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From political opportunities to niche-openings: the dilemmas of mobilizing for immigrant rights in inhospitable environments

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Abstract

This article examines how undocumented immigrants mobilize for greater rights in inhospitable political and discursive environments. We would expect that such environments would dissuade this particularly vulnerable group of immigrants from mobilizing in high profile campaigns because such campaigns would carry high risks (deportation) and have little chance of success. However, we have witnessed many mobilizations by undocumented immigrants in both Europe and the United States over the past 20 years. This article uses the case of undocumented youths in the United States (DREAMers) to examine how a group of undocumented immigrants have overcome important barriers and become a powerful voice for immigrant rights in the country. The article suggests that while undocumented immigrants faced inhospitable contexts, cracks and “niche-openings” they continued to present themselves to groups with the right set of cultural, legal, and economic attributes. Immigrants in possession of these attributes (in this case, youth) could target a niche-opening and argue that they are particularly deserving of legalization. This article also highlights an important dilemma: In contexts characterized by general closure and hostility, narrow mobilizations targeting niche-openings provide the only path to legal status for some, but they can also differentiate (discursively and legally) between “deserving” and “undeserving” undocumented immigrants. Differentiation can contribute to stratifying the immigrant population, with those deemed more deserving facing greater rights and entitlements and those deemed less deserving facing greater restrictions and repression. This carries the risk of magnifying normative and legal inequalities between immigrant groups while introducing many points of conflict within the broader immigrant rights movement.

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Notes

  1. On the one hand, there are differences in terms of the legal and cultural attributes needed to gain temporary or permanent residency status. Some may be much better integrated, possess more desirable skills, have longer residency in the country, and have family members who legal residents and citizens in the country. These undocumented immigrants are much closer to meeting the criteria for legal residency. On the other hand, there are also many immigrants who may exist in a state of “liminal legality” (Menjívar 2006). These are immigrants who entered the country without authorization but who have gained a foothold to legal status and possess some form of temporary legal status. The vast majority of undocumented youths in this study are fully undocumented (see Gonzales 2011) but also possess the cultural and legal attributes that make them more eligible for legal status.

  2. National Immigration Law Center, Center for Community Change, Center for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, among others.

  3. The criteria for DREAM eligibility are: are under 31 years of age; came to the United States while under the age of 16; have continuously resided in the United States for a 5-year period; are currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a GED, or have been honorably discharged from the Coast Guard or armed forces; have not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor, or more than three misdemeanors and do not pose a threat to national security or public safety; among other things.

  4. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rejected this argument in the following way: “The husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this since those resources will be eaten up by the considerable administrative cost of conducting the non-enforcement program, which will require as many as 1.4 million background checks and biennial rulings on requests for dispensation” (Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court, June 25, 2012, Politico.com).

  5. Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act (Sensenbrenner Bill, H.R. 4437).

  6. Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611).

  7. This is the term repeatedly used by DREAMers to refer to their positioning within the general immigrant rights movement.

  8. These organizations formed a new coalition, Reform Immigration for America (RIFA), to push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The leading organizations of the coalition were Center for Community Change, National Council of La Raza, and the National Immigration Forum. Large funders including the Atlantic Philanthropies granted RIFA more than $3 million to fight for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

  9. Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON), Dream Team Los Angeles, Dream Activist, etc.

  10. Deportation rates reached 400,000 a year in 2010, doubling the rate of the Bush Administration (Massey and Pren 2012).

  11. These included AFL-CIO, MALDEF, NDLON, United We Dream, and Dream Team Los Angeles, among others. Other more radical organizations remained resistant to the Senate’s efforts.

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Interviews

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185, Amsterdam, 1012 DK, The Netherlands

    Walter J. Nicholls

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Correspondence to Walter J. Nicholls.

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Nicholls, W.J. From political opportunities to niche-openings: the dilemmas of mobilizing for immigrant rights in inhospitable environments. Theor Soc 43, 23–49 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-013-9208-x

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