Walter J. Nicholls

The urban roots of anti-neoliberal social movements: the case of Athens, Greece

The recent rounds of anti-neoliberal mobilizations in Europe have shown to be rooted in cities. Whereas Madrid has become a central hub in Spains social movement, Athens has assumed a central and centralizing role in Greece. Through a case study on Athens, Greece, this paper aims to show how cities have become the driving force of these national movements. The argument maintains that political institutional factors and local networking processes among activists contributed to making Athens a central hub of this national movement. First, weak state traditions in Greece undermined the abilities of government officials to mitigate the most egregious effects of urban neoliberalism during the 1990s and 2000s. As this triggered a proliferation of struggles throughout Athens, weak state traditions also denied local authorities the capacities to co-opt and control aggrieved inhabitants. Second, as urban grievances spurred countless localized struggles, participants formed new ties to one another, learned how to engage in their broader public worlds, and discovered new ways to become political. At the same time, well-networked activists within these particularistic struggles assumed the role of brokers between localized mobilizations and the wider social movement space. This networking process permitted the city of Athens to become an important staging ground in national mobilizations. In sum, we maintain that political opportunities and urban networking processes combined in ways to make Athens a driving force of the countrys anti-neoliberal social movement.

Social Movements in Urban Society: The City as A Space of Politicization

Recent anti-systemic social movements have illustrated the central role of cities in social movement mobilization. We not only highlight the characteristics of urban social relations that make cities fertile ground for mobilization, but also point to the disjunctures between the geographies and spatialities of social relations in the city, and the geographies and spatialities of many systemic processes. Struggles for a more just society must consider the broad geographies and spatialities of oppression, which we illustrate with a brief analysis of the Occupy movement. Finally, we introduce the next five articles in this special issue, all illustrating the importance of the geographies and spatialities of urban social struggle.

Making Undocumented Immigrants into a Legitimate Political Subject: Theoretical Observations from the United States and France:

Over the last 20 years, the global North has witnessed the growing prominence of immigrant rights movements. This article examines how this highly stigmatized population has achieved a certain degree of legitimacy in hostile political environments. The central claim of the article is that this kind of legitimacy is initially achieved through the efforts of activists to represent undocumented immigrants in ways that resonate with the normative values of the nation. The author examines how activist networks are formed to present their cases within national political fields and the effects of this process on the political identities of immigrants and their respective citizenship regimes. The process of gaining legitimacy is contradictory. It contributes to nationalizing the political identities of foreigners and reproducing the exclusionary logic of national citizenship regimes. But in doing this, it encourages those who cannot conform to national values to embrace more radical and universal conceptions of rights. The generation of competing discourses and notions of rights (national versus universal) therefore arises through struggles to make undocumented immigrants into legitimate political subjects.

Cities and the unevenness of social movement space: the case of France’s immigrant rights movement

This paper analyzes the formation of a ‘social movement space’ through the case of Frances immigrant rights movement. Rather than this movement developing on the head of a pin, the French immigrant rights movement displays a rich and varied geography that changed over time. The movement emerged through a series of urban struggles and Paris early on became a center of these mobilizations. The complex and empowering networks developed in Paris were later deployed in a new campaign to contest restrictive national legislation passed in 1993. As this movement shifted from the urban to the national scale, networks connected the Paris hub to local struggles across the country. This network configuration, with Paris playing a centralizing role, introduced powerful geographical cleavages between center and periphery. Thus, this movement is not only conceived as a form of contentious collective action but as a distinctive spatial entity in its own right (‘social movement space’). As a spatial entity, the paper examines the processes that intersected to provide it with its own unique features, the capacities to sustain its political momentum, and the internal cleavages that would later result in its slow demise.

Cities and Social Movements: Immigrant Rights Activism in the United States, France, and the Netherlands, 1970-2015

Through historical and comparative research on the immigrant rights movements of the United States, France and the Netherlands, Cities and Social Movements examines how small resistances against restrictive immigration policies do – or don’t – develop into large and sustained mobilizations.

Rights to the Neoliberal City: The Case of Urban Land Squatting in ‘Creative’ Berlin

Abstract This paper asserts that activists can carve out a political space between cooptation and autonomy in neoliberalizing cities but that strategic options vary according to the micro-political spaces activists operate in. This assertion is examined through an in-depth ethnographic study of two trailer encampments in Berlin. These trailer encampments occupy previously abandoned wastelands in Berlin and have strong ties to the squatter movement. The dominant discourse of the ‘creative city’ has served as both constraint and opportunity. Activist-residents in both camps are conscious that their abilities to maintain their communities require them to present themselves in a way that coincides with the dominant ‘creativity’ discourse of the city. Both have fashioned their own discursive frames and introduced events that demonstrate how they contribute to making Berlin dynamic and creative. However, the encampment in the conservative district faces more severe constraints than the one in the left-wing district. These constraints have favored a strategy that stresses identification with the governing urban norms. We conclude by arguing that using ‘creativity’ as a strategic frame may provide rights for some, but also reproduces a neoliberal model of citizenship that rights need to be earned by demonstrating deservingness in the city. Those lacking cultural resources have greater difficulty asserting their deservingness of rights and therefore face greater risk of marginalization and displacement.

Between punishment and discipline: comparing strategies to control unauthorized immigration in the United States

Immigration scholars have noted the rise of a distinctive discourse concerning immigrants in the United States. The ‘immigrant threat’ discourse is said to portray immigrants as an existential threat to the country and contributes to highly restrictive enforcement policies. Through a close examination of national political debates concerning comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) (2005–2007), the paper shows that most politicians involved in this debate (from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans) agreed with the basic assumptions of this general discourse. But the paper also identifies important variants on the ‘threat’ discourse and associated strategies. Hardline conservatives stressed that the essential ‘illegalness’ of immigrants posed a threat to the country. Protecting the nation state from this threat required policies to totally banish all undocumented immigrants from the country, irrespective of their ‘good’ conduct or exceptional circumstances. Moderate and liberal reform advocates agreed with the idea that undocumented immigrants posed a threat to the country. However, they believed that banishment alone could not address the threat. Instead they advocated a strategy of risk management whereby the population would be differentiated according to levels of risk (high to low priority) and policies of inclusion and exclusion would be adjusted accordingly. This would allow the government to incorporate low risk/priority immigrants while freeing government resources to target the ‘truly threatening’ groups (i.e., criminals, delinquents, homeless, repeat unauthorized entries, etc.). Thus, while both sides conceded that undocumented immigrants were a threat to the country, they developed important variants on the discourse and contrasting policy solutions to exert control over the population.

Governing immigrants and citizenship regimes: the case of France, 1950s–1990s

Does sustained and increasingly transnational immigration weaken the national character of citizenship regimes? This paper addresses this issue by examining French responses to immigration over a 40-year period. In spite of the changing character of immigration and changing state strategies, all governments throughout this period have sought to maintain the national character by making full access to rights contingent on ones conformity to national values and moralities. As the government made accessing rights dependent on conformity to national norms, the legitimacy of immigrant activists seeking to expand their rights has depended on their abilities to conform to the rules of the national political game. Resisting marginalization therefore requires the assimilation of the immigrants into nationally specific political cultures, which contributes to reinforcing the national character of citizenship regimes. By examining the particular case of France, the paper aims to show how top-down and bottom-up processes by states and activists work in different ways to keep the nation at the center of citizenship regimes in spite of the ongoing and very real challenges presented by transnationalism and globalization.

The Politics of Regional Development

At the time of writing (June 2015), Europe sits on the edge of a major structural and existential crisis. Greece and the so-called Troika are in the middle of difficult negotiations concerning structural reforms and loans. The reforms demanded by the Troika have already been instituted and these have unleashed a vicious cycle of decline. Since 2010, the government had already made €28 billion in spending cuts, which accounts for about 15% of its total economy. Austerity has resulted in deep cuts in public expenditure, a sharp increase of unemployment (particularly hard for young adults), a decline in basic social services to assist the country’s huge population of jobless poor and weak signs of recovery. These measures have degraded the physical, human and social infrastructure needed for high road growth. Talented, educated and innovative young adults have few economic opportunities in the country and are seeking out their fortunes in richer regions of Europe (ironically, regions that are oftentimes the most unflinching supporters of austerity). This brain drain will likely have long-term consequences on Greece’s economic fortunes while devaluing the skills of the young migrants. As Greek youths settle into the low-end service economy of northern cities like London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, their human capital will likely wither, damaging the economic prospects of these youths and the country that invested so heavily in developing their skill sets. The austerity policies demanded by the Troika have the real potential of setting this southern European country on a pathway of low-road economic development. Many Greek citizens have become politicized and challenged what the Troika considers to be tough yet ‘reasonable’ policies. The re-politicization of the populace predates the current crisis (ARAMPATZI and NICHOLLS 2012). It emerged in response to EU supported and banker propelled speculative urbanization over the past two decades. Residents and activists saw their cities and environments transformed by poorly regulated urban development schemes. Many different people from across the Athens metropolitan region engaged in many small battles throughout the 2000s. They started to slowly identify commonalities and develop connections between themselves. While the issues, backgrounds and tactics differed, some began to see themselves in a common struggle to re-appropriate and re-democratize their lived environments