Reading notes for week four.
So far, we have talked about the role of systems in social problems. And we have talked about the difficulty of changing systems. This week we will talk about efforts to do just that–to change systems. Social movements are organized efforts to bring about social change, usually around a social problem. Think of how the animal rights movement changed the rules around animal testing in research, for example, or how Black Lives Matter is trying to change the ways that police departments operate. People who study social movements ask: why do movements emerge when they do? Is it when the problem has gotten so bad that people feel finally that they have to act? Is it when their frustration reaches a boiling point?
Social movement scholars say no. Instead, they argue that small groups of activists are able to mobilize large groups of people—to create a mass movement—1) when there are political openings or opportunities for effective action; 2) when they can draw on or create mobilizing structures that give people an incentive to participate in protest; and 3) when they come up with persuasive frames justifying protest.
I’ll talk about this framework in the lecture videos, and describe how it worked in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I’d like you to think about the role of political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and persuasive frames in the rise of the movement by undocumented student Dreamers in the 2000s. Can you apply the same framework to explain why the Dreamer movement emerged when it did? Let me give you some notes on the readings and then pose the questions I’d like you to wrestle with in your discussions.
The brief excerpt by Neil Caren may seem pretty abstract, but it describes the concepts of opportunities, mobilizing structures, and frames that I will talk about in lecture. Make sure that you understand each of those concepts.
The Dreamers movement emerged in the mid- to late 2000s to fight for the rights of undocumented immigrant young people; that is, young people who emigrated from other countries but do not have legal status here. Walter Nicholls asks how activists were able to mobilize undocumented young people–who, remember, could be arrested and deported if they made their status public. There are a lot of dates and people and laws in the excerpts, which you do not need to remember. But do try to grasp the argument. Nicholls begins the excerpt by talking about anti-immigrant sentiment and legislation that was passed in the 1990s (including Prop 187 in California). It was a hostile environment for activists fighting for the rights of immigrants. But Nicholls also argues on page 22 that there were “niche openings” for immigrant activism in that landscape. What does he mean by that? Can you think about such openings as political opportunities? Nicholls then talks about complicated maneuvering in Congress, which you do not need to pay close attention to, but do read pages 29 to 32 carefully, where Nicholls describes the opportunities for a movement on behalf of undocumented young people. On page 47, Nicholls turns to how activists framed Dreamers. What does he mean by the “exceptional immigrant?” Do you see any risks or strategic downsides to the frames they chose? If you were a leader in the movement, would you use those frames?
Beginning on page 64, Nicholls turns to the networks through which young undocumented people mobilized. If you were an undocumented teenager, and you knew that revealing your immigration status would put you at risk of deportation, why would you join the movement? How did Dreamer organizers get people to join? Can activists create new mobilizing structures rather than relying on ones that already exist? Do they sometimes need to do so?
Here are some questions to have in mind as you’re doing the readings and watching the lecture videos:
What is a social movement? According to political process theory, what three factors are important to the emergence of movements?
What is the “free-rider problem”? What is the solution to the problem?
What political opportunities did leaders of the civil rights movement take advantage of?
The civil rights movement adopted a strategy of nonviolent resistance. What was that?
What made it possible for the DREAMer movement to emerge when it did?
What were the “mobilizing structures” that the DREAMers drew upon or created?
What frame(s) did the DREAMers employ? What are the trade-offs of that framing strategy?
In your discussion, I’d like you to focus on the role of mobilizing structures and persuasive frames in social movements. Were Dreamer activists able to rely on preexisting mobilizing structures the way the civil rights movement did? What was their strategy to recruit people? What do you think of their mobilizing strategy? And what do you think of their framing strategy? In a brief opinion piece, Joel Sati disagrees vehemently with that strategy. What do you think? If you were a leader of the movement, would you describe Dreamers the way that the movement did? If not, what would you have done differently—or do differently, since the movement is ongoing?