In our seminar series (see below) we discuss matters relating to undocumentedness, rights-claiming and action. Last seminar was about Social movement, neatly summaries below by Sally Erisman who is also a new project member.
During the Brown Bag Seminar on February 5th, we discussed the function and impact of social movements, drawing on Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani’s introductory book Social Movements. This is a recurring theme in many of our discussions, as actions taken by and on behalf of undocumented migrants, might be called collective rights claims.
Della Porta and Diani define social movements as a distinct social and political process. They are sources for creating and reproducing loyalties and collective identities. They are fluid in the sense that there is no stability between organisational and movement identities; hence, social movements don’t have members, but participants. When individuals identify themselves less with the movement and more with an organisation, the movement burns out. Distinct characteristics of social movements are that they have dense informal networks, linking individual and organisational actors engage in conflictual collective action, i.e. in relation to other actors there has to be an enemy on the basis of shared identities.
The book provides a research overview through the theories of other social movement scholars. Through the New Social Movements approach, scholars break from a commonly Marxist background, instead finding that conflict among industrial classes is of decreasing relevance. Rather, the interest lies in how stakes and central actors of social conflict are modified under changing structural conditions. Social movements have departed from an industrial worker’s movement to a post-industrial mode, where the reasons to engage may be multiple. Through cultural and symbolic production, the identification of social problems as worthy objects of collective action is enabled, and the collective identity is constructed. By developing new ideas and values, social movements work as agents of cultural change.
Identity linked to social movements and collective action is about processes of recognition – how participants recognise themselves and how they are recognised by other actors – as part of groupings to which they develop attachments. What lies behind individual participation – rational choice, or emotions? In the 1970s, some sociologist scholars made a point of defining social movements as rational, purposeful, and organised actors, thus with calculations as a fundamental component. This book, along with many others, criticises this assumption for being too rationalistic, and rather suggests that while the organisation makes rational, calculated choices for action, the social movement may not. Disregarding emotions creates a problem, in particular when accounting for the construction of collective identity. The process of constructing collective identity is a fundamental component of collective action, which is always highly emotive. The answer could instead be shared values and solidarity within the movement, rather than potential material gain. This makes identity highly paradoxical: it is stable in the sense that it usually persists for a long period of time; and dynamic in the sense that it is open to constant redefinitions.
Social movements are dependent on the political system of the country in which they operate, and how they are recognised by the other actors in that context. They develop in a variety of ways: through rituals and ways of living; or perhaps through the participation in recurrent events, such as demonstrations on May 1st. With participation, loyalties and identities are formed, and while collective identity does mean homogeneity, the identity movement or identity politics runs the risk of being exclusionary.