Marco Giugni

Social Networks and Individual Perceptions: Explaining Differential Participation in Social Movements

This paper seeks to explain differential participation in social movements. It does so by attempting to bridge structural-level and individual-level explanations. We test a number of hypotheses drawn from the social networks and the rationalist perspectives on individual engagement by means of survey data on members of a major organization of the Swiss solidarity movement. Both perspectives find empirical support: the intensity of participation depends both on the embeddedness in social networks and on the individual perceptions of participation, that is, the evaluation of a number of cognitive parameters related to engagement. In particular, to be recruited by an activist and the perceived effectiveness of ones own potential contribution are the best predictors of differential participation. We specify the role of networks for social movements by looking at the nature and content of networks and by distinguishing between three basic functions of networks: structurally connecting prospective participants to an opportunity to participate, socializing them to a protest issue, and shaping their decision to become involved. The latter function implies that the embeddedness in social networks significantly affects the individual perceptions of participation.

Life-Spheres, Networks, and Sustained Participation in Social Movements: A Phenomenological Approach to Political Commitment

This article proposes an account of individual participation in social movements that combines structural and cultural factors. It aims to explain why certain activists continue to be involved in social movements while others withdraw. When activists remain embedded in social networks relevant for the protest issues and, above all, when they keep a symbolic linkage between their activism and their personal life-spheres, sustained participation is likely to occur. When these two factors become progressively separated from each other and the process of self-interaction by activists loses its strength, disengagement can be expected. The argument is illustrated with life-history interviews of activists who have kept their strong commitment to a major organization of the Swiss solidarity movement, and others that, in contrast, have abandoned their involvement. The findings support the argument that the interplay of the structural positions of actors and the symbolic meanings of mobilization has a strong impact on commitment to social movements and hence on sustained participation or disengagement. In particular, the interviews show the importance of a sense of coherence and of a holistic view of ones personal life for keeping commitment over time. This calls for a view of individual participation in social movements that draws from social phenomenology and symbolic interactionism in order to shed light on the symbolic (subjective) dimensions of participation, yet without neglecting the crucial role played by structural (objective) factors.

Resilient or adaptable Islam?: Multiculturalism, religion and migrants' claims-making for group demands in Britain, the Netherlands and France

This article investigates multiculturalism by examining the relationship between migrants’ group demands and liberal states’ policies for politically accommodating cultural and religious difference. It focuses especially on Islam. The empirical research compares migrants’ claims-making for group demands in countries with different traditions for granting recognition to migrants’ cultural difference – Britain, France and the Netherlands. Overall, we find very modest levels of group demands indicating that the challenge of group demands to liberal democracies is quantitatively less than the impression given by much multicultural literature. Group demands turn out to be significant only for Muslims, which holds across different countries. Qualitative analysis reveals problematic relationships between Islam and the state, in the overtly multicultural Dutch approach, within British race relations, and French civic universalism. This implies that there is no easy blueprint for politically accommodating Islam, whose public and religious nature makes it especially resilient to political adaptation.This article investigates multiculturalism by examining the relationship between migrants’ group demands and liberal states’ policies for politically accommodating cultural and religious difference. It focuses especially on Islam. The empirical research compares migrants’ claims-making for group demands in countries with different traditions for granting recognition to migrants’ cultural difference – Britain, France and the Netherlands. Overall, we find very modest levels of group demands indicating that the challenge of group demands to liberal democracies is quantitatively less than the impression given by much multicultural literature. Group demands turn out to be significant only for Muslims, which holds across different countries. Qualitative analysis reveals problematic relationships between Islam and the state, in the overtly multicultural Dutch approach, within British race relations, and French civic universalism. This implies that there is no easy blueprint for politically accommodating Islam, whose public and religious nature makes it especially resilient to political adaptation.

Protest participation and economic crisis: The conditioning role of political opportunities

The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource-based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it is likely that mechanisms at both levels are interrelated. To fill this lacuna, this article examines the ways in which individual-level grievances interact with macro-level factors to impact on protest behaviour. In particular, it examines whether the impact of individual subjective feelings of deprivation is conditional on contextual macroeconomic and policy factors. It is found that while individual-level relative deprivation has a direct effect on the propensity to have protested in the last year, this effect is greater under certain macroeconomic and political conditions. Both significant results for the cross-level interactions are interpreted in terms of their role for opening up political opportunities for protest among those who feel they have been most deprived in the current crisis. These findings suggest that the interaction of the contextual and individual levels should continue to be explored in future studies in order to further clarify the mechanisms underlying protest behaviour.

