Abstract
ABSTRACTDeportation of immigrants is a high-ranking issue on political agendas across Europe. Political authorities, however, face a challenge regarding forced returns: affected migrants, organized activists and concerned citizens are standing up for deportees. Do these protests contest the nation state’s sovereignty, expressed in the right to carry out deportations of foreign citizens? How far-reaching are protesters’ ambitions for political changes? Based on a developed typology of change aspirations, this article explores this topic by studying anti-deportation protests in Austria. It combines qualitative data from interviews with protesters with longitudinal data covering protest events from 1993 to 2013. Expanding previous research, the study finds that protests often refrain from demanding fundamental political change, instead they demonstrate overt conformism for tactical purposes. At the same time, protesters develop grievances about deportation policies and practices in the course of protest developