Mobilizing Voluntary Associations into a Social Movement: The Case of Environmental Quality*

The mobilization behavior of voluntary associations in a community was studied to explain why some organizations were successfully recruited into the environmental quality movement and others were not. Analysis of a random sample of 209 community organizations in a midwest urban area showed that approximately half were mobilized into supporting the environmental quality movement. Hypotheses on the effects of goal overlap, organizational resources, and position in the multi-organizational field were tested. The significant factors were the size of the manpower base, the leader's personal mobilization into the environmental quality movement and the allocation of social responsibility among community groups for solving local pollution probems. The last factor—the acceptance or rejection of group responsibility for working for the collective good—emerged as the most important explanatory factor. Thirty-one percent of the variance in the mobilization of organizational interest and 22 percent of the variance in the mobilization of group activity was explained.     

Social Movements and Patronage Politics: Processes of Demobilization and Dual Pressure

Why might social movements be highly contentious at one point in time and demobilize shortly after? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the dynamics of demobilization of popular movements in a context of patronage politics. I argue that demobilization in these contexts results from relational processes creating a “dual pressure” stemming “from below” and “from above.” In social environments where patronage is pervasive, poor people develop survival strategies relying on clientelistic arrangements. They participate in a social movement organization (SMO) to voice their rights, but also to address pressing survival needs by gaining access to resources. These expectations of constituents create a pressure “from below” on leaders of an SMO, which respond by securing resources obtained through alliances with national political actors. In turn, these alliances create a pressure “from above,” because local leaders reciprocate this national support by eschewing the organization of collective actions. Drawing on data culled from 12 months of fieldwork on an Argentine peasant movement, this article inspects the interconnections between popular movements and patronage politics to refine our understanding of demobilization processes; contribute to discussions regarding the role of culture on contentious politics; and shed light on current demobilization trends in Latin America.     

The Europeanization of Nordic Gender Equality: A Foucauldian Analysis of Reconciling Work and Family in Finland

In this article, we analyse the case of reconciling work and family as a particularly illuminative example of the effects of soft Europeanization. We focus on one particular policy instrument of the EU, namely projects co‐funded by the European Social Fund (ESF), which have sought to develop family‐friendly arrangements in Finnish workplaces. Our analysis suggests that this soft law instrument can result in significant changes in member states, even in cases where the member state's own policy is well entrenched. Theoretically, our contribution is to connect soft Europeanization to the Foucauldian theory on power, and the literature on Analytics of Government specifically. From this perspective we argue that the ESF development projects function as Foucauldian ‘technologies of involvement’. We find that by stabilizing and normalizing project techniques and managerial rationalities untypical for previous gender equality and work–family policies in the country, the ESF projects in our case partly challenge some established principles of Nordic welfare policies, such as universalism and state responsibility for welfare measures. Moreover, as ESF projects have managed to involve mainly female‐dominated organizations and women as participants, we pose the question whether this kind of soft‐law instrument that trusts the self‐regulation capacities of actors can bring about change in gendered conventions.     

At the Intersection of Social Entrepreneurship and Social Movements: The Case of Egypt and the Arab Spring

With a history of civic associations turned political, and an ongoing sociopolitical transformation in Egypt, social entrepreneurship (SE) has proliferated as an alternative to traditional forms of civic engagement such as charities on one hand and open activism on the other. Yet, situated between a desire for change, and the overpowering state and market logics, SE has been both limited and shaped by neoliberal and local-authoritarian visions. Using Egypt as the case, this study combines in-depth interviews with civil society practitioners, and field observation at an SE incubator, to examine how SE came to embody a desire for change using publicly sanctioned logics, all while enacting practices that preserve/revitalize a social movement in abeyance. By examining SE as part of a larger phenomenon in this particular moment of transition, this timely research allows us to investigate a link between social movements and SE not as two separate phenomena but as different ways of approaching the same thing: creating social transformation.     

