Friday, March 14, 2014
Private Dining Room (Omni Shoreham)
Social movement theory has approached protest movements involving persons of immigrant origin in Western Europe either as examples of transnationalism or in relation to the host country’s political opportunity structure with regard to ethnic minorities. The paper endorses a different approach by emphasizing networks of neighborhood solidarity among members of the second and third generation. These networks provide both the resources and discursive frame of social protest. I rely on evidence from coding interviews and public statements of social activists in the suburbs of French cities. I also overview and code ethnographic evidence collected during and after the 2005 violent protests. I find that the resources and justificatory frames for both non-violent and violent protest in the banlieues are created and mobilized at the local level and with local demands in mind. There is, instead, little evidence that social protest results from mobilizing a unified minority identity or responds to the national political opportunity structure/discourse of the French Republic.
