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Ethnic and Racial Studies

Fragmenting citizenship: dynamics of cooperation and conflict in France's immigrant rights movement

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DOI:: 10.1080/01419870.2011.626055

Walter J. Nicholls^*

pages 611-631

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Received: 1 Apr 2010
Accepted: 5 Sep 2011
Published online: 03 Nov 2011

Article Views: 448

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Abstract

This paper examines the contradictory relational dynamics of immigrant rights movement through a close examination of the French case during the 1990s. Through this movement, we find a network made up of different groups of immigrants and well-established rights organizations. As the movement intensified over the months, powerful cleavages developed between groups of undocumented immigrants (e.g. families, single men, etc.) and between certain immigrants and rights organizations. The same discursive and political structures that precipitated the cooperation of these diverse actors were also responsible for planting seeds of conflict by presenting different groups of migrants with unequal opportunities and placing resource-rich associations in a powerful position in the network. The paper concludes by discussing how the theory developed here can be ‘extended’ to analyse the relational dynamics found in similar social movements in other countries (e.g. USA).