Institutional Opportunities, Discursive Opportunities and the Political Participation of Migrants in European Cities

The idea that the political context sets the parameters within which political participation and mobilization occur is quite common among students of social movements and contentious politics (see Eisinger, 1973; Kriesi et al., 1995; McAdam, 1999; Tarrow, 1998; Tilly, 1978). This holds as well for the political activities carried out by migrants’ organizations (Bloemraad, 2006; Vermeulen, 2006). However, previous work has stressed the impact of the institutionalized political system, largely overlooking more cultural and symbolic contextual aspects. In addition, previous work has looked at the role of political opportunities for explaining collective action, focusing much less on how they influence individual participation and behaviour (but see Leighley, 2001; Morales, 2009). This chapter engages with the systematic analysis of a set of ‘opportunity structures’, ranging from institutional opportunities to discursive opportunities, for the political participation of migrants at the individual level. To what extent does the political context influence individual participation? If there is an impact, how can we disentangle the institutional from the discursive aspects of that context? What are the implications in terms of policy-making?

Public discourses about Muslims and Islam in Europe

A consortium of six European research teams based in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland conducted, between 2009 and 2012, an EU-funded research project titled ‘Finding a Place for Islam in Europe: Cultural Interactions between Muslim Immigrants and Receiving Societies’ (EURISLAM). What has brought together these research teams is the fact that their own countries stand out as the main European states of Muslims’ settlement. The project aimed to advance theory and provide further empirical knowledge on cross-national variations in countries’ approaches to the cultural integration of Muslims, to be then linked to cross-national variation in cultural distance and interaction between Muslims and the receiving society’s population. The need to engage with this core research question has followed from the fact that, in spite of some crucial convergences across their distinct approaches (Garbaye, 2005; Joppke, 2007), national states have different ways to tackle cultural and religious differences (Cinalli and Giugni, 2011; Koopmans et al., 2005; Laurence and Vaisse, 2006). In addition, national idiosyncrasies within Europe have often been considered to be the main obstacle to the emergence of an EU-wide approach to issues relating to ethnic relations and migrants’ integration (Geddes, 2003). The quest to determine cross-national variations in terms of countries’ approaches to cultural and religious differences led us to engage with the more formal aspects of legislation and policy making (Carol et al., 2009). Besides this consideration of formal political arrangements, legislation and policies, however, the research also addressed the more informal understandings that resonate in Ethnicities 13(2) 131–146 ! The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468796812470897 etn.sagepub.com

The Consequences of Social Movements

Social movements have attracted much attention in recent years, both from scholars and among the wider public. This book examines the consequences of social movements, covering such issues as the i ...

Political opportunities, citizenship models and political claim-making over Islam

This article engages with the systematic analysis of two main dimensions of political opportunities—namely institutional opportunities and discursive opportunities—so as to appraise their impact upon claim-making in the field of Islam. We account for cross-national variations of claim-making in terms of (1) visibility of Muslims, (2) use of collective action, and (3) salience of cultural issues in five main European countries of Muslim settlement, that is Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. In addition, we propose a conceptual framework that tackles a crucial conundrum that one finds in the scholarly literature, namely the variable (dis)alignment that may exist between the restrictive/expansionist stance of institutions and policy actors on the one hand and the restrictive/expansionist discursive position that prevails in the public domain on the other hand. Emphasis is also placed on a number of unexpected findings, such as the divergence between Britain and the Netherlands, the not so universalistic approach of French republicanism, and the small steps that Germany has walked towards multiculturalism.

Structure and Culture in Social Movement Theory

Scholarly accounts of social movements seem to follow a cyclical pattern. Like a sound wave, they have lower and higher limits, indicating the relative weight of structure and of culture in the explanations offered. This metaphor obviously simplifies the diversity of existing work on social movements. Yet there is a tension in this literature between explanations that stress structural constraints and those that stress cultural variables.

Political Opportunities, Social Capital and the Political Inclusion of Immigrants in European Cities

Discussions about how public policies can promote more effectively the active engagement and participation of immigrants and their children1 in the political and civic life of the countries where they live are at the core of current scholarly and public debates. In advanced democracies, there are recurrent disputes about the appropriateness and potential benefits or shortcomings of introducing legal reforms that would guarantee that large immigrant populations — and especially their native-born children — are not excluded from the political process and from political representation. As Jones-Correa (1998: 35 and 46ff.) notes, migrants’ political marginalization has several potential negative implications for democratic politics: it undermines the process of democratic representation and accountability, it undervalues the role of active participation in the polity for the construction of the political community, and it perpetuates the view of immigrants and their descendants as outsiders to that community. Furthermore, the negative consequences related to migrants’ political exclusion are likely to spill over to their social and economic integration, as the policy process will fail to address adequately their needs in these domains. Yet there are widely divergent views on what are the most effective ways to promote migrants’ political inclusion, and on when and under what conditions should first-generation immigrants be granted full political rights.