Civil Society Organizations, Community Organizing, and the Politics of Immigrant Regularization in the UK

Between 2006 and 2010, two major trade unions, several national religious institutions, and a number of other prominent civil society organizations in the UK campaigned actively for the establishment of a large-scale regularization program for undocumented immigrants. Prior to 2006, very few major organizations in the UK had been active in making the case for regularization; similarly, few major organizations have put substantial resources into the regularization cause since 2010, even though some continue to support it in principle. Adopting a process-tracing approach, I consider in this paper both why organizations became active campaigners for regularization, and why they eventually ceased their active push for a regularization program. My analysis, which draws on interviews with organizational informants as well as other sources, links the rise of interest in regularization programs to the resurgence of grassroots community organizing in the UK; this resurgence can be seen in the expansion of organizing groups like Citizens UK, as well as in some unions’ adoption of an “organizing model.” New organizing efforts have brought civil society organizations into contact with undocumented immigrants and encouraged these organizations to view the undocumented population as a source of members and supporters. At the same time, shifts in immigration policy, as well as the public perceptions of immigration highlighted by the “Brexit” referendum, have also shaped organizations’ approach to the regularization question. In considering these issues, this paper makes a novel contribution to an emerging literature on the relationships between civil society organizations and undocumented immigrants in Europe.