This dissertation casts a wide net in order to explain the recent emergence and proliferation of the contemporary anti-immigration movement in the United States. Anti-immigration activism is an understudied but not entirely overlooked phenomenon. Yet, we know incredibly little about an important set of macro- and micro- questions related to contemporary anti-immigration activism. This dissertation addresses big-picture mobilization questions, such as: What large-scale, historical preconditions set the stage for the emergence and proliferation of contemporary anti-immigration activism in the United States? And how--and through what general processes--has pro-migrant countermobilization influenced the anti-immigration movement and, perhaps, unintentionally spurred its growth? Finally, I address micro-level questions focused around the mechanics of micromobilization: How and why do individuals support anti-immigration activism? How and why do individuals become motivated to engage in anti-immigration activity? and How and why do individuals ultimately participate in anti-immigration-related activism? In sum, both big-picture and small-scale questions anchor this dissertation. By answering these I not only shed light on this specific case but also make a number of more general contributions to social movement literature.

Learning to Stand on Shifting Sands: Sonoran Desert Capitalism, Alliance Politics, and Social Change offers a comparative analysis of activisms, labor organizing, and production practices in southern Arizona between 1999 and 2003. Using a combination of political economy, queer/feminist theory, transdisciplinary critical cultural studies, and discourse analysis, the research analyzes the broad social and ideological contexts, the tactics, the contradictions and the attempts and lost opportunities for building broader alliances for radical social change in contemporary Arizona. The case studies reckon with this experience, arguing that: Arizona's migrant workers have been strategically produced via media practices, border militarization, "development" discourse, and global production practices as flexible post-NAFTA commodities that enable formidable nationalist and heteronormative representation and political economic practices within the Sonoran desert border region. That local activism and labor organizing draws upon neoliberal "development" discourse strategies, and also breaks from these strategies in ways that suggests that the terms of production and exchange might be usefully applied towards outcomes that are outside of profit accumulation. That alliance practices that take structures and discourses of domination into account in estimations of value, even in production, can promote broader collaborations between activist organizations, cultural identities and single-issue politics. A politics of alliance that accounts for the interdependence of seemingly disparate practices of production, social oppression and culture might help invigorate contemporary grass roots struggles and promote social transformation.

This thesis examines the emergence and evolution of ‘progressive activism and organisation’ between 1976 and 2006 in the African township of Guguletu and the coloured township of Bonteheuwel within the City of Cape Town. In doing so it compares both how activism has changed over time (including as a result of democratisation) and how it differed between and within these two communities. Whilst at heart an empirical study of activism it seeks to move beyond the specificities of the cases studied to also draw broader conclusions about the nature and causes of collective action and organisation. Drawing on both social movement and class theory it aims to shed some light on the fundamental question of the relationship between structure and agency - why do people act and what defines the form of action they take? It combines a quantitative study of the changing relationship between race, class and state policy with qualitative studies of activism in Guguletu and Bonteheuwel. These two studies cover in detail: the development and unfolding of the riots of 1976; the great boycott season of 1979/80 which saw large numbers of Africans and coloureds across Cape Town drawn into school, bus and consumer boycotts; the development of activism between 1980 and 1985, including the impact of the United Democratic Front; the township unrest of 1985-7; the transition period between 1988 and 1994; and post-apartheid activism in the two communities. It draws on theories of class which recognise the importance of peoples’ positions within the state’s distributional networks (citizenship), experiences and expectations of social mobility and the impact of historical experience of class formation on expectation (moral economy). In doing this it shows how differences in race, education, age and labour market position all interacted to pattern activism in the case studies. Struggles in Cape Town throughout the period 1976-2006 were not dualistic conflict between classes, races or between the oppressed and forces of global capital, nor were they mechanistic responses to the opening and closing of political space. They were complex coalitions of competing and collaborating class forces which were defined by the underlying nature of the city’s political economy and which emerged in interaction with changing opportunities for action.

This study analyzes the bicycling community of Lexington, Kentucky. Interviews and participant observation were conducted in order to better understand the structure of Lexington’s cycling community, revealing three prominent groups/types of cyclists: (1) road cyclists, (2) underground/urban cyclists, and (3) commuters. The characteristics of each group are discussed, with particular attention devoted to the underground/urban cyclists, due to their politically-minded culture. Building from prior social movement literature, the unique framing processes of the underground/urban cycling group are analyzed in order to explore the group as a new social movement. Finally, the potential for a broader cycling movement based upon interests common to all cyclists is discussed.

