Resisting “Politics as Usual”: Examining the Rise of Anti‐Establishment Politics by Comparing the Narratives of Opportunity Used Within the Single Payer Movement During Two Presidential Eras

The recent rise of “Medicare for All” in American political discourse was many years in the making. Behind this rise is a movement composed of grassroots activists and organizations focused on the goal of establishing a single‐payer health care system in the United States. I examine the ways in which activists used narrative to interpret opportunity within their historically specific environments to work towards this goal. I find that while the Single Payer Movement's narrative practice during the Clinton era was focused on opportunity within the political sphere, the focus in the Obama era shifted to mobilizing the public sphere, or grassroots opportunity. This was related to the critique that the Obama Administration was engaging in “politics as usual”, which was defined as the “enemy” of “real” health care reform. This narratively produced critique is tied to the anti‐establishment turn that factors into the current era of American politics.     

Building democratic public spheres? Transnational advocacy networks and the social forum process

What, if anything, can transnational advocacy networks (TANs) contribute to the democratization of public spheres outside Westphalian frameworks? On the one hand, TANs excel at turning international public campaigns into political influence – connecting people and power across borders. On the other hand, the increasingly policy‐orientated nature of TANs raises questions about their legitimacy in speaking on behalf of multiple publics. In this article, I suggest that a TAN's success in ensuring the political efficacy of public spheres, while at the same time undermining their normative legitimacy, reflects two sides of the same coin. This is a consequence of the recent internal professionalization of advocacy networks. Framing professionalization as a particular form of communicative distortion within TAN decision‐making, I suggest that networks should incorporate internal deliberative mechanisms, adapted from international social forums, to enhance the normative legitimacy of democratic public spheres.     

Why are migrant campaigns different from homeland campaigns? Understanding belonging in context among UK‐Sudanese activists

Migrant communities' homeland‐oriented political campaigns are always related to, but often different from, the activism in which local people engage in their homeland setting. In seeking to understand the observed disparities between migrant campaigns and homeland activism, several studies have demonstrated the influence of contextual factors like political opportunity structures on homeland‐oriented migrant politics. Complementing these studies are works that focus on changes to identity and belonging associated with migration and resettlement. In this article, I build on these debates by offering a combined analysis of the intersections between, and interplay of, contextual and identity‐based factors. I use this analytical approach to examine the case of Sudanese political activists resident in the UK. I demonstrate how forms of belonging emerge here as part of – and not in isolation from – the strategic navigations of multiple political contexts and opportunities. In doing so, I contribute to our understanding of how belonging can be contextualized to serve as an analytical lens for understanding homeland‐oriented migrant activism.     

Just One Click Away: The Politics of E‐Commerce Sales Tax Policy

E‐commerce has altered the relationship between consumers, businesses, and U.S. states. E‐retailers are not required to collect sales tax from their customers, thus depriving fiscally insecure states of tax revenue, and providing a competitive advantage for e‐retailers, like Amazon Inc., in their struggle for market share with brick‐and‐mortar stores, like Walmart. Attempts at e‐commerce sales tax policy by state legislators and brick‐and‐mortar lobbyists failed until 2008 when New York successfully passed legislation. A subsequent wave of legislation ensued, and between 2008 and 2012, e‐commerce sales tax legislation left committee in fourteen states, each experiencing various levels of success. Existing explanatory efforts have not fully accounted for the combinatorial effect of political–institutional structure and market contestation in U.S. state‐level policy creation, as well as the likelihood of multiple pathways to passage. Embracing this framework, I use fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to uncover three sufficient pathways for successful passage of e‐commerce sales tax policy. Two paths highlight the confluence of large retailer pressure and a conductive political–institutional structure facing fiscal stress, while the third path reflects political–institutional forces. These findings corroborate, as well as build upon, our knowledge of fiscal sociology, policy domains, and corporate power in American politics.     

Roots and routes: tracking form and history in African diasporic narrative and performance

Much Black diasporic scholarship is beholden to one or the other of these two claims: the first locates Africa as origin, by way of anthropological verification and corroboration, while the other tends to erase it in the name of an anti‐essentialist articulation of hybridity and creolisation. The consequence of their self‐representations within the binary discourse of essentialism and anti‐essentialism is that each portrays itself as being in conceptual opposition to the other. In this article, I suggest that this binarism is a false one and attempt to chart a path out of these two paradigms by destabilising and undermining their binary self‐positioning. I argue for a model that at once transcends this binarism and takes care of the ‘deficiency’ of each model; the model I propose simultaneously foregrounds Africa in a non‐essentialising manner and recognises the trajectories and transformations of history in the reading of African diasporic narrative and performance. I suggest that we deploy the concept of genre in the reading of these narratives because genre at once inscribes origin as discursive and thus erases the fixity and truth claims of singular origins, while simultaneously disclaiming and de‐authorising any notions of singular determinations. I consolidate this suggestion with a genre‐based reading of Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain.     

