Producing-resisting national borders in the United States, France and the Netherlands

Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Political Geography j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / p o l g e o

Producing-resisting national borders in the United States, France and the Netherlands Walter J. Nicholls * Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, Univeristy of California, Irvine, CA, USA

A R T I C L E

I N F O

Article history: Available online Keywords: Immigration Borders Resistance Social movements

A B S T R A C T

Since the 1990s, governments in the United States, France, and the Netherlands have expanded their capacities to police their national borders against immigrants. The paper examines how such efforts have contributed to the growth of centralized policing agencies and the devolution of powers to individualized border enforcers (local police, service providers, nonprofit organizations, etc.). The paper argues that bordering strategies have closed some “holes” in national walls, but they have also introduced countless disagreements, disputes, and resistances by undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents, national citizens, and frontline border enforcers. Many of these small resistances stay small and do not evolve into large contentious struggles. Others scale up and present more important challenges to government efforts. Rather than simply producing smooth governing machines that sharpen boundaries between the national citizen and the foreign Other, bordering strategies generate waves of small and big struggles that puncture and blur these facile boundaries. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction In a number of northern countries, a growing consensus emerged during the 1990s that immigrants presented a threat to national communities and that states needed to “get tough” on this population (Berezin, 2013; Joppke, 2007, 2008). While there have certainly been differences in how governments (e.g. United States, France, and the Netherlands) have developed and enacted bordering strategies, there have also been similarities. This paper suggests that one similarity has been the concentration of power in central government agencies (law enforcement, courts, detention and deportation facilities) and the devolution of bordering powers to individualized border enforcers (local officials, service providers, private employers, …). The paper maintains that this effort to construct more impermeable borders has not resulted in smooth governing machines to separate populations. Bordering strategies have instead politicized immigration as an issue and opened up governmental practices to disagreements, resistance, and contentious struggles (Strunk & Leitner, 2013; Vigneswaran, 2008). The paper therefore addresses two interlinked questions: How does the concentration– diffusion of bordering powers contribute to the proliferation of resistances, and how do some (but not all) small resistances grow into larger disruptive political forces?

* Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, Univeristy of California, Irvine, CA, USA. Tel.: (949) 824-6323; Fax: (949) 824-8566. E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2015.12.001 0962-6298/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper argues that more restrictions enacted in more locations produce small disagreements, doubts, and resistances among immigrants, supporters, and newly deputized border enforcers. Early resistances generate thousands of small debates across localities and institutional sites (local schools, police departments, state legislative bodies, and so on) over whether restrictive measures are legitimate, moral, and just. Some of these small seeds of resistance can fester, sharpen, and spread through complex networking processes. As certain seeds grow into potent mobilizations, they can present important disruptions and challenge to government policies and rationalities. The paper illustrates the theoretical argument by drawing on secondary literature and the author’s long-term research. The author has performed extensive research on immigrant rights movements in the United States and France (Nicholls, 2013a, 2013b), and continues to perform research on the United States. The research in the United States and France depended on semi-structured interviews, archive analysis of key immigrant rights organizations, and the construction and analysis of large newspaper databases. The Dutch case relies more on secondary materials. The Amsterdam campaign discussed in the final section of the paper draws on ten semistructured interviews with immigrant activists and nonprofit organizations, a newspaper analysis, and the informative insights provided by several students who participated in and studied the mobilization. This short discussion is not intended to be a definitive account of the campaign but only a brief illustration of how conflicts grow from small resistances into a big, complex, and tangled mobilization.

44

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

While not wanting to do violence to the particularities of any single case, a three-country comparison provides a conceptual platform to make more general claims about the nature of state power and resistance. By highlighting commonalities, we gain a better understanding of the contradictions, holes, and inherent fragility of expansive government strategies. The paper begins with an outline of the basic theoretical argument. The second section describes the new bordering strategies in the U.S., France, and the Netherlands. The third section analyzes how these strategies trigger grievances, conflicts, and resistances among undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents, national citizens, and newly deputized border enforcers. The final section uses a case in Amsterdam to describe how a small resistance took root in a specific geographical environment and scaled up into a messy and large mobilization.

Growing seeds into entangled, disruptive mobilizations We still lack theoretical tools to understand the links between more state power, small resistances, and upscaling small resistances into larger disruptive mobilizations. To address the connection between these links, the paper draws inspiration from Michel Foucault and James Scott. Taken together, their work provides insights into how modern governments create bounded categories to separate licit from illicit populations, how modern state power is deeply fragmented, how governing powers become diffused across space through localized relays, and how the enactment of power (against illicit populations/conduct) in specific places generates a plurality of resistances that undermine the bordering capacities of the state. The subsection outlines four interlinked processes to address how the expansion of a repressive governing apparatus (a bordering regime, in this instance) multiplies resistances, and how these resistances sometimes grow into large and disruptive political forces.

Enforcing–resisting borders Contentious immigrant rights politics Scholars studying immigrant social movements have largely drawn from the theoretical toolkit provided by the social movement literature (Ireland, 1994; Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, & Passy, 2005; Voss & Bloemraad, 2011). While European scholars have drawn mostly from the “opportunity structure” tradition of the social movement literature, their U.S. counterparts have turned more to the “resource mobilization” tradition (Nicholls, 2013a; Voss & Bloemraad, 2011). For instance, Koopmans et al. (2005) focused on national level political and discursive opportunity structures to understand variations between large immigrant rights mobilizations in four countries. Voss and Bloemraad (2011) added to these insights in their study of the big 2006 immigrant rights mobilizations in the U.S. by suggesting that resources (economic, cultural, political capital) were essential for making these massive mobilizations possible. This literature says much about the factors that shape large-scale mobilizations, but less about how small resistances emerge in response to growing government repression, and how small conflicts evolve into system threatening mobilizations. Political geographers (Coleman, 2007; Strunk & Leitner, 2013; Vigneswaran, 2008; Walker & Leitner, 2011) have shown that national governments have created more powerful, totalizing, and sophisticated bordering regimes. These regimes have presented limited political opportunities for many immigrant activists and undermined their legitimacy, but they also spur small resistances in different localities and institutional settings (Strunk & Leitner, 2013; Walker & Leitner, 2011). Other geographers have shown why and how smaller conflicts scale up into larger mobilizations (Miller, 2000; Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005). Mobilizations emerge in localities, but political barriers and challenges at these scales may precipitate leaders to switch to more fortuitous geopolitical scales (Miller, 2000). While some scholars help explain why activists “shift” scale, others have spent more time analyzing how scale shifts occur (Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). Networks make it possible for activists in a locale to reach out to distant others, obtain information concerning opportunities and constraints, access a broader variety of resources, expand organizational infrastructures, and increase the number and diversity of possible allies. The sociological literature therefore helps us identify the political and organizational conditions that favor large social movements, but it is less useful for understanding how small resistances proliferate in response to growing state power. Political geographers have helped fill the gap by showing that people resist state power, and why and how small resistances shift scale and become larger mobilizations.

1. Illegality and bordering State power in the 19th century, as Foucault famously noted, focused on producing and managing life. It was “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit” (Foucault, 1978, p. 136). Discourses arose concerning what constituted a good, moral, and healthy population, and such discourses differentiated this population from deficient and polluting others. This resulted in constructing a collective “norm” around which to distinguish normal from abnormal populations (Foucault, 1978, p. 144). While certain deviants (people veering from socially constructed norms) could be disciplined and normalized, others could not. They were banished through symbolic and institutional sanctions that rendered their activities illegal and turned those engaging in them into criminals. The process of making certain populations illegal (illegalized) was therefore a political project to ensure the wellbeing of the normal, licit, and legal population: At the point of departure, then, one may place the political project of rooting out illegalities, generalizing the punitive function and delimiting, in order to control it […] The criminal designated as the enemy of all, whom it is in the interest of all to track down, falls outside the pact, disqualifies himself as citizen and emerges, bearing within him as it were, a wild fragment of nature; he appears as a villain, a monster, a madman, perhaps, a sick and, before long, “abnormal” individuals (Foucault, 1979, p. 101, emphasis added). Fostering normal life in modern society required disallowing irreducibly abnormal lives (“wild fragment of nature”) from taking root in society, “often to the point of death” (Foucault, 1978, p. 138). This stimulated the production of categorical and institutional boundaries to exclude the threat from good society. Bordering, as used in this paper, has been a central normative rationality and technology to territorialize boundaries between good and bad, legal and illegal populations (Fassin, 2011). “The b/order,” as critical border scholars have long claimed, “is an active verb” (Van Houtum et al., 2005, p. 3). It entails developing discourses for why the Other is a threat, the construction of legal codes and administrative categories to translate subjective norms into formal criteria and metrics, and the creation of repressive agencies, materials, and institutions dividing desirable and undesirable populations. Those on the other side of borders are rendered outside the law, making it virtually impossible for citizens to recognize them as subjects of solidarity and as beings with the “right to have rights” in the country (Arendt, 1973; Ngai, 2004). 2. Concentrating–individualizing bordering powers Protecting good and licit populations precipitates governments to block the threatening Other from entering and settling within

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

its borders. Enhanced bordering capacities “disallow” (Foucault, 1978) threatening life forms from taking root in society. This hastens governments to concentrate power in the central organs of the state (police, courts, executive, legislative bodies). While the state amasses and consolidates restrictive powers, large centralized institutions lack the dexterity and reach to seal off the small cracks that allow threats from taking root in society. This requires the introduction of individualized techniques to seal off small and imperceptible openings in territorially bounded communities (Foucault, 1979). To extend its reach downward, the state diffuses repressive powers to countless actors who encounter the threatening Other in their everyday lives. These “relays” of government power (teachers, police, landlords, service providers, voluntary organizations, neighbors) are essential because they are both the “eyes and ears” of the state and gatekeepers of life-sustaining resources (Miller & Rose, 1990). Enlisting them in the war against the “illegalized” Other enhances the reach of the central government into the micro-spaces of daily life, enabling it to close access to essential resources and services. Efforts to maximize borders in response to an “enemy” population like undocumented immigrants therefore induce a move that is unique to the modern state (Foucault, 1978, 1979): concentrating powers in central institutions of the state and empowering tens of thousands of people to assume responsibility in producing and enacting borders. 3. Proliferating resistances and border transgressions Modern (state) power produces as much as it denies (Foucault, 1978). Every time power is enacted, it gives life and differentiates lives, while seeking to “disallow” the lives of others deemed to be a threat to society (Foucault, 1978, p. 138). This results in the production of other subjects (groups that were named, categorized, and kept apart from good, “legal”, normal society) while disallowing these others the conditions needed to have full and normal lives. The Janusfaced nature of power (productive-denying) produces subjects with the will to resist bordering practices. “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (Foucault, 1978, p. 95). The will to resist that develops from power relations complicates government goals to create a smooth, compliant, and wellordered society with clean lines to demarcate populations. “Illegalized” populations like undocumented immigrants become familiar with their exclusion not only through abstract discourses and big government policies but also through interactions with the specific border “enforcers” they encounter in their local, everyday worlds (Menjívar & Abrego, 2012). These encounters deny access to resources and services needed to sustain life. They also reinforce their essential inequality and irreducible otherness. A landlord, nonprofit organization, or medical practitioner denies a person a life-sustaining service because she or he has been categorized as “illegal” by the government and therefore an irreducible threat to society. It is not simply the denial of life-giving resources that is troubling to this person but the rationale underlying this denial (stigma, inequality, otherness). The countless small acts of denial, disrespect, and discrimination – whether at a bank, a service counter, a school, the streets, work, etc. – reinforce profound feelings of marginalization and the need to assert their lives, dignity, and equality in the face of recurrent exclusions. The will to resist is forged in the small and specific struggles to secure life and recognition in the face of everyday aggressions. People certainly had complex political lives before their placement into a category of “illegality”. But their placement into this category becomes constitutive of their life and comes to shape their political dispositions, concerns, and urges to resist (Derby, 2014; Menjívar & Abrego, 2012). Equally important, bordering measures are directed at a target population (undocumented immigrants), but the broad nature of these measures often spillover and trigger grievances and “moral

45

shocks” (Jasper, 1997) among populations not directly targeted by the measures (e.g. citizens, permanent legal residents, naturalized citizens). Rather than clearly delineate populations (licit and illicit), bordering measures can blur boundaries by prompting legal residents and citizens to resist government measures and forming feelings of solidarity with “illegalized” people where none had previously existed. First, the larger the population of undocumented immigrants, the more likely the population has direct contacts to permanent residents and citizens. Residents and citizens may have family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers or acquaintances directly targeted by bordering measures. This spreads the costs and pain (financial, physical, psychic, emotional) to those with strong ties to undocumented immigrants (especially in mixed status families). When bordering measures are enacted in concrete places, supporters may become morally shocked and aggrieved by the effects of these measures on people they know, like and love. Second, streetlevel border enforcers (police, teachers, mayors, landlords, nonprofit organizations) are important components in the fight against undocumented immigrants (Vigneswaran, 2008). However, complying with this role can conflict with their professional responsibilities and personal ethics (Van der Leun, 2006). This can introduce new grievances and efforts to resist (passive and active) bordering roles. Thus, maximizing state bordering powers, against a population that has been rendered “illegal”, can plant seeds of resistance among the targeted populations (undocumented immigrants) and the people they come into regular contact with (legal permanent residents, citizens, etc.). These are not necessarily large mobilizations but, more often than not, specific acts that question and push back on government efforts to enact bordering practices. 4. From small resistances into messy, entangled mobilizations Resistances proliferate in localities and institutional settings in response to the concentration, diffusion, and multiplication of state power, but many of these resistances stay hidden, passive, and small. In spite of their location, form, or size, resistances still generate important effects on dominant institutions and ideologies, and some (but not most) “small and uncoordinated acts of petty resistance may aggregate to a point where they jeopardize state structures” (Scott, 1985, p. 344). To address how and where some resistances “aggregate”, the paper builds on the scaling and networking literature discussed above (Diani, 2014; Miller, 2000; Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005). Small resistances are geographically pervasive because they emerge where state bordering powers are enacted (detention centers, neighborhoods, housing blocks, workplaces, street corners, and so on). However, not all resistances succeed in aggregating into larger scale mobilizations. Certain contexts provide more supportive environments for small seeds of resistance to grow into entangled networks of contention (Goodwin & Jasper, 1999; Miller, 2000; Nicholls, 2009). Some localities may possess more favorable norms and discourses; concentrate more supportive organizations and resources; and contain friendlier political elites. These contexts make it easier for activists in budding resistances to sustain their struggles and make demands on public officials. Growing a seed of resistance into a large mobilization is not automatic even in favorable contexts. It depends on people connecting to one another through a complex networking process (Diani, 2014; Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). The paper aims to contribute to the literature by drawing attention to three networking mechanisms that, when combined within a supportive context, can unleash the growth of small resistances into large and tangled mobilizations: 1) Brokering refers to actors who connect their comrades in a specific action to previously unconnected people and organizations (Diani, 2014; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). This enables the original group of resistors to reach beyond themselves and gain more access to information and resources from their

46

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

environment. 2) Extending networks occurs when recently connected allies, who had been connected through a broker, serve as brokers in their own right. They introduce the original resistors to their circle of friends. This extends the degrees of separation from the original point of resistance, diffuses the message to multiple publics, and creates important opportunities to draw in more resources, support, and information. 3) Amplifying occurs when the resources, skills, and talents of different stakeholders complement and amplify one another in powerful ways. For instance, someone may possess good writing skills and another person may have connections to a newspaper editor. These resources apart are not very important, but when they are brought together they produce amplification effects that can significantly raise the public profile of an action. This, in turn, draws in more supportive connections and resources to an emergent mobilization. When brokering, extending, and amplifying mechanisms are unleashed, complex interactions can occur between the mechanisms and contribute to a rapid buildup in momentum, power and force. Growing a resistance beyond an initial point of conflict is important to disrupt government rationalities and practices. However, scaling up results in more people, more heterogeneity and inequalities, and a greater likelihood of fragmentation (Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). Growth comes with risk, but the risk is acceptable when marginalized actors are provided a pathway to disrupt government repression. In sum, by enacting sharp dividing lines, bordering as a government rationality and technology destabilizes society as it seeks to protect and rationalize it. Rather than produce a sharp line in the sand between good and bad people, we are left with countless battles, cracks, and heated struggles concerning rights and equality in the national polity. The technologies of modern government therefore politicize exclusionary practices as much as they depoliticize, resulting in an unstable and permanently contentious sociopolitical order.

Constructing the immigrant threat Immigration regimes vary by country, but many scholars agree that there has been some convergence since the late 1980s (Berezin, 2013; Calavita, 2005; Joppke, 2007). For natives who attribute their own precariousness to the decline of the nation-state (Berezin, 2013), the “immigrant” is conceived as the personification of the problem. It is a population that needs to be banished as the first step to restoring an orderly and healthy society. The United States witnessed a major surge in the “immigrant threat” discourse in the late 1970s, with this discourse eventually becoming a consensus position by the 1990s (Chavez, 2008; Massey & Pren, 2012). Based on a review of news publications between 1965 and 1995, Massey and Pren (2012, p. 7) found that the pairing of terms like “crisis” and “Mexican immigrants” increased from 1 per year in 1965 to 39 in 1990. High profile personalities (intellectuals, pundits, politicians) emphasized different aspects of this threat. Some stressed that their lack of morals made Mexicans a threat to public welfare institutions. Others stressed that their lack of “AngloSaxon” culture threatened the national identity (Chavez, 2008). “The relentless propagandizing that accompanied the shift had a pervasive effect on public opinion, turning it decidedly more conservative on issues of immigration …” (Massey & Pren, 2012, p. 8). As public opinion became more conservative, so too did leading politicians on the left and right. In his first months in office, President Clinton (Democrat) noted that, “The simple fact is that we must not and we will not surrender our borders to those who wish to exploit our history of compassion and justice” (Clinton, in Nevins, 2002, p. 1). National political leaders used bordering norms (“surrender our borders”) to construct a divide between the good national self (“our

history of compassion and justice”) and the nefarious foreigner (“to those who wish to exploit”). The Netherlands experienced a similar discursive turn in the 1990s and 2000s (Schinkel, 2013; Uitermark, 2012). Anti-racist and pragmatist discourses of the 1980s were eclipsed by anti-immigrant discourses in the 1990s and 2000s (what Uitermark, 2012, calls “culturalist” discourse). This discourse maintains that immigrants posed a threat because they lacked the essential cultural attributes (religion, morality, values) needed to assimilate in the country. This discourse became adopted by prominent intellectuals, politicians, and media personalities in the late 1990s and 2000s. “While it is true that disenfranchised natives formed a core constituency of culturalists, the discourse was also mobilized by intellectuals, academics and politicians who sought to challenge the pragmatist political culture and to redefine power relations in the civil sphere” (Uitermark, 2012, p. 118). The increased prominence of the far right party (National Front) in France precipitated similar shifts in public discourse in France. French political officials increasingly drew upon hard conservative frames to talk about immigrants (Berezin, 2013). In 1991 Jacques Chirac (mayor of Paris, future president) argued, How do you want a French worker who works with his wife, who earns together about 15,000 francs and who sees next to his social housing apartment, a piled-up family with a father, three or four spouses and twenty children earning 50,000 FF via welfare benefits, naturally without working… If you add to that the noise and the smell, well the French worker, he goes crazy. And it is not racist to say this. We no longer have the means of honoring the family reunification policy, and we need to finally start the essential debate in this country, as to whether it is moral and normal that foreigners should profit to the same extent as French people, from a national solidarity to which they don’t participate, as they pay no income taxes (Jacques Chirac in Blin, 2005, p. 67). The statement is striking in its similarity to Clinton’s statement cited above: both helped legitimate sharp symbolic boundaries between two populations (national and immigrants) and contrasted the virtues of one with the malevolence of the other. The “immigrant threat” discourse is not new (see Ngai, 2004; Weil, 1991), but it has enjoyed prominence at different historical junctures. This period (1990s–2000s) marked a juncture in which the discourse became normalized in these three countries (Berezin, 2013). The prominence of these discourses lay the ground for considering immigrants with precarious legal status as “illegals” with minimum (if any) rights in these countries (Fernandez-Kelley & Massey, 2007; Menjívar & Kanstroom, 2013; Siméant, 1998; Van der Leun, 2006). Concentrating–individualizing bordering powers Concentrating bordering powers In the United States, the 1990s was a major turning point in restrictive measures. Responding to growing anti-immigrant sentiment, the Clinton administration introduced Operation Gatekeeper in 1994. This measure increased border efforts in the southwest, and especially California. This single measure increased the budget of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from $400 million in 1993 to $800 million in 1997. It also contributed to increasing the number of border agents from 4200 to 9212 between 1994 and 2000 (Nevins, 2002, p. 3). This measure was followed by groundbreaking legislation in 1996: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). The law introduced new crimes that could make one ineligible for residency status, streamlined deportation procedures, reduced the discretion of judges considering

