Local Path Dependency and Scale Shift in Social Movements: The Case of the us Immigrant Rights Movement

This paper examines how social movement organizations shift scale through the case of the immigrant rights movement. This was largely a local movement for the first decades of its existence. However, in the late 1990s, repressive federal policies increased the salience of national politics for many...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geographical review 2021-04, Vol.111 (2), p.269-286
Main Authors: Nicholls, Walter, Gnes, Davide, Vermeulen, Floris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dependency
Federal policies
immigrant activism
Immigrants
Local politics
Organizations
Path dependence
path dependency
Politics
Rights
scale shift
Social movement organizations
Social movements
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper examines how social movement organizations shift scale through the case of the immigrant rights movement. This was largely a local movement for the first decades of its existence. However, in the late 1990s, repressive federal policies increased the salience of national politics for many organizations. While recognizing the importance of national politics, many organizations remained mostly engaged in local politics for nearly a decade. The aim of this paper is to examine why immigrant rights organizations stayed local for so long after the threat shifted to the federal level and why they actually shifted to the national scale when they did. It does so by focusing on the case of Los Angeles.
ISSN:0016-7428
1931-0846
DOI:10.1080/00167428.2020.1780127