The networked grassroots. How radicals outflanked reformists in the United States’ immigrant rights movement

Abstract

This paper accounts for important shifts in the debate on immigration reform by considering the geographies of protest. Our findings point to the importance of urban hubs of activists and organisations that have worked with one another over extended periods of time. While these urban hubs constitute distinctive activist worlds, they have also connected to one another and coordinated nation-wide actions through a variety of networks (social media, interpersonal, and inter-organisational). Using interviews, network analysis, and data on funding, we show how this decentralised network evolved and eventually outflanked nationally centred and reformist advocacy organisations in recent anti-deportation campaigns.

Cities as sites of refuge and resistance

“…For pragmatic reasons, local politicians are therefore often more concerned with maintaining public order in their jurisdictions than they are with the legal status of their residents, and may thus be inclined to take more favourable positions towards undocumented residents within their districts (cf. Nicholls et al, 2016: 3). What motivates cities to such pragmatic action is often a logic of emergency, which leads them to provide some, at least temporary, partial or improvised form of membership based on human rights, as with the UK’s Cities of Sanctuary movement or the city of Utrecht’s policy to provide shelter for rejected asylum claimants.…”

“…Since city agencies administer many of the programmes and deliver most of the services relevant to the daily lives of immigrants, and since they are also more accessible, the threshold for participation in local governments is lower. This encourages ‘aggrieved local actors to transform the local arena into a major front in national immigration battles’ (Nicholls et al, 2016: 3). Since municipalities are closer to civil society organisations, they frequently cooperate with NGOs and non-profits in the delivery of local services and on many consultative round tables.…”

Building protest online: engagement with the digitally networked #not1more protest campaign on Twitter

“…Core users, who are highly connected, persistent and account for large proportions of traffic, are concentrated in specific places. California is home to a tapestry of community-based groups and individual activists, while Washington, D.C. harbours large advocacy organizations that have dedicated resources to tweeting routinely and prolifically (Nicholls et al, 2016). Zooming in closer on the top 30 cities that form the campaign's hubs (Table 1), we find that four urban areas harbour the core users and together account for 35.0% of the entire user base: Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.…”

“…Over the course of 20 months, the campaign became widely endorsed in immigration rights struggles, tying in closely with direct actions such as rallies, sit-ins and blockades of detention centres across the nation. Eventually, widespread engagement with the #not1more campaign contributed to a push for immigration reform leading up to controversial executive action by President Obama on November 20, 2014, providing administrative relief for up to 4.9 million immigrants (Nicholls, Uitermark, & van Haperen, 2016; 'United States Department of Homeland Security: Executive Actions on Immigration' 2015). Employing a strategy of digital networking, the campaign developed a coalition that was durable enough to push for substantial policy impact.…”

Transformations of the undocumented youth movement and radical egalitarian citizenship

“…Building on and extending the scope of this literature and studies of earlier stages of the movement, I analyze more recent forms of organizing as contentious politics that challenge the previous exclusive focus on students, immigration reform, and citizenship status (Perez 2014;Unzueta Carrasco and Seif 2014). My research therefore also hints at what might be a broader shift toward grassroots organizing in the migrant movement across the USA more generally (Nicholls, Uitermark, and van Haperen 2016).…”