Ethnographic Cartographies: Social Movements,Alternative Media and the Spaces of Networks

Research on social movement networks has been defined by an emphasis on structural determinism and quantitative methodologies, and has often overlooked the spatial dimension of networking practices. This article argues that scholars have much to gain if (1) they move beyond the understanding of networks as organisational and communication structures, and analyse them as everyday social processes of human negotiation and construction, and (2) they pay attention to how networks between different organisations create multiple and overlapping spaces of action and meaning that define the everyday contexts of social movements. Drawing on ethnographic research within the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, this article explores the everyday dimension of political and communication networks. It shows that everyday networking practices are embedded in processes of identification and meaning construction, and are defined by a politics of inclusion and exclusion; introducing the concept of ethnographic cartography, it demonstrates that social movement networks are incorporated into everyday practices and narratives of place-making.     

(In)credible Violence: An Analysis of Post-Alvarado Domestic Violence Asylum Cases in the United States

ABSTRACT

Every year, women from around the world apply for asylum in the United States to escape an abusive partner. In this article I find that domestic violence applicants may not be interpreted as viable truth tellers since they are missing specific markers of credibility, including legitimacy of fear, coherence and corroboration, and proof of no culpability. I link these questions of credibility to broader US discourses about gender-based violence and racialized conceptions of victimhood, which show a preference for credentialed knowledge over women’s experiences and employ assumptions about autonomous, linear decision-making. I argue that the deployment of these discourses represents a tactic of exclusion, likely motivated by fears of immigration. Asylum adjudication practices (including credibility determinations) must address these issues in order to secure the health and well-being of women fleeing abusive partners in their countries of origin.     

Changing the Status Quo of Migration and Asylum Policies in Turkey: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Turkey has been experiencing a migration policy transformation in the wake of a new ruling entitled the ‘Foreigners and International Protection Law’ (FIPL). This qualitative inquiry investigates this major change process by focusing on the planned reorganisation which is a result of the legislation process, with the aim of connecting the change process to a change model. The researcher interviewed twenty-seven middle and upper-level managers and experts from the Foreigners, Border, and Asylum Department (FBAD) and Asylum and Migration Bureau (AMB) of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior. Both their implementation of the change process and perceptions on such a transformation period were investigated. The study also examined the change process of the irregular migration and asylum regime within Turkey’s bid for full European Union membership as well as implementation of the draft FIPL. This study provides an example of a policy change process by analysing how governmental practice and legislation have evolved with regard to irregular migration, asylum seekers, and refugees in Turkey. The results noticeably reveal that, instead of seeing irregular migration and asylum as merely a threat to national security or a welfare issue, Turkey has chosen a way of developing a humanitarian approach in both the legislative and administrative fields. This is the first study which attempts to analyse a particular policy change process in the migration and asylum regime in Turkey. The results could influence policy dynamics and set priorities by suggesting policy solutions.     

Social Movements and Rights Claims: The Case of Action Groups in the Niger Delta of Nigeria

This article examines how the various claims to, and demands for, rights have enabled and shaped the various equity and justice seeking social movements that have emerged in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, the key point being that claims to rights are fundamental of the logic and coherence of social movements. The article is divided into three sections. The first sets the conceptual and analytical frame by elaborating on the rights–social movements nexus. This is followed by a discussion of the historical and conceptual location of the Niger Delta. The rest of the article interrogates the contexts of relative deprivation, rights denial, and injustice within which social movements have emerged in the Niger Delta. A major objective is to account for why the social movements have been largely ethnic and most recently generational and to analyze the dynamics and outcomes of the rights struggles waged by the various social movements.

Participatory action research with asylum seekers and refugees experiencing stigma and discrimination: the experience from Scotland

Using evidence from a participatory action research process with over 100 asylum seekers and refugees in Scotland, this study explores participants’ views on mental health problems, stigma and discrimination. The study found that migration can have adverse effects on mental health and well-being, due to racism and the asylum process, and this is worsened by stigma and discrimination. This stigma is influenced by both social and cultural causal factors, including fear, past trauma, isolation, racism and the stress of the asylum process coupled with negative cultural beliefs about mental health problems. The paper considers the international relevance of this approach and the value of a model grounded in principles of community development and grassroots action.     

Ideology and Social Movements: The Contributions of Habermas*

Theorists of social movements have not developed a sufficiently complex perspective of the role that ideology has in the dynamics of social movements. This essay demonstrates that Habermas’theory of the autonomy of normative structures is useful to explain the independent role of ideology in determining the direction taken by social movements. Habermas’emphasis on the interrelationship between cultural traditions, consensus formation, epistemologies, and differentiated rationalization processes furnishes an alternative to the instrumentalist and ahistorical assumptions that often characterize theorists’treatment of ideology in social movements. Empirical examples from studies of social movements are utilized to demonstrate the usefulness of Habermas’approach.     

The Construction and Mobilization of Unemployed Interests: The Case of Sweden in the 1990s

In this paper, using a case of unemployed mobilization in Sweden in the 1990s, we examine the interpretive process by which unemployment interests emerge and evolve in public interactions with other political actors, especially unions, and argue that unemployed mobilization episodes cannot be fully understood without attention to interpretive processes. More specifically, we show how unemployed interests during the unemployment crisis in the 1990s initially were aligned with the labor movement at large, later became aligned with unions against the Social Democrats, and eventually gave rise to an independent federation of unemployed groups, which subsequently collapsed.     

Urban Social Movements and the Right to the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Urban Mobilization

This paper introduces the special issue and explains the diversity as well as common features of mobilization practices present in cities around the world. The paper starts with presenting the specificity and history of urban movements worldwide, as well as the development of ‘right to the city’ frame. Drawing on the existing literature, it focuses on presenting different forms of urban activism and interpretations of ‘right to the city’ slogan. This paper strives to fuse the framework of social movements as networks (Diani, in: Diani, McAdam (eds) Social movements and networks, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 299–318, 2003) of challengers (Gamson in The strategy of social protest, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1990) with the concepts of diffusion and translation of ideas, borrowed from Finnemore and Sikkink (Int Org 52(4):887–917, 1998). It also illustrates the application of the theoretical concepts of incumbents and challengers (Gamson 1990), organizational platform and norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as well as the development on movement networks within and between localities (Diani in The cement of civil society: studying networks in localities, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015). The theoretical model helps to explain the rapid global spread of the notion of the ‘right to the city.’ The paper concludes with a discussion of the urban context, both ‘glocal’ and global, as an arena of social mobilization around different aspects of the ‘right to the city.’     

The Challenge of Cultural Elites: Celebrities and Social Movements*

Although celebrities have become a regular fixture in modern social movements, there is little explicit theory on why, or on how they may affect the movements in which they participate. We begin by discussing the resources celebrities can bring to bear on social protest movements, as well as the risks that celebrity participation entails both for the movement and for the celebrity. We suggest a notion of political standing, which sets limits on the sorts of causes in which celebrities will generally participate. In constructing their legitimacy to speak for a movement, celebrities frequently alter the claims of that movement to more consensual kinds of politics. We examine the entry, action, and influence of celebrities in particular movements by looking at two recent controversies in which celebrities are deeply involved: The ongoing efforts to preserve the woods around Walden Pond, and the recent passage, and subsequent political fallout, of an antigay referendum in Colorado. In the first case, celebrity participation led to a redefining of movement claims into a nonconflictual inclusive politics that skirted important questions. In the second case, the larger claims of gay rights and liberation were eclipsed by the entry of celebrities into the conflict who universalized the opposition to discrimination. We conclude by discussing the systematic biases that movement use of celebrities may create, and the need to consider the impact of celebrities’peculiar relationships to audiences as they affect political movements and public life.     

Saying Something: The Location of Social Movements in the Surveillance Society

Arguing for social movement-based critiques of public surveillance, this article proposes an alternative approach to the established parameters of research on the contemporary surveillance society. As cities become increasingly organized around a logic of insecurity and fear, there has been an eruption of concern and debate about the expansion of urban public surveillance. But most of the research on this subject has paid little attention to the deliberate, collective forms of political critique raised by anti-surveillance activism. Rather, the predominant focus has been on concerns about privacy rights, civil liberties, and the dilemmas of balancing freedom with security. Moreover, the prevailing critical narrative contends that the radical expansion of surveillance has been largely met with consent from the public. Moving beyond such a discourse of consent, this article examines two examples of cultural interventions that seek to contest the growth of public surveillance, not as a problem limited to the violation of privacy rights but as a process that signifies the metastasizing weaponization of everyday life and the authoritarian circulation of fear. I suggest that the significance of contemporary anti-surveillance activism is found in its embeddedness in broader struggles rather than in the opposition to surveillance as an autonomous political aim.