The Changing Contours of the Immigrant Rights Protest Movement in the United States: Who Demonstrates Now?

The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. McCann ◽  
Katsuo A. Nishikawa Chávez ◽  
Marisa Plasencia ◽  
Harper Otawka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Population ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Longitudinal Surveys ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Systems

AbstractDrawing from several original longitudinal surveys of the Mexican immigrant population in Texas and Indiana, we examine the course of the immigrant rights movement in the wake of the historic mobilization in the spring of 2006. We find that from 2007 to 2015, the number of participants in demonstrations, rallies, and marches to support immigrant rights dropped substantially, though protesting remains a fairly prevalent activity. The Mexicans taking part in protest events today, however, have higher levels of education and are older compared to 8 years ago, and they are not primarily driven by personal grievances. This change in the activist base suggests that the immigrant rights movement is following a trajectory that is common among protest movements across many democratic systems. What began as an expression of profound discontent has become a somewhat more conventional mode of involvement.

scholarly journals Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Paret ◽  
Sofya Aptekar ◽  
Shannon Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some activists also noted the hypocrisy of opening borders to capital while militarizing the borders for migrants. Yet, in the end, immigrant rights movements and their central issues did not feature prominently in Seattle or later anti-globalization efforts. Simultaneously, however, most immigrant rights advocates have not prioritized opposition to the destructive power of global capitalism. In this paper, we consider the implication of this critical omission and trace the recent history of the immigrant rights movement and its articulations with anti-capitalism.

Inside Story

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-54
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

This chapter reveals the centrality of narrative and storytelling to the sociopolitical status of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. It offers a theorization of reclaimant narratives by illuminating the experiential, partial, public, oppositional, and incondensable nature of the stories undocumented activists tell. Despite attempts to essentialize and distill this narrative, the reality of undocumented immigration is a complicated story with no easy one-size-fits all tagline. This reality complicates the process of public education about immigration and works both for and against immigrants who use their stories as activism. The emergence of voices of undocumented storytellers in the immigrant rights movement has the capacity to engender empathy, motivate listeners, and even advance reforms in laws and policy. But these narratives also have the capacity to decelerate the movement by detracting from systematic problems and the tangible actions needed to advance reform.

FLOResiste

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilda Flores-González ◽  
Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Worker ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Neoliberal Policies

This chapter examines the intersections of gendered and transnational labor, class, race, migration, and political activism in Flor Crisóstomo's life as a transnational worker, mother, and activist. Crisóstomo is an immigrant worker and mother from Mexico who turned into an activist after she was apprehended in a worksite immigration raid in 2006. She created a blog called FLOResiste to denounce neoliberal policies that have led to the migration of women and indigenous people and resulted in the separation of families. This chapter first situates Crisóstomo's experiences within theoretical understandings of transnational motherhood before discussing the circumstances that led her to migrate to the United States and expand on her experiences as a transnational worker until the raid. It also analyzes Crisóstomo's politicization through the immigrant rights movement, her defiance of a deportation order, and her activism and concludes by assessing how these events have transformed her perceptions and practices regarding parenting and placing those ideas in a transnational and neoliberal context.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 152-170
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Voting Power ◽  
The Future ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Future Work

This chapter argues that the future of the immigrant rights movement hinges on the power of storytelling. It illuminates the ideological role of audience knowledge and ignorance to the movement and demonstrates that the voting power to advance immigration reform may rest in the hands of individuals who favor a path to citizenship but do not know what policy changes would be necessary for that to happen. Bishop interrogates both nationalism and citizenship to demonstrate their critical relationship to the contested nature of immigration in the United States. The chapter details several areas of potential future work that could extend academic understanding of the role of storytelling in the immigrant rights movement.

Pathways to Legalization: Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in the US/Mexico Borderlands, 1942–1956

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Elizabeth Rosas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Agricultural Laborers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Contract Laborers

In the 1940s, curbing undocumented Mexican immigrant entry into the United States became a US government priority because of an alleged immigration surge, which was blamed for the unemployment of an estimated 252,000 US domestic agricultural laborers. Publicly committed to asserting its control of undocumented Mexican immigrant entry, the US government used Operation Wetback, a binational INS border-enforcement operation, to strike a delicate balance between satisfying US growers’ unending demands for surplus Mexican immigrant labor and responding to the jobs lost by US domestic agricultural laborers. Yet Operation Wetback would also unintentionally and unexpectedly fuel a distinctly transnational pathway to legalization, marriage, and extended family formation for some Mexican immigrants.On July 12, 1951, US president Harry S. Truman’s signing of Public Law 78 initiated such a pathway for an estimated 125,000 undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers throughout the United States. This law was an extension the Bracero Program, a labor agreement between the Mexican and US governments that authorized the temporary contracting of braceros (male Mexican contract laborers) for labor in agricultural production and railroad maintenance. It was formative to undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers’ transnational pursuit of decisively personal goals in both Mexico and the United States.Section 501 of this law, which allowed employers to sponsor certain undocumented laborers, became a transnational pathway toward formalizing extended family relationships between braceros and Mexican American women. This article seeks to begin a discussion on how Operation Wetback unwittingly inspired a distinctly transnational approach to personal extended family relationships in Mexico and the United States among individuals of Mexican descent and varying legal statuses, a social matrix that remains relatively unexplored.

“La Idea Mueve” (The Idea Moves Us)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela González
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Scientific Racism ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment

The concluding chapter explains how race had served defenders of slavery by providing them with an excuse to hold men and women in bondage. For their inhumane treatment of Africans during the Age of Enlightenment to be justified, their humanity needed to be ideologically stripped away—scientific racism served that purpose. Racist theories also kept other groups in subaltern positions. Mexicans with mestizo, mulatto, and Indian genealogies experienced racialization in the United States. Simply put, Americans, proud of their liberal political heritage and their democratic institutions, needed to see oppressed groups as somehow sub-human in order to reconcile their political beliefs with the nation’s less than egalitarian realities. It is for this reason that the politics of redemption practiced by Mexican immigrant and Mexican American activists merits attention.

Labor Unions and Undocumented Immigrants: Local Perspectives on Transversal Solidarity During DACA and DAPA

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052098012
Author(s):  
Els de Graauw ◽  
Shannon Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Deferred Action ◽  
Immigrant Organizations ◽  
Local Perspectives

National labor unions in the United States have formally supported undocumented immigrants since 2000. However, drawing on 69 interviews conducted between 2012 and 2016 with union and immigrant rights leaders, this article offers a locally grounded account of how union solidarity with undocumented immigrants has varied notably across the country. We explore how unions in San Francisco and Houston have engaged with Obama-era immigration initiatives that provided historic relief to some undocumented immigrants. We find that San Francisco’s progressive political context and dense infrastructure of immigrant organizations have enabled the city’s historically powerful unions to build deep institutional solidarity with immigrant communities during the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA [2012]) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA [2014]) programs. Meanwhile, Houston’s politically divided context and much sparser infrastructure of immigrant organizations made it necessary for the city’s historically weaker unions to build solidarity with immigrant communities through more disparate channels.

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