This essay is about the mobilization that have arisen due to the mining activities being planned in Norra Kärr, just outside of Gränna in the northern part of the county of Jönköping, Sweden. This study is based on the association Aktion Rädda Vättern and members of the associatons’ individual thoughts and experiences of their possibility to success. Interviews were carried out with members of the association. The theoretical basis lies within the theory of political opportunity structure and the defintion of the same by Sidney Tarrow. According to Tarrow one of the motivating factors playing an important role for people to mobilize is their individual sense of success and the possibility to reach it. Important factors for the mobilization of people consists of both social and individual such as networks, social ties, the perception of the group in the surrounding area and by bystanders, but also by individual feelings. As shown in the essay people’s feelings of opportunity to achieve success is important, so is their feeling of belonging.

Political disillusionment is widespread in contemporary Japanese society, despite people’s struggles in the recession. Our social relationships become entangled, and we can no longer clearly identify our interest in politics. The search for the outside of stagnant reality sometimes leads marginalised young people to a disastrous imaginary for social change, such as war and death. The imaginary of disaster was actualised in March 2011. The huge earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which triggered the largest wave of activism since the 1960s. Based on the author’s fieldwork on the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements in Tokyo, this thesis investigates how the disaster impacted people’s sense of agency and ethics, and ultimately explores the new political imaginary in postmodernity. The disaster revealed the interconnected nature of contemporary society. The thesis argues that their regret about their past indifference to politics motivated the protesters into social commitment without any totalising ideology or predetermined collective identity. They also found an ambiguity of the self, which is insufficient to know what should be done. Hence, they mobilise their bodies on to the streets, encountering others, and forcing themselves to feel and think. This is an ethical attitude, yet it simultaneously stems from the desire of each individual to make a difference to the self and society. The thesis concludes that the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements signify a new way of doing politics as endless experiments by collectively responding to an unexpected force from an outside in a creative way.

After the Cold War and fall of Communism in the East bloc, a dramatic transformation took place in world geopolitics known as the third wave of democratization. From the 1970s to the 1990s, third wave democracies became a foil to military dictatorships and Marxist-style juntas throughout the Third World (see Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave, 1991 and Larry Diamond et. al, Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies, 1997). The process of democratization in Africa seemed to have attained significant levels by the mid 1990s but the same could not be said for the turn of the twenty first century. What went wrong? The process of transition from military dictatorships to constitutional rule was fraught with problems. A perennial problem was the abuse of electoral systems which provided legitimate ways to political participation. Authoritarian governments in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Togo and Zimbabwe used multiparty elections to legitimize and entrench their rules. Incumbents brazenly rigged elections and derailed Africa's fragile democratic experiment and return to constitutional rule. Democracy in Africa, nevertheless, was not a lost cause. The successful transition to democracy in Ghana is worth studying because it provided a test case of hope and resilience on the part of citizens who wanted to exercise their rights to political participation and governance. I argue that it is important to shift emphasis from electoral systems to associational life and broad-based political participation because this is how democracy is going to be sustained in Africa. To put an end to contested elections and perennial military intervention, broad-based local solutions were sought in Ghana in the period of political opening. The revival of associational life and broad-based political participation, and an emphasis on civil society from the late 1970s to the early 1990s became the founding stone of Ghana's Fourth Republic. The art of association and the assumed freedom it comes with is one of the founding tenets of liberal and democratic societies, and nowhere is this statement more relevant than in Ghana. Ghana's democratic Fourth Republic is the foster child of Ghana's civil society organs and social forces. In Ghana, civil associations such as the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), the Movement for Freedom and Justice (MFJ), Christian Council of Ghana (CCG), and the Catholic Bishops' Conference (CBC) generated social movements which were critical to the success of Ghana's democratic experiment. Despite the fact that the political and social activities of the National Union of Ghana Students were crucial and complimentary to the making of Ghana's Fourth Republic, no extensive study has addressed this blatant omission. Sakyi Amoa is the only scholar who has done some substantive work on student movements in Ghana ("Ghanaian University Students," 1969; University Students' Political Action in Ghana, 1979). However, his work did not explore the relations between civil society, social movements, and student movements, and their roles in the making of Ghana's Fourth Republic. This study has a double-edged purpose: to explore and define the place of civil society and social movements in Ghana's democratic experiment; and to point out the importance of the often neglected student movements in making the democratic experiment successful. This dissertation is not just a study of student organizations and their political and social activities, but it is also an analysis of the social forces in Ghana's civil society which agitated for social change and democratization. From the Ghanaian context, I argue that African states embarking on democratization need a functioning and independent civil society which would ensure that at the time of political opening and transition to democracy, the rules of political competition are agreed upon and constitutionally implemented. Also I argue that student movements, along with other social movements, are important to the functioning and independence of civil society. Despite the apparent lack of political maturity by student movements, the student movement in Ghana did perform its functional role in conjunction with other social actors to support Ghana's democratic experiment from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

