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

By: Justus Uitermark and Walter J. Nicholls

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Synopsis: 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