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

“hardship” cases, required immigrants seeking to regularize their status to do so from their home countries, among other things (Durand & Massey, 2003; Varsanyi, 2008). Along with Operation Gatekeeper, the law spurred the extraordinary growth of the INS (Durand & Massey, 2003; Massey & Pren, 2012; Nevins, 2002). The “war on terror” reinforced these punitive tendencies. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security and incorporated the INS into it as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Bordering (internal and external) was now made a central component of the new security state. Congress passed five restrictive laws that directly targeted immigrants, and the Bush White House introduced 12 different bordering measures (Massey & Pren, 2012, 10–11). The policies accelerated the rates of deportation, resulting in the record removal of approximately 403,000 undocumented immigrants per year during 2009–2013 (Gonzalez-Barrera, 2014). The Netherlands also experienced a sharp increase in its border enforcement capacities. Government officials introduced what it called “discouragement policies”. Restrictions have been placed on family reunification, resulting in measures to detect “fake marriages”, raise the minimum age for foreign spouses, establish income requirements for partners, and introduce language requirements (Doomernik, 2010). These new restrictions were designed to allow the country to meet its international obligations on family reunification while reducing the number of people eligible for this right. There have also been important restrictions imposed on asylum seekers. In 1996 the government created the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) to monitor and coordinate asylum procedures. The New Aliens Act (Vreemdelingenwet) of 2000 shortened procedures, ended direct and indirect government supported shelter for refused asylum seekers, and introduced preventive detention. Restrictions continued with the creation of new detention and expulsion centers, a Return and Departure Service in 2007, and the streamlining of removal procedures. Broeders and Engbersen (2007, p. 1602) remark that “The assumption is that a prison regime will encourage immigrants to reveal their true identity. Detention is also considered to be a deterrent to prevent immigrants from coming to Europe through undocumented channels”. To deny undocumented immigrants access to labor markets, the government introduced new measures during the 1990s: Compulsory Identification Act, the Employment of Aliens Act, and the Law on the Chain Liability. These laws required employees to present a social security number to employers, made direct and indirect employment of undocumented immigrants a criminal offense, and introduced important sanctions on employers for hiring migrants without proof of residency status. France pursued similar measures during the 1990s and early 2000s. The Minister of Interior in 1993, Charles Pasqua, authored legislation to restrict legal migration to the country (Hayward & Wright, 2002). The so-called “Pasqua Laws” raised the criteria needed to qualify for legal residency through family reunification and asylum. The government also expanded “holding centers” at airports, ports, and cities to detain undocumented migrants and facilitated identity checks and detentions by local law enforcement agencies (Hayward & Wright, 2002). The “Debré Law” (1997) required French residents to register foreign visitors to their homes (reporting arrivals and departures of foreigners to city hall), adopted fingerprinting of non-European Union foreigners, restricted residency permits to asylum seekers, reduced legal appeals for those denied legal residency, and enhanced the capacities for police to stop and detain suspected undocumented immigrants and immigrant traffickers (Emmons, 1997, p. 9). The Sarkozy and Hortefeux laws of the 2000s increased the barriers to acquire legal residency through family reunification and asylum, made cultural integration a criteria for gaining legal status, blocked access to housing markets and welfare provisions, and introduced deportation quotas.

47

Individualizing bordering powers While central governments have concentrated their bordering powers, they have also enlisted local public agencies and frontline service providers to share responsibility in enforcement practices. By devolving border enforcement responsibilities to law enforcement agents, school officials, welfare providers, nonprofit organizations, medical professionals, building contractors, bus drivers, and so on, governments have been better able to penetrate the everyday lives of immigrants and refine and individualize bordering practices. The United States government pursued several measures that devolved more authority to state and local-level public officials. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996) introduced new restrictions that made undocumented immigrants ineligible for publicly funded state and local services. This, according to Monica Varsanyi (2008, p. 889), was a major turning point because states were now authorized by the federal government to “to discriminate against noncitizens in deciding eligibility for their programs, an act that prior to 1996 was considered an unconstitutional encroachment into federal powers over membership policy”. IIRIRA (1996) introduced a program (287 [g]) to create agreements between federal and local law enforcement agencies. The program introduced a Memorandum of Understanding between the federal Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies. Local police participating in the program were given special training in immigration matters and granted authority to work in concert with the federal immigration agencies. 287[g] was superseded by the Secure Communities program, which was introduced in 2008. This program required local police agencies to report on the status of immigrants in detention and placed “holds” on those people lacking legal status. Lastly, nationals began to target state and local governments to develop restrictive immigration policies of their own, with approximately 271 such measures passed between 2005 and 2010 (Coleman, 2007; Strunk & Leitner, 2013; Varsanyi, 2008; Walker & Leitner, 2011). States passed their own anti-immigrant measures. The first comprehensive anti-immigration law was passed in Arizona in 2010 (S.B. 1070), which was then followed by five other states. The Linking Act in the Netherlands required public service providers working in health, housing, and education to deny services to undocumented immigrants. Immigration status had never been a criterion to obtain these services. Now, “street level bureaucrats” in housing, health care, and education assumed direct responsibility in verifying documents and providing essential services strictly on the basis of legal status (Van der Leun, 2006). These measures required “street level bureaucrats” (from public housing officials to bus drivers) to report suspected immigrants to the police. The division of labor between the national immigration police and the local police was also recalibrated to better use the local police to detect and detain undocumented immigrants in their jurisdictions (Broeders & Engbersen, 2007; Doomernik, 2010). France has a long tradition of enlisting department and municipal level officials in enacting government immigration policies (De Barros, 2004; Hayward & Wright, 2002). Department prefects (equivalent to state governors) have long been charged with implementing national laws. In order to enhance restrictions on family reunification, the Minister of Interior in 1977 required that applicants present a certificate of “decent housing” issued by mayors. Facing tight housing markets and discriminating mayors, many immigrants had difficulty obtaining the certificates (Péchu, 1999). Consequently, thousands of families entered the country without residency visas during the 1980s and 1990s and settled in dilapidated hotels and abandoned buildings, which made it more difficult to obtain the requisite housing certificate. “For immigrants, housing takes on a dimension that it simply does not have for French families. It affects the

48

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

right to live as a family and to obtain papers for the family which are in order” (Péchu, 1999, p. 734, emphasis added). Lastly, the Pasqua and Debray Laws restricted the ability of community and nonprofit organizations to provide support for undocumented immigrants and required mayors to report and monitor immigrant visitors to their towns. Proliferating resistances and border transgressions Restrictive measures increased detention and deportation rates, and discouraged unauthorized migration to the point of causing the deaths of thousands of people at important crossing points in Europe and the United States (Isaacson & Meyer, 2013; Kiza, 2008). The same measures, however, intensified deep grievances, outrage, and resistances among undocumented immigrants and broad sectors of the “legal” population (migrants with permanent legal status, natives, local border enforcers).

them with strong legal, political, and moral foundations for their struggle (Nicholls, 2013a). In France, increased restrictions placed on family reunification during the 1990s rendered thousands of immigrant parents of French-born children into undocumented immigrants (sans papiers) (Blin, 2005; Nicholls, 2013b; Siméant, 1998). This precipitated a two-year struggle, which resulted in the legalization of this particular subset of the population (e.g. parents of French children). In the Netherlands, increased restrictions on asylum-seekers and long detentions for asylum-seekers have also triggered important resistances across this country (see final section). Enhanced enforcement has therefore intensified the grievances of undocumented immigrants and provided many with a certain will to resist. This will has become acute for those pushed to the outer limit of legality. These cases oftentimes have more resources, greater urgency, and more support to press their cases. Their positioning makes them more likely to move into open resistance. Resistant legal permanent residents

Resistant undocumented immigrants Daily life for many immigrants became a minefield of controls and formidable risks (Menjívar & Kanstroom, 2013). An immigrant in the United States comments, “You watch the news and you learn. Nobody is safe. They take people from work[…] For these people [officials], it doesn’t matter that we’ve lived here for 15 years, that we’ve been raising children who are good people […]All they see is that we are ‘illegal’” (Maricella, in Abrego, 2013, 142). Just as important, restrictive bordering measures reinforced the status of immigrants as “illegals” and feelings of stigma borne by this population. An undocumented immigrant in France remarked that They used to look at us with suspicion but without knowing very well why. Now it’s clear: we are and will stay undocumented (sans papiers). For the man on the street, that would mean religious fundamentalist. For the small business owners, that would mean delinquent. For the police, that would be all of that and a clandestine. Why? Because the Pasqua Laws say so…” (Anonymous immigrant, Le Monde, 1995, emphasis added). Enhanced border enforcement magnifies the stigma associated with being an immigrant, and transmits this stigma through the many people they encounter in daily life (man on the street, small business owner, police). Such experiences often result in depression and isolation, but they can also intensify grievances and deep feelings of moral outrage. Such feelings have become particularly acute for subgroups of immigrants finding themselves on the cusp of the legal system. As governments have raised the qualifications for legal residency status through legal avenues (family reunification, asylum, work), people who had once been eligible for legal status under previous legal arrangements now found themselves in a state of illegality. These subgroups often feel particularly “deserving” of legal status and they perceive a small window of opportunity (legal, moral, discursive) to push their claims forward (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascarenas, 2012). During the 1980s and 1990s, El Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the United States were denied asylum status because they fled governments that had been supported by the U.S. government (Coutin, 2003; Menjívar, 2000). The denial of legal status to a population that deserved it fueled a sense of “moral outrage” among denied asylum seekers and their allies. It also provided them strong legal and political foundations to assert their claims in courts and the U.S. Congress. Similarly, undocumented children had a constitutional right to public schools, but the enforcement of restrictive rules at adulthood forced them to come to terms with their “illegality” (Gonzales, 2011; Nicholls, 2013a). Sitting on the outer edge of a normal (i.e. “legal”) life fueled a sense of moral outrage among many undocumented youths (who came to be known as Dreamers) and provided

Undocumented immigrants constitute important parts of immigrant communities, especially in gateway cities with high concentrations of immigrants. They are not a population apart from immigrants with legal permanent residency but a major group with extensive ties to the general immigrant population. In the United States the population of undocumented immigrants increased from 3 to 12 million between 1990 and 2010. In France, the Minister of Interior estimated the number to be between 200,000 and 400,000 in 2005 (Documentation Française, 2012). In the Netherlands, the number ranged from 70,000 to 100,000 in the early 2000s (Broeders & Engbersen, 2007). Additionally, more undocumented immigrants and greater restrictions on family reunification visas have also contributed to the growing number of mixed-status families. In the United States, Passel (2006) observed that “these mixed status families represent about one-third of all unauthorized families and five out of six unauthorized families with children” (p. 13). Immigrants with mixed-family status have consequently become important contributors to resistances and struggles in France over the past 20 years. Major campaigns in the 1990s and the 2000s emerged in response to the grievances of families with mixed status (Siméant, 1998). Similarly in the U.S., grievances among mixedfamilies continue to feed a range of different resistances and mobilizations. In their survey of participants in the large 2006 mobilizations, Pallares and Flores González (2011) found that “although most were U.S. citizens, nearly half (47 percent) lived in mixedstatus families… [A] significant number of marchers had family ties to undocumented immigrants, even when they themselves were U.S. citizens” (p. 163, emphasis added). Thus, restrictive measures negatively impacted the broader community of legal permanent residents as they found family and friends on the other side of the legal line. Just as important, the growing use of legal status as a qualification for work and services, the widespread use of employer sanctions, and the increased use of municipal police to detain residents suspected of unauthorized residency have placed all people of immigrant origin under increased scrutiny. Employers, police, public service workers, contractors, landlords, and so forth use ethnic/ racial markers to identify suspect populations. As early as 1971, Mexican American advocacy organizations vigorously contested employer sanctions on hiring undocumented workers because of the potential for racial profiling (Gutiérrez, 1991). More recently, Latinos complained about restrictive bordering measures enacted in Long Island, New York. One Latino resident expressed this frustration by saying, “We are not all illegal. I’m not illegal. My daughters are not illegal. You can’t say that about all of us!” (Long Island resident, New York Times, 2004). Arizona’s S.B. 1070 increased harassment of immigrants with and without legal residency status (Johnson, 2012;

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

Nill, 2011). The broad reach of enforcement raised the ire of the broader Latino community and spurred many (Latino citizens, legal permanent residents, undocumented immigrants) to mobilize for the repeal of the measure. Espino (2013, p. 32) found that “the hostile rhetoric surrounding this legislation appears to have unified rather than divided Latinos across party lines.” Politicians were once able to drive a wedge between “good legal” and “bad illegal” immigrants, but this has become more difficult as interdependent connections have developed between these populations, and as all immigrants have been made into suspect populations by increasingly repressive government measures. Resistant national citizens For national citizens, border enforcement has become concrete and tangible. Enforcement now occurs in their towns, schools, streets, and neighborhoods. The violent practice of bordering has ceased being carried out in distant areas (deserts and seas) to a dehumanized Other. Bordering has come home, targeting seemingly “normal” people that citizens had come to know and, in certain instances, like. In France, the practice of targeting elementary schools for deportation raids in the 2000s resulted in sharp conflicts with immigrants, teachers, school administrators, and French parents. Many French parents joined small struggles at specific schools because they did not want the parents of their children’s friends threatened with deportation at school during pickup and drop off hours. These early conflicts gave rise to a new and relatively informal network, Reseau Education Sans Frontier (Education Without Borders Network [RESF]). One close observer of these struggles and a long-time immigrant activist in Paris noted that, “RESF was a struggle in daily life, with faces, men, women, children. There was a network of parents of children that went beyond the normal militants. There were people from the right and left because it was the friend of their children who was being targeted” (director, ACORT, 2007, personal interview). The aggressive and highly intrusive bordering practices of the state (deportation raids at schools, for example) exposed such practices as unjust and morally outrageous. Another Parisian activist observed, At the instant in which there were children in schools, a grand parent who was detained by the police while picking up his grandchild from school; all those are things that the French public does not like. Sarkozy [then the Minister of Interior] saw that the parents of students were not good for him. He opened a door to regularization on a case-by-case basis” (organizer, SUD, personal interview). The violent and disruptive nature of deportations was brought home and made tangible to the native French population. This triggered flourishing resistances in the specific sites where bordering measures were enacted. In the Netherlands, there has been a wave of small campaigns by Dutch residents (2009–2013) who believed that certain immigrants deserved an exemption from restrictive laws. In one case, minors who had been granted temporary protected status were scheduled for deportations at adulthood (Versteegt & Maussen, 2012). Many of these youths had been raised in local neighborhoods, attended schools, participated in local social life (church, sports, civic activities), and interacted regularly with Dutch natives throughout the course of their lives. These immigrants dressed, spoke, and acted like “normal” Dutch people and did not resemble the stereotypical images of “illegal” immigrants. This prompted Dutch nationals to view the scheduled deportations of the children as morally outrageous. The imminent deportation of one boy sparked one small campaign in a provincial city, with a local politician arguing that

49

Yossef is a boy with a Sudanese nationality who has become a Dutch child, an Alkmaar boy who has his friends in this city, who is a member of the soccer club and is attending school here. Let him live with his mother in Alkmaar as long as there is no clarity about possible expulsion to his country of origin. This child should not be more damaged by this procedure, which has been dragging on for years; children have rights too (in, Versteegt & Maussen, 2012, p. 54). The incorporation of immigrants in localities and their connections with Dutch citizens “normalized” (“become a Dutch child”) these people. This complicated senses of solidarity and made the deportation of friends (who happened to be immigrants) seem morally repugnant. These were localized resistances against the specific enactment of government bordering policies. Certain immigrants were not perceived threatening and had actually become “normal” members of local communities. This complicated the symbolic boundaries between nationals and foreigners and infused nationals with a sense of outrage when immigrants they knew and liked became targets of government repression. Resistant border enforcers The devolution of border enforcement has incorporated thousands of local officials, politicians, civil servants, nonprofit organizations, and service providers directly into an issue area that was once the reserve of national government agencies. While these locals have been expected to enact enforcement measures, some have had conflicting concerns over how to do this. After the passage of the Linking Act, Dutch medical professionals were expected to deny non-emergency medical services to immigrants lacking legal documentation (Van der Leun, 2006). Their new enforcement responsibilities conflicted with their professional ethics to serve all patients irrespective of their legal status. Many medical professionals used their discretion to provide immigrants coverage under the “emergency” clause of the provision, eventually pushing the government to modify its policy. Similarly, government restrictions on providing undocumented immigrants assistance have given rise to policy dilemmas for city officials (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascarenas, 2012). Officials have been in charge of evicting immigrants whose asylum cases have been rejected from social housing and denying access to assistance and shelters once on the streets. These restrictions contributed to the rapid growth of homeless undocumented immigrants in Dutch cities. In 2005, the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) sent a formal petition to parliament and the Minister of Justice, indicating that it was impossible for mayors to comply with government restrictions because it conflicted with their primary obligation of maintaining public order in their cities (Doomernik, 2010). In the United States, many local police agencies have embraced their roles in the major enforcement programs of Secure Communities and 287(g). Nevertheless, many others have expressed concern because such measures were seen as eating into the trust in immigrant rich communities. This would undermine their abilities to fulfill policing and safety obligations (Johnson, 2012; Theodore, 2011). Some officials used their discretion to circumvent full implementation of Secure Communities, while others supported local measures to minimize participation in federal enforcement programs (Strunk & Leitner, 2013). In California, mayors and police chiefs in large cities like San Francisco came out against the Secure Communities program and supported a state law to curtail compliance with this federal program (TRUST Act). The central aim of government bordering strategies has been to clarify the boundary between populations. However, these efforts have resulted in the unintended consequence of deepening the

50

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

grievances and outrage of undocumented immigrants while spreading resistances to populations not directly targeted by these measures. The exact nature of resistances varies sharply according to national contexts, the specific ways and places in which restrictive bordering measures are enacted, and the mobilization capacities of local populations. In spite of their diversity, they all introduce small yet important disruptions in how to conceive and enact national borders. If “borders are everywhere” (Balibar, 2004), so too are acts of resistance. Scaling up: growing seeds into entangled, disruptive mobilizations Enhanced bordering powers have been deployed across locations and settings within these countries. This has resulted in the geographical diffusion of resistances. In France, small resistances emerged at schools across the country in response to government bordering efforts. An early supporter of RESF describes the geographically ubiquitous nature of these resistances, “There are now networks of RESF in every department of the country, and every time the creation of new one follows the same logic: there is a young student who is arrested or at least his family is arrested; sometimes at school and other times outside school. This is then followed by small mobilization of support for the family” (director, FSU, 2007, personal interview). In the Netherlands, resistances have also multiplied everywhere. Recent struggles for regularizing the status of children facing deportation arose in many different localities. Disputes between mayors and the central government have also been geographically ubiquitous (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascarenas, 2012). Moreover, as the Dutch government has moved many of its detention and deportation centers to provincial locations, these localities have become flashpoints of small struggles by rejected asylum seekers. In the United States, Secure Communities has catalyzed resistances in localities across the country. “The Secure Communities program may be the most ambitious effort to achieve full immigration enforcement coverage across the country, but this ambition has been challenged by immigrant advocacy groups and networks operating at multiple scales: the local, regional, and national” (Strunk & Leitner, 2013, pp. 75–76). The geographical extension of internal border enforcement has contributed to the diffusion of conflicts and resistances outward, but certain contexts of mobilization provide fertile soil for resistances to take root and grow into larger mobilizations. When initial resistances emerge in these environments, they may draw in a greater diversity of supporters with different forms of knowledge and resources; and supporters with extensive networks and brokering skills. The geographical concentration of opportunities and resources therefore makes certain areas more supportive of early resistances than others. Large gateway cities (Amsterdam, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.) tend to provide more supportive contexts (Walker & Leitner, 2011). Scaling up from an initial point of resistance to a collective mobilization is a complicated networking process and certain contexts favor these networking processes more than others (Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). This last section lays out the basic mechanisms (brokering, extending, amplifying) involved in the process and draws on the Dutch case for illustration. This part of the paper is based on research on the We Are Here campaign (2012–2014). In September 2012, several rejected asylum seekers requested assistance from a sympathetic ally in Amsterdam. Their demands for asylum had been rejected by restrictive government policies. They had been turned into undocumented migrants with limited access to shelter and work. The immigrants expressed outrage that their well-founded petitions for asylum were rejected and that they were denied a life in the country. “We are here. We are not animals, we

are not criminals, we are not gangsters, we are not hobos, we are just refugees!…Even a monkey wouldn’t suffer here. Birds don’t suffer either. Everything is in order in this country! Why are they leaving us on the street? And they know, we have showed them a great face, very polite, so they can maybe someday think about doing something good for us. But they refuse… All of the government’s measures were bad for us” (activist 1, We Are Here campaign, interview). The Amsterdam ally served as an initial broker in the city and connected the asylum seekers to the Protestant Diaconate. After several meetings, the Diaconate permitted a handful of asylum seekers to install tents in its courtyard in central Amsterdam. This marked the beginning of the “We Are Here” campaign. The small group of immigrants and early supporters brokered relations within their distinctive worlds. Immigrant activists at the encampment reached out and connected to other rejected-asylum seekers in the Netherlands, and members of the Diaconate connected to the world of Dutch Protestant humanitarians. Each new connection between the original group and subsequent people created new brokers in parallel and distinctive worlds. The brokers diffused the news of the action, its message, and its sense of moral outrage across these relational circuits. This helped expand and reinforce the Protestant church’s support of the emergent campaign while simultaneously drawing other rejected asylum seekers to the Diaconate’s courtyard. The growing assortment of brokers had friends and acquaintances in other sociopolitical worlds as well. This permitted the immigrant activists and their supporters to extend deep into their own primary worlds (immigrant communities, Protestant humanitarians) and, just as importantly, to extend outward across Amsterdam’s diverse social, organizational, and political environment. For example, an immigrant activist who had settled at the camp after the initial upsurge informed one of his contacts at a nonprofit organization. The caseworker at one nonprofit remembers, “I heard about it for the first time when my client. He needed a place to stay but I could not arrange it for him. I called him later and he told me he was in the camp. I was trying to look up what he was talking about. The day after that it was in the newspaper” (employee ASKV Refugee Support, interview). Through this microlevel mechanism, the encampment in central Amsterdam soon drew in a wide variety of individual supporters with a diverse range of resources and skills, including university students, experienced radicals, humanitarians of various political stripes, a dedicated contingency of activist squatters, journalists, among others. The camp grew and required activists and supporters to move to another location on the outskirts of the city. The encampment swelled to approximately 250 immigrant activists and 100 Dutch supporters with diverse backgrounds. While the growing diversity of immigrant activists and Dutch supporters introduced certain disagreements, it also permitted the flow of diverse resources. Some resources were essential to maintain the life of the activists. Individuals and religious organizations surrounding the encampment provided food, tents, clothes and blankets. One immigrant activist remembers that, “the churches, the mosques helped a lot. Mosques around Osdorp, Turkish, Moroccan… The Moroccans they knew where I came from but they still gave me food. They weren’t stopped by the fact that our countries used to fight each other” (activist 2, We Are Here campaign). Others provided more intangible resources like activist knowledge in Amsterdam. “Frans [pseudonym] is a brother, one of the best for me. An activist. I really like him because he has eight years of experience. He really knew how to get things done” (activist 1, We Are Here). While tangible and intangible resources were essential for bolstering the campaign, some resources complemented and amplified one another. Amplification occurs when activists combine resources derived from different network sources to create potentially powerful synergies. For instance, the experiences and individual