In 2006, millions of Immigrant Rights Movement (IRM) activists and allies stomped through the streets of cities throughout the United States. Attracting a diverse array of participants, the IRM includes immigrants and non-immigrants and people from varying religious and non-religious traditions. This dissertation focuses on the social cohesion as an element of the collective identity of this multicultural and multi-faith movement. Taking the IRM in San Diego County as a critical case, this study included data from forty-nine extensive formal interviews with movement participants in sixteen organizations, along with countless informal conversations during participant observation in over two hundred activist-organized events from April 2006 until August 2008. By focusing on movement narratives, frames, and patterns of interaction, this study finds that stories of change, a progressively inclusive moral framework, and what I call "multicultural activist etiquette" serve as unifying mechanisms in the IRM. In stories of change, we hear how activists articulated the right to migrate and advocate for worker rights through shared narratives of agitation and hope-generating stories of collective action. A shared sense of injustice and collectively focused movement goals are informed by a belief system about how the world ought to operate that is located at the ideological intersection between religious and non-religious. An inclusive and humanitarian moral framework provided the common ground upon which diverse activists organize, but this progressive moral framework was differently legitimated by the diverse religious and non-religious traditions of the activists. They agreed that all people are inherently equal, and everyone ought to care for one another, upholding an emphasis on marginalized immigrants. This over-arching moral framework moved beyond multicultural and multi-faith rhetoric and helped guide and affirm the way activists interacted in meeting spaces. Together, they constructed a code of collaboration, the multicultural activist etiquette, that facilitated equality within organizational processes, in an emotionally and physically secure meeting space, while focusing on productivity toward movement goals. Finally, this study recognizes immigrant activists as "rule-changers," agents of change collaborating to improve their own quality of life in the U.S. It thus offers an alternative to current perspectives on immigrant assimilation into American society.

The Internet is a new tool for mobilization, communication, and articulation of social movement organizational framings of events and ideologies. The White Supremacist/Separatist Movement has had, and remains, a significant presence on the Internet. There are several hundred sites operating, representing almost every faction of the movement. Hyperlinks between sites allow the ideological resources (content of sites, online libraries, radio shows, etc.) offered by one group to be available to many groups, regardless of geography. Importantly, links are often asymmetrical and more prestigious sites have many "in" links. This movement has considerable diversity of beliefs, goals, tactics, and resources. Movements vary in the richness of symbolic resources available on their web sites. I operationalize "resource richness" as the amount and coverage of content on a website. Groups also exhibit a range of tactical orientations ranging from peaceful (education) to extremely violent (race war). Using network analysis, I investigate the structure of ties in the White Supremacist/Separatist Movement industry on the Internet. Through this method, analyses reveals patterns of sharing of ideological resources. I examine how ideological and tactical affinities structure the scope, density, and patterns of cybernetworks in the White Supremacist/Separatist Movement industry.

