Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance


Book Description

Migration and cosmopolitanism are said to be complementary. Cosmopolitanism means to be a citizen of the world, and migration, without impediments, should be the natural starting point for a cosmopolitan view. However, the intensification of migration, through an increasing number of refugees and economic migrants, has generated anti-cosmopolitan stances. Using the concept of cosmopolitanism as it emerges from migrant protests like Sans Papiers, No One Is Illegal, and No Borders, an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses this discrepancy and explores how migrant protest movements elicit a new form of radical cosmopolitanism. The combination of basic theoretical concepts and detailed empirical analysis in this book will advance the theoretical debate on the inherent cosmopolitan aspects of migrant activism. As such, it will be a valuable contribution to students, researchers and scholars of political science, sociology and philosophy.




The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements


Book Description

Over the past two years, large-scale migratory movements to Europe have gained worldwide attention, and have prompted ever-greater desires to govern and control them. At the same time, we have seen the emergence of political struggles for rights to movement and demands for greater social justice, in both the global ‘north’ and ‘south’. Throughout the world, political mobilizations by refugees, irregularized migrants and solidarity activists have emerged, demanding and enacting the right to move and to stay, struggling for citizenship and human rights, and protesting the violence and deadliness of contemporary border regimes. This collection brings together articles that explore political mobilizations in several countries and (border) regions, including Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey and ‘the Mediterranean’. Many of these political mobilizations can be understood as transnational responses to processes of regionalization and the intensification of restrictive border regimes across the globe, and as illustrative of what might be referred to as a ‘new era of protest’.




Migrant Protest and Democratic States of Exception


Book Description

Recognizing the radical disparity between migration/border policy and constitutional law “inside these borders,” Kathleen R. Arnold focuses on two main forms of migrant protest to explore the meaning of resistance in a sovereign context: self-harming protest by detainees and faith-based sanctuary of individuals scheduled for detention. This activism creates a “democratic state of exception,” interrupting the legal process, altering discretionary forms of sovereign power, and enacting rights not formally granted; these efforts go beyond the assertion of liberal rights or merely restoring the rule of law (even if these are also goals), challenging the warfare state while constituting a demos that is formally illegible. Migrant Protest and Democratic States of Exception will be of interest to scholars, migrant advocacy professionals (including INGO and IGO officers), graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students in a variety of fields from legal studies to forced migration and refugee studies, political science, human rights, protest history, and contemporary movements.




Protesting Citizenship: Migrant Activisms


Book Description

What does it mean to state ?No One is Illegal??. This rallying call is what unifies migrant protests against exclusionary border regimes around the world, bringing migrants, citizens, `legal` and `illegal` people onto the streets in ever greater numbers. Indeed, the last decade has witnessed an explosion of immigrant protests, political mobilizations by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This edited collection aims to contribute to the growing body of scholarship on migrant resistance movements and to consider the implications of these struggles for critical understandings of citizenship and borders. It offers a rich series of theoretical and political interventions which together explore the tensions between integrationist and autonomous approaches, and between migrant and activist strategies of invisibility and visibility. By bringing immigrant protests to the heart of debates about citizenship, it also extends discussions about the limits and the possibilities of citizenship as the material and conceptual horizon of critical social analysis, political participation and democracy today.This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.




Migrant Protest


Book Description

Migrant protest has proliferated worldwide in the last two decades, explicitly posing questions of identity, rights, and equality in a globalized world. Nonetheless, such mobilizations are considered anomalies in social movement studies, and political sociology more broadly, due to 'weak interests' and a particularly disadvantageous position of 'outsiders' to claim rights connected to citizenship. In an attempt to address this seeming paradox, this book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavourable contexts of marginalization. Such a perspective unveils both the odds of precarious mobilizations, and the ways they can be temporarily overcome. While adopting the encompassing terminology of 'migrant', the book focusses on precarious migrants, including both asylum seekers and 'illegalized' migrants.




No Borders


Book Description

From the streets of Calais to the borders of Melilla, Evros and the United States, the slogan 'No borders!' is a thread connecting a multitude of different struggles for the freedom to move and to stay. But what does it mean to make this slogan a reality? Drawing on the author's extensive research in Greece and Calais, as well as a decade campaigning for migrant rights, Natasha King explores the different forms of activism that have emerged in the struggle against border controls, and the dilemmas these activists face in translating their principles into practice. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, No Borders constitutes vital reading for anyone interested in how we make radical alternatives to the state a genuine possibility for our times, and raises crucial questions on the nature of resistance.




Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement


Book Description

Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies. The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies. Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement will be of interest to students and scholars of migration and security politics, globalisation and citizenship studies.




Migration and Political Theory


Book Description

Migration dominates contemporary politics across the world, and there has been a corresponding surge in political theorizing about the complex issues that it raises. In a world in which borders seem to be solidifying while the number of displaced people soars, how should we think about the political and ethical implications of human movement across the globe? In this book, Gillian Brock, one of the leading figures in the field, lucidly introduces and explains the important historical, empirical, and normative context necessary to get to grips with the major contemporary debates. She examines issues ranging from the permissibility of controlling borders and the criteria that states can justifiably use to underpin their migration management policies through to questions of integration, inclusion, and resistance to unjust immigration laws. Migration and Political Theory is essential reading for any student, scholar, or general reader who seeks to understand the political theory and ethics of migration and movement in the twenty-first century.







Protest Movements in Asylum and Deportation


Book Description

This open access book deals with contestations “from below” of legal policies and implementation practices in asylum and deportation. Consequently, it covers three types of mobilization: solidarity protests against the deportation of refused asylum seekers, refugee activism campaigning for residence rights and inclusion, and restrictive protests against the reception of asylum seekers. By applying both a longitudinal analysis of protest events and a series of in-depth case studies in three immigration countries, this edited volume provides comparative insights into these three types of movement in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland over a time span of twenty-five years. Embedded in concepts of political change, limited state sovereignty, and migration control, the findings shed light on actors, repertoires, and the effects of protest activities. The contributions illustrate how local contexts, national political settings, issue specifics, and social ties lead to distinctly different forms of protest emergence, dynamics, and strategies. Additionally, they give a profound understanding of the mechanisms and constellations that contribute to protest success, both in terms of preventing deportations of individuals as well as changing policies. In sum, this book constitutes a major contribution to empirically informed theoretical reflections on collective contestation in the fields of refugee studies and social protest movements.