Inactive and Quiescent? Immigrant Collective Action in Comparative Perspective, 1960 to 1995

Abstract

Social movement mobilization by and on behalf of immigrants occurs frequently today, but sociologists have been slow to include immigrant collective action in the canon of social movement or immigration scholarship. Is this because, until recently, immigrant protest was minimal or limited in scope? The authors take a macro-comparative approach, recoding the Dynamics of Collective Action dataset to compare proimmigrant collective action with paradigmatic, well-studied movements from 1960 to 1995. The authors find that immigrant collective action was on par with iconic movements, mobilized similar numbers of people, occurred across the United States, engaged in disruptive action, and encompassed a wide range of origins, thus correcting possible misperceptions that immigrants did not engage in contentious action before the 1990s. The authors conclude by advocating for a population at risk focus for studying the emergence of collective action, decentering the borders of collective mobilization, and illuminating the vulnerabilities of legal status.