Cities and Social Movements: Immigrant Rights Activism in the US, France, and the Netherlands, 1970–2015

Given the hostile climate facing immigrants, it might be expected that they would try to remain hidden and under the radar. However, many immigrants have asserted their rights for equality in the countries they reside in. While the general policy evolution has been in the direction of greater restrictions, some immigrant mobilizations have successfully swum against the tide and achieved important wins including large–scale regularizations. Cities and Social Movements make sense of these remarkable mobilizations and their successes or failures.

Through historical and comparative research on the immigrant rights movements of the United States, France, and the Netherlands, this book examines how small resistances against restrictive immigration policies do or don t develop into large and sustained mobilizations. Drawing on a range of disciplines, the book rethinks movements from the bottom–up. The authors descend to the urban grassroots to uncover the micro–mechanisms through which movement networks emerge or disband.  Cities and Social Movements demonstrate how efforts to enforce national borders trigger countless resistances and shows how some environments provide the opportunities to nurture these small resistances into sustained and system–challenging mobilizations.

Walter Nicholls is Associate Professor of Planning, Policy and Design at the University of California, Irvine. His main area of research has been the role of cities in social movements. He has published widely in journals including Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Theory and Society, Theory, Culture and Society, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Studies, Environment and Planning A, and European Urban and Regional Research. His study of the undocumented youth movement in the United States was published as The DREAMers: How the Undocumented Youth Movement Transformed the Immigrant Rights Debate (Stanford University Press).  

Justus Uitermark is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and the Gradus Hendriks Professor in Community Development at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests include Urban Studies and Political Sociology. He has published widely in journals including the American Sociological Review, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, and Public Administration.