Durante as investigações da Conjuração Baiana de 1798, um grupo de homens de muita opulência e luzimento, qualificados por Luís dos Santos Vilhena de corporação dos enteados, fez pronta-entrega de seus escravos à justiça para livrarem-se da acusação de prática sediciosa no final do século XVIII, na capitania da Bahia. Esse episódio foi o ponto de partida para se comprovar a participação de pessoas dos médios e altos setores da sociedade soteropolitana na Conjuração Baiana de 1798, cujas demandas explicitadas nos boletins manuscritos eram inconciliáveis em seus termos, uma vez que o projeto político dos médios setores, os milicianos, vislumbrava a mudança dos hierarquizados critérios sociais que os impediam de participarem do universo político e ascenderem na carreira militar, e o projeto político dos altos setores, a corporação dos enteados, objetivava a conservação das regras do Sistema Colonial, que até então os tratava como enteados nas dinâmicas políticas e econômicas do Império Português. A documentação demonstra que o recrudescimento do pacto colonial anunciado pelas reformas modernizantes de d. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho desencadeou uma tomada de consciência da exploração colonial, fazendo com que os altos setores da sociedade soteropolitana do final do século XVIII reivindicassem a internalização de seus interesses econômicos e a manutenção de seus privilégios ameaçados com a possibilidade do fim dos monopólios, dos morgados, da mudança na forma de arrematação dos ofícios de fazenda e justiça, e da manutenção da prorrogação da arrematação dos dízimos para os negociantes portugueses. Após uma aliança programática com o contingente armado da capitania da Bahia, os médios e altos setores do Partido da Liberdade deflagraram o movimento com a publicação dos boletins manuscritos, explorando ao limite os dois principais medos no horizonte de expectativas da coroa portuguesa naquele conflituoso final de século: a miragem do livre comércio e a invasão francesa. Abertas as devassas para a investigação dos autores dos boletins manuscritos e dos partícipes do movimento, os altos setores recuaram, entregaram seus escravos à justiça e formularam as principais culpas que condenaram à pena de morte homens dos médios setores. Tratam-se, portanto, de elementos que permitem a análise da Conjuração Baiana de 1798 como um movimento de contestação política ocorrido em duas fases, durante o período de 1796-1800, contando com a efetiva participação dos altos e médios setores da sociedade soteropolitana da época. O enforcamento em praça pública dos réus da Conjuração Baiana de 1798, portanto, é paradigmático do fato de que projeto político vencedor foi o conservador, na medida em que a coroa portuguesa empreendeu uma série de soluções de compromisso com a corporação dos enteados, garantindo-lhes a internalização de seus interesses e a manutenção de seus privilégios, que os constituíam no setor dominante daquela sociedade, base social fundamental para a sustentação do poder monárquico português continuar a governar a conflitualidade no interior dos setores dominantes da sua principal colônia. / During the investigations of the Conjuração Baiana of 1798, a group of men with \"opulence and brightness\" qualified by Luís dos Santos Vilhena like the \"corporação dos enteados\", made a \"immediate delivery\" of their slaves to justice to rid themselves of charges of seditious practices in the late eighteenth century, at the captaincy of Bahia. This episode was the starting point to prove the participation of people from middle and higher social sectors of Salvador in the Conjuração Baiana of 1798, whose demands spelled out in manuscript bulletins were incompatible on their own terms, once the political project of the middle sectors, the militiamen, glimpsed the change of hierarchical social criteria that prevented them from participating in the political world and ascend in the military, and the political project of the upper sector, the corporação dos enteados, aimed at keeping the rules of the Colonial System, which until then was treated as \"enteados\" in the political and economic dynamics of the Portuguese Empire. The documentation shows that the intensification of the colonial pact announced by the modernizing reforms of d. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho triggered an awareness of colonial exploitation, making new claims of the higher social sectors of Salvador in the late eighteenth century to the internalization of its economic interests and maintain their privileges threatened with the possibility of the end of monopolies, of the morgados, the change in the auction of justice and treasury permissions, and maintaining the extension of auction of tithes to the Portuguese merchants. After a programmatic alliance with the armed contingent of the captaincy of Bahia, the middle and upper sectors of the Partido da Liberdade sparked the movement with the publication of manuscript bulletins, exploring the limits the two main fears on the horizon of expectations of the Portuguese crown at the end of that turbulent century: the mirage of free trade and the french invasion. With the start of the investigations to define the authors of these manuscripts and from participants of the movement, the higher sectors retreated, delivering their slaves to justice and formulating the main proves that condemned to death those men from the middle social sector. These elements allow the analysis of Conjuration Baiana of 1798 as a movement of political contestation that occurred in two phases, during the 1796-1800 period, with the effective participation of upper and middle social sectors of Salvador at the time. The hanging in public square of the defendants of the Conjuração Baiana of 1798, therefore, is paradigmatic of the fact that the winners political project was the conservative, in that sense that the Portuguese crown undertook a series of compromises with the corporação dos enteados, ensuring them to internalize their interests and maintain their privileges, which allows them to constitute the dominant sector of that society, and was fundamental to sustaining the continuance of Portuguese monarchy to govern the conflict within the dominant sectors of its main colony.