the different processes at stake. Many scholars argue for empirical works analyzing the link between networks and cognition, but this remains a pious wish. Here, we propose to systematically examine the effect of social interactions on activists' cognitive toolkit.

Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on national identity, in this article we propose an explanation of the extreme right's claim making based on the interplay of three factors: national models of citizenship, the dynamics of political alignments and party competition, and the strategic/organizational repertoires of the extreme right, in particular the electoral strength of extreme-right parties. Confronting a number of hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework with original data on the extreme right's claim making in five European countries (the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland), we show how political-institutional and cultural-discursive opportunities account for differences in the extent, forms, and content of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. Our study shows that national configurations of citizenship affect in significant ways the mobilization of the extreme right, both directly and indirectly. More precisely, our two-country comparison confirms the hypothesis that the claim making of the extreme right depends on a specific political opportunity structure formed by the combination of discursive opportunities deriving from the prevailing model of citizenship and by the political space made available by mainstream parties for far-right mobilization.

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