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

stories of immigrants provided compelling testimony of the moral limits of the country’s immigration system. Dutch supporters with extensive public relations experience helped train some of the immigrants to transform the raw accounts of immigrants into sharp and compelling stories that specifically targeted the moral ambiguities of the Dutch public. Other supporters had contacts to Dutch media outlets and supportive politicians. The experiences of the immigrant activists, the skills of the public relations supporters, and the political and media contacts of allies complemented one another and produced important amplification effects. “In Osdorp, the government came everyday, TV channels came everyday. Each day there were discussions, speeches” (activist 2, We Are Here). The intensive media attention eventuated in an invitation to interview with a Dutch national television station at the news station. “We went there, three women with four men. We went there to the big television! We were sitting there, we discussed with the journalists. They talked about our problem and more than 100,000 Dutch people watched us on the same air that night” (activist 1, We Are Here). The broad and positive media coverage resulted in more news coverage by both national and international news outlets including the BBC and Al Jazeera. Thus, by combining resources derived from different networks (migrant experiences, media training, connections to journalists and politicians), We Are Here was able to create powerful synergies and amplification effects, resulting in a buzz that far exceeded the original point of conflict. After achieving this buzz, new possibilities opened up to further expand the scope and allure of the struggle. More supporters entered the fray, new supporters replaced and reinforced older ones, they assumed brokering roles in their own right, they extended the struggle into new directions across their sociopolitical worlds, and their resources and skills produced unanticipated and unplanned amplification effects. The sharp upturn in resources and attention helped the campaign expand the message and draw in more support from broader elements of the region and country. At this stage, the original point of resistance had been transformed into a powerful disturbance that brought to light the wrongs of the government’s bordering policies. What the government did was no longer assumed to be natural. Its bordering practices had been denaturalized through this complex networking process, forcing the government to justify its policies, both morally and legally. The network mechanisms highlighted here do not explain for the organizational infrastructures that “fixed” the mobilization at a broader geographical scale, but they do provide insight into how the mobilization moved from a very small and imperceptible seed of resistance into a potent and disruptive mobilization. After achieving a certain ability to pull in greater resources and attention, participants could then develop an infrastructure to stabilize and steer it. Prior to this stage, however, a resistance needs to move beyond its original point of origin and generate sufficient buzz to puncture the public sphere and draw attention, resources, and support. Concluding remarks The argument of the paper is that government-led bordering strategies have produced resistances and mobilizations that continually destabilize, disrupt, and blur the sociospatial boundaries separating “legal” from so-called “illegal” populations. The growing power of states to police national borders unleashes small resistances that scale up and out, eating into and hollowing out the state’s capacities to effectively achieve its ultimate bordering ends. The progression of bordering measures has planted thousands of doubts, disagreements, and resistances that disrupt the smooth transmission of power. Many of these small disruptions do not grow into larger scale struggles for immigrant rights. Government officials have great skills and capacities to contain conflicts and repair any damage

51

that may come from them, but certain points of resistance escape their reach and become larger-scale mobilizations. Struggles may not force governments to completely reconfigure their bordering rationales and strategies, but they often unsettle the common sense that rendered bordering strategies into normal parts of civic, political, and administrative life. These struggles assert that government strategies are wrong because the people targeted for exclusion are equals who merit basic rights. The growing resonance and legitimacy of such arguments compel government officials to justify practices in public debate. In certain cases, struggles may compel governments to introduce measures that provide some subgroups (children, assimilated youths, families, asylum seekers) an exemption from normal exclusionary rules. More bordering has therefore not resulted in an impermeable “fortress Europe” or “fortress America”. Instead and quite unexpectedly, it has given rise to countless resistances and countless debates over who belongs and doesn’t belong in these countries. These resistances and heated debates have complicated the lines separating populations while also perforating small and large holes into national walls. Lastly, it must be stressed that this paper is not about a single and cohesive social movement. Just as the state has developed different and specific ways to exert its bordering powers against immigrant populations, the resistances and mobilizations are differentiated and specific as well. Each resistance has its own specific configurations (grievances, participants, ideas, and so on). As different seeds of resistance grow, they may become entangled with other struggles, but they also retain their specific raisons d’être, passions, claims, and goals. Rather than viewing these mobilizations as integrated parts of massive immigrant rights movements, it would be more accurate to say that they are specific struggles against the very different ways in which governments enact power against immigrant communities. These differentiated resistances and mobilizations eat multiple and varied holes into the lines separating “legal” from “illegal” populations, eating into state border rationalities and capacities. Conflict of interest There are no conflict of interest. References Abrego, L. (2013). Latino immigrants’ diverse experiences of ‘illegality’. In C. Menjívar & D. Kanstroom (Eds.), Constructing immigrant ‘illegality’: Critiques, experiences, and responses (pp. 139–160). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Assemblée Citoyenne des Originaires de Turquie (ACORT) (2007). Director, personal interview. Anonymous immigrant (1995). Les entraves administratives se multiplient envers les étrangers. Le Monde. Arendt, H. (1973). On the origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Balibar, E. (2004). We, the people of Europe? Reflections on transnational citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Berezin, M. (2013). The normalization of the right in post-security Europe. In W. Streeck & A. Schäfer (Eds.), Politics in the Age of Austerity (pp. 239–260). Cambridge: Polity Press. Blin, T. (2005). Les Sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard. Mouvement social et action organisée. Paris: L’Harmattan. Broeders, D., & Engbersen, G. (2007). The fight against illegal migration. American Behavioral Scientist, 50, 1592–1609. Calavita, K. (2005). Immigrants at the margins: Law, race, and exclusion in Southern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chauvin, S., & Garcés-Mascarenas, B. (2012). Beyond informal citizenship: The new moral economy of migrant illegality. International Political Sociology, 6, 241– 259. Chavez, L. (2008). The Latino threat: Constructing immigrants, citizens, and the nation. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Coleman, M. (2007). Immigration geopolitics beyond the Mexico-US border. Antipode, 38(1), 54–76. Coutin, S. (2003). Legalizing moves: Salvadoran immigrants’ struggle for U.S. residency. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. De Barros, F. (2004). From the local to the national, local governance and the genesis of the ‘social mix’ policy from to the 1990s to 1950s. French Politics, 2, 61–80.