Experiencing ‘Illegality’ as a Family? Immigration Enforcement,Social Policies,and Discourses Targeting Mexican Mixed‐Status Families

Mexican mixed‐status families have been front and center in embroiled national debates about the place of undocumented immigrants and their citizen family members in this country. These families face unique obstacles, including possible family fragmentation caused by deportation, challenges to birthright citizenship, and they are often targeted by anti‐immigrant elected officials and political pundits that perpetuate a racialized discourse that casts even citizen children in these families as an abomination of US citizenship. Therefore, “illegality” may be a familial experience that can be endured by citizens and non‐citizens alike. Despite their unique vulnerabilities, researchers know very little about how mixed‐status families experience belonging in the country while managing possible tensions and inequalities shaped by immigration status. In this article, I review the research on punitive immigration enforcement and the scholarship on social policies and discourse targeting mixed‐status families. I conclude by reviewing new directions in sociological research and suggest avenues for research that may examine mixed‐status families' subjectivities, belonging, and negotiations of family relationships.     

Transformations of Old Colony Mennonites: the making of a trans‐statal community

Through an analysis that combines the historical development of the Old Colony Mennonites, which covers their migrations from sixteenth‐century Europe to late twentieth‐century Latin America, with ethnographic field work in Bolivia and Argentina, I examine the genesis and maintenance of a religiously based trans‐statal community. I argue for the conceptual maintenance of a clear distinction between transnational and trans‐statal processes in understanding the cross‐border practices of Old Colony Mennonites. Mennonites do not move in and out of nations but between the territories over which different states claim sovereignty. I further show that the trans‐statal practices of Old Colony Mennonites are a strategic means of outmanoeuvring states in their imposition of national identities within a context of nation‐states being the dominant political formation. The case contributes to the call for a shift in emphasis from nations to faith communities in transnational and trans‐statal studies.     

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND THE POLITICAL PROCESS: Movements, Corporations, and the State

I explore two questions in this article: (1) How has the role of the U.S. state in the political process changed vis‐à‐vis corporations? (2) What tactical repertoires have movements devised to confront this changing political process? Through the lens of the U.S. environmental movement, I find that (1) the state's policy‐making authority has weakened as corporations have become both policy makers and the new targets of challengers, (2) the environmental movement has devised organizing strategies–such as corporate‐community compacts or good neighbor agreements–to respond to and influence this new political process, and (3) those segments of the movement that ignore the political economic process are likely to meet with failure. These changes in the political economy constitute a challenge for the political process model. I therefore propose a “political economic process’ perspective to extend the political process model and more accurately capture these dynamics. The political economic process perspective evaluates four state‐centric assumptions of the political process model (the state as the primary movement target or vehicle of reform, the state policy‐making monopoly, capital as just another interest group, and the primacy of the nation‐state level of analysis) and demonstrates that the political economic process has changed in dramatic ways.     

Visits to the country of origin: how second‐generation British Pakistanis shape transnational identity and maintain power asymmetries

In this article, I identify the need for more nuanced approaches to transnational emotional attachment, especially with regard to the second generation. Interviewing second‐generation British Pakistanis while on their holidays in Pakistan and comparing the findings with data collected in the UK provides a more realistic exploration of the phenomenon than would have been possible with only narratives collected before and after the trips. In contrast to current utopian views of egalitarian transnationalism negotiated at a personal level, known in the literature as transnationalism from below, I argue that the visits of second‐generation British Pakistanis perpetuate global power asymmetries. Furthermore, such visits may help British Pakistanis redefine their identity in relation to Pakistan, the UK and Islam, thus contributing to the formation of a new transnational identity. In the conclusion, I suggest that leisure visits can still carry the potential for important political and economic relations for Pakistan in times of need.     

Ethno‐sectarianism in Iraq,diaspora positionality and political transnationalism

In this article, I draw on the experiences of Iraqi diasporas in the UK and Sweden after the 2003 US‐led intervention to demonstrate how ethno‐sectarianism in Iraq has affected their political transnationalism. Using the concepts of intersectionality and positionality, I show how the reconfiguration of the social positions of individuals and groups in the diaspora affects their types of political engagement and the spaces in which political mobilization takes place. In the case of the Iraqi diaspora, I show how, among other things, the social categories of ethnicity, religion and gender create positions of both subordination and privilege, which inhibit, reshape and empower the political actions of diasporas in both the homeland and host country. In societies divided along ethnic, religious or tribal lines, the social positions of individuals and groups relative to the dominant ethnic/religious political parties and the nationalist ideology they promote determine the nature of their diasporic mobilization.     

