Cities and Social Movements
Immigrant Rights Activism in the US, France, and the Netherlands, 1970-2015
Studies in Urban and Social Change
1. Auflage Dezember 2016
280 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Through historical and comparative research on the immigrant rights movements of the United States, France and the Netherlands, Cities and Social Movements examines how small resistances against restrictive immigration policies do - or don't - develop into large and sustained mobilizations.
* Presents a comprehensive, comparative analysis of immigrant rights politics in three countries over a period of five decades, providing vivid accounts of the processes through which immigrants activists challenged or confirmed the status quo
* Theorizes movements from the bottom-up, presenting an urban grassroots account in order to identify how movement networks emerge or fall apart
* Provides a unique contribution by examining how geography is implicated in the evolution of social movements, discovering how and why the networks constituting movements grow by tracing where they develop
* Demonstrates how efforts to enforce national borders trigger countless resistances and shows how some environments provide the relational opportunities to nurture these small resistances into sustained mobilizations
* Written to appeal to a broad audience of students, scholars, policy makers, and activists, without sacrificing theoretical rigor
Acknowledgments x
1 Sparks of Resistance 1
2 Rethinking Movements from the Bottom Up 13
Part I The Birth of Immigrant Rights Activism 37
3 Making Space for Immigrant Rights Activism in Los Angeles 39
4 Radical Entanglements in Paris 54
5 Placing Protest in Amsterdam 71
Part II Urban Landscapes of Control and Contention 89
6 The Laissez ]Faire State: Re ]politicizing Immigrants in Los Angeles 91
7 The Uneven Reach of the State: The Partial Pacification of Paris 116
8 The Cooptative State: The Pacification of Contentious Immigrant Politics in Amsterdam 138
Part III New Geographies of Immigrant Rights Movements 157
9 Los Angeles as a Center of the National Immigrant Rights Movement 161
10 Paris as Head of Splintering Resistances 188
11 Divergent Geographies of Immigrant Rights Contention in the Netherlands 209
12 Conclusion: Sparks into Wildfires 227
Notes 239
References 245
Index 262
Ruth Milkman, Professor of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
"What makes social movements by groups usually considered as resourceless possible? Through cross-national comparison and using a historical perspective, aptly bridging sociology and geography, this volume convincingly argues that, notwithstanding more and more exclusive neoliberal policies in global cities, the relational qualities of some places help the incubation of resistance."
Donatella della Porta, Director of the Centre on Social Movement Studies, Scuola normale superiore di Firenze, Florence
"Bringing diverse people together, cities are not just sites of tension, but also alliances. As Nicholls and Uitermark show in their innovative comparison, public policies and city residents' relations as neighbors, co-workers and community members can spark movements of resistance and solidarity. As anti-immigrant rhetoric pervades European and American politics, Nicholls and Uitermark's empirically and theoretically rich analysis could not be more timely."
Irene Bloemraad, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
"This book is essential reading to understand how immigrant rights struggles persist in the face of growing xenophobia and parochialism. Using an impressive array of sources, Nicholls and Uitermark show how these struggles emerge, use cities as strategic sites, and thrive or fail. In addition to its rich empirical content, Cities and Social Movements is a brilliant reflection on the relationship between space, social movements and cities."
Mustafa Dikeç, Professor of Urban Studies, Ecole d'Urbanisme de Paris and LATTS, Paris
Justus Uitermark is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include Urban Studies and Political Sociology. He has published widely in journals including American Sociological Review, Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Social Networks and PLoS ONE. His Dynamics of Power in Dutch Integration Politics was published by University of Amsterdam Press.