52

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 43–52

Derby, J. (2014). Everyday illegal: When policies undermine immigrant families. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Diani, M. (2014). The cement of civil society: Studying networks in localities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Documentation Française. (2012). L’immigration et politique migratoire en France. . Doomernik, J. (2010). Overview of Dutch asylum and immigration system: Dutch methods of regulating migration. Migration Watch UK, briefing paper 10/19. . Durand, J., & Massey, D. (2003). The cost of contradiction: US border policy, 1996-2000. Latino Studies, 1(1), 233–252. Emmons, S. (1997). The Debré Bill: Immigration legislation or a national ‘front’? Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 5(1), 357–366. Espino, R. (2013). Immigration politicking and the perceptions of Latino voters in Arizona. In L. Magaña & E. Lee (Eds.), Latino politics and Arizona’s immigration law SB 1070: Immigrants and minorities, politics and policy (pp. 27–41). New York: Springer. Fassin, D. (2011). Policing borders, producing boundaries. the governmentality of immigration in dark times. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 213–226. Fernandez-Kelley, P., & Massey, D. (2007). Borders for whom? The role of NAFTA in Mexico-U.S. migration. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 610, 98–118. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality I: The will to knowledge. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon. Fédération syndicale unitaire (FSU) (2007). Director, personal interview. Gonzales, R. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76(4), 602–619. Gonzalez-Barrera, A. (2014). U.S. deportations of immigrants reach record high in 2013, Pew Research Center, Fact Tank. . Goodwin, J., & Jasper, J. (1999). Caught in a winding, snarling vine: The structural bias of political process theory. Sociological Forum, 14(1), 27–54. Gutiérrez, D. (1991). Sin fronteras? Chicanos, Mexican Americans, and the emergence of the contemporary Mexican immigration debate, 1968–1978. Journal of American Ethnic History, 10(4), 5–37. Hayward, J., & Wright, V. (2002). Governing from the center: Core executive coordination in France. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ireland, P. (1994). The policy challenge of ethnic diversity. Immigrant politics in France and Switzerland. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Isaacson, A., & Meyer, M. (2013). The alarming rise of migrant deaths on U.S. soil – and what to do about it. Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America. Jasper, J. (1997). The Art of Moral Protest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, K. (2012). A case study of color-blindness: The racially disparate impacts of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and the failure of comprehensive immigration reform. University of California Irvine Law Review, 314–356. Joppke, C. (2007). Beyond national models: Civic integration policies for immigrants in Western Europe. West European Politics, 30(1), 1–22. Joppke, C. (2008). Immigration and the identity of citizenship: the paradox of universalism. Citizenship Studies, 12(6), 533–546. Kiza, E. (2008). Tödliche grenzen – die fatalen Auswirkungen europäischer Zuwanderungspolitik. Münster: Lit Verlag. Koopmans, R., Statham, R., Giugni, M., & Passy, F. (2005). Contested citizenship. Immigration and cultural diversity in Europe. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press. Massey, D., & Pren, K. (2012). Unintended consequences of US immigration policy: Explaining the post-1965 surge from Latin America. Population and Development Review, 38(1), 1–29. Menjívar, C. (2000). Fragmented ties: Salvadoran immigrant networks in America. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Menjívar, C., & Abrego, L. (2012). Legal violence: Immigration law and the lives of Central American immigrants. American Journal of Sociology, 117(5), 1380– 1421.

Menjívar, C., & Kanstroom, D. (Eds.), (2013). Constructing “illegality”: Immigrant experiences, critiques, and resistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, B. (2000). Geography and social movements: Comparing antinuclear activism in the Boston Area. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Miller, P., & Rose, N. (1990). Governing economic life. Economy and Society, 19(1), 1–31. Nevins, J. (2002). Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Control. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. New York Times. (2004). The changing face of the Island’s labor force. November 14, 2004. Ngai, M. (2004). Impossible subjects: Illegal aliens and the making of modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nicholls, W. (2009). Place, relations, networks: The geographical foundations of social movements. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34(1), 78–93. Nicholls, W. (2013a). The DREAMers: How the undocumented youth movement transformed the immigrant rights debate in the United States. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Nicholls, W. (2013b). Fragmenting citizenship: Dynamics of cooperation and conflict in France’s immigrant rights movement. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36, 611–631. Nill, A. (2011). Latinos and S.B. 1070: Demonization, dehumanization, and disenfranchisement. Harvard Latino Law Review, 14, 35–66. Pallares, A., & Flores González, N. (2011). Regarding family: New actors in the Chicago protests. In K. Voss & I. Bloemraad (Eds.), Rallying for immigrant rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Passel, J. (2006). The size and characteristics of the unauthorized migrant population in the U.S. Research Report, Pew Hispanic Center. Péchu, C. (1999). Black African immigrants in France and claims for housing. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 25(4), 727–744. Routledge, P. (2005). Convergence space: Process geographies of grassroots globalisation networks. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28(3), 333–349. Schinkel, W. (2013). The imagination of ‘society’ in measurements of immigrant integration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(7), 1142–1161. Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. Yale University Press. Siméant, J. (1998). La cause des sans-papiers. Paris: Presses Sciences-Po. Strunk, C., & Leitner, H. (2013). Resisting federal–local immigration enforcement partnerships: Redefining ‘secure communities’ and public safety. Territory, Politics, Governance, 1(1), 62–85. Solidaire Unitaire Démocratique (SUD). Personal Interview, Organizer, 121–149. Tarrow, S., & McAdam, D. (2005). Scale shift in transnational contention. In D. della Porta & S. Tarrow (Eds.), Transnational protest and global activism. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Theodore, N. (2011). Policing borders: Unauthorized immigration and the pernicious politics of attrition. Social Justice, 38(1/2), 87–102. Uitermark, U. (2012). Dynamics of power in Dutch integration politics. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Van der Leun, J. (2006). Excluding illegal migrants in the Netherlands: Between national politics & local implementation. West European Politics, 29, 310–326. Van Houtum, H., Kramsch, O., & Zierhover, W. (2005). B/ordering Space. In H. Van Houtum, O. Kramsch, & W. Zierhove (Eds.), B/ordering Space. Hants, U.K.: Ashgate. Varsanyi, M. (2008). Rescaling the ‘alien’, rescaling personhood: Neoliberalism, immigration, and the state. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4), 877–889. Versteegt, I., & Maussen, M. (2012). Contested policies of exclusion: Resistance and protest against asylum policy in the Netherlands. Accept Pluralism Research Report. . Vigneswaran, D. (2008). Enduring territoriality: South African immigration control. Political Geography, 27, 783–801. Voss, K., & Bloemraad, I. (2011). Rallying for immigrants: The fight for inclusion in 21st century America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Walker, K., & Leitner, H. (2011). The variegated landscape of local immigration policies in the United States. Urban Geography, 32(2), 156–178. Weil, P. (1991). La France et ses étrangers: L’aventure d’une politique de l’immigration, 1938–1991. Paris: Calman-Levy.