The push for transgender inclusion: Exploring boundary spanning in the gay–straight alliance

Gay–straight alliance (or gender‐sexuality alliance; GSA) is a high‐school based club aimed at providing a safer environment for sexual and gender minority youth as well as their straight allies. Yet, as a club historically rooted in addressing sexual orientation‐related concerns, less attention has been given to understanding the changing relational dynamics of internal GSA activities aimed at expanding membership boundaries through the promotion of transgender inclusivity. I address this by bridging existing scholarship on GSAs, social movements, and the sociology of culture to showcase the impact boundary‐spanning strategies are having on GSA mobilization, in‐group solidarity, and external political and social activism. My findings reveal that membership boundary negotiations around gender diversity issues are shifting the social landscape of these clubs. Emerging barriers that impede boundary‐spanning efforts are also highlighted and discussed. More broadly, I generate new theoretical insights into how boundary spanning can shape political and social activism as well as offer promising future research directions in this area.     

To See Ourselves As Others See Us? Incorporating the Constraining Role of Socio‐Cultural Practices in the Theorization of Micropolitical Resistance

In this paper, I explore micro‐political resistance (defined as resistance at the level of meanings, identity or subjectivity) within the context of professional part‐time working. Using Skeggs' (1997) notion of dialogical recognition, which refers to an individual's identification with negative portrayals of the social categories to which they belong, I argue that in transgressing dominant (and taken‐for‐granted) workplace norms, part‐time professionals experience guilt and a sense that they may not be fulfilling their professional obligations. Based on a qualitative study of part‐time working in the UK police service, I show how part‐time professionals navigate these feelings by both drawing attention to the instrumental value of conforming to certain work‐based norms, specifically long hours, and by refusing deployment to tasks and roles that they see as peripheral to their professional identities. It is through such refusals, I argue, that the micropolitical resistance I illustrate in this paper can be understood as effective because of its impact on how everyday routines are performed.     

Evidence of a transnational capitalist class‐for‐itself: the determinants of PAC activity among foreign firms in the Global Fortune 500, 2000–2006

Transnational capitalist class (TCC) theory is rooted in the claim that the globalization of the economy has led to a globalization of economic interests and of class formation. However, systematic evidence linking the indicators of transnational class formation with political behaviour is largely missing. In this article, I combine data on board of director interlocks among the 500 largest business firms in the world between 2000 and 2006 with data on the political donations to US elections of foreign corporations via the corporate political action committees (PACs) of their subsidiaries, divisions or affiliates. Controlling for the various interests of individual firms, I find that foreign firms that are highly central in the transnational intercorporate network contribute more money to US elections than do the less central foreign firms. Given prior research on board of director interlocks, this finding suggests that a segment of the transnational business community has emerged as a class‐for‐itself.     

The Political Lives of Girls

Girls are increasingly being publically celebrated as community leaders, models for ideal citizenship, and central to economic development. Contemporary girlhood is rich with political implications and significance. In this essay, I outline some of the scholarship on the public discourses that idealize girls as model neoliberal citizens and address important findings and contributions from empirical research on the political lives of girls: girls' political beliefs, political socialization, political identities, and their practices of political and civic engagement. There is a growing body of scholarship that suggests that studying the political lives of girls enables and requires a re‐thinking of some key concepts in political sociology, including the meaning of politics, of engagement, and of citizenship for different populations.     

Hip‐hop Imaginaries: a Genealogy of the Present

In this article, I track the emergence of Hip‐hop imaginaries in the enunciatory present, focusing on three disparate scenes: democratic change in Bolivia, cultural resistance in Hawaii, and the foundations of Hip‐hop that emerged from New York City. I position Hip‐hop as a mode of cultural expression that gives resistant form to marginalized existences abjected from dominant society through political and economic exclusion. I trace the origins of Hip‐hop in New York in order to show how the idea of existential resistance provides a useful interpretive framework in which to theorize the relationships between cultural resistance and political change. I utilize this framework by looking at Hip‐hop in two disparate locations, first analyzing the music of Hawaiian Hip‐hop group Sudden Rush and contextualizing it within the contemporary Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement. Second, Bolivia’s newly emergent Hip‐hop scene amidst a turbulent culture of political protest provides a useful contrast to that of Hawaii’s. In the end, I argue that Hip‐hop imaginaries in Hawaii and Bolivia demonstrate inter‐related strategies of national and cultural decolonization which carry distinct political implications.     

The Political Influence of Return: From Diaspora to Libyan Transit Returnees

In December 2016, Gambian dictator Jammeh was surprisingly ousted through the ballot box by a democratically motivated opposition. With this remarkable change, tables also turned for Gambian migrants. Gambians abroad were called upon to return and help rebuild the nation, while political interests in host states increased to return “irregular” migrants. In what ways can migrant return be politically influential, especially after a critical juncture as in the Gambia? Current studies fail to consider different types of returnees, including those perceived as highly skilled compared to those seen as low‐skilled. We found that in post‐dictatorial Gambia, both types of returnees have political influence on the new regime. Highly skilled diaspora returnees were explicitly invited as contributors to political developments in the country and thus have a direct political influence. In contrast, low‐skilled returned migrants from Libya are considered as receivers of public goods; yet through claims to political representation they managed to carve out political influence, albeit indirectly.     

Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diaspora

In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long‐distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first‐ and second‐generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ‘choose’ to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ‘given’ entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in‐between‐ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ‘messy’ and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross‐border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.