Protest Movements in Asylum and Deportation

This open access book deals with contestations “from below” of legal policies and implementation practices in asylum and deportation. Consequently, it covers three types of mobilization: solidarity protests against the deportation of refused asylum seekers, refugee activism campaigning for residence rights and inclusion, and restrictive protests against the reception of asylum seekers. By applying both a longitudinal analysis of protest events and a series of in-depth case studies in three immigration countries, this edited volume provides comparative insights into these three types of movement in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland over a time span of twenty-five years. Embedded in concepts of political change, limited state sovereignty, and migration control, the findings shed light on actors, repertoires, and the effects of protest activities. The contributions illustrate how local contexts, national political settings, issue specifics, and social ties lead to distinctly differentforms of protest emergence, dynamics, and strategies. Additionally, they give a profound understanding of the mechanisms and constellations that contribute to protest success, both in terms of preventing deportations of individuals as well as changing policies. In sum, this book constitutes a major contribution to empirically informed theoretical reflections on collective contestation in the fields of refugee studies and social protest movements.

• Protest mobilization and outcome
• Political participation
• Emotions and social ties
• Deportation nation
• Refugees
• Pro-migrant protest
• Anti-migrant protest
• Open access

• University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

  Sieglinde Rosenberger, Nina Merhaut

• Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  Verena Stern

Verena Stern is a doctoral researcher at PRIF and is working towards a doctorate at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. She was previously a BMWFW Doctoral Research Fellow at the Austrian Centers in Edmonton, Canada and Minneapolis, USA. She studied Political Science at the University of Vienna, where she was a researcher on the project “Taking Sides: Protest against the Deportation of Asylum Seekers” and has worked as a lecturer. Her research interests include protest and social movements, migration, political sociology, and political theory.

Nina Merhaut worked as a researcher on the project “Taking Sides: Protest against the Deportation of Asylum Seekers” at the University of Vienna. She studied Political Science and International Development at the University of Vienna and theUniversity of Buenos Aires. Her research interests include migration and asylum, protest and social movements, and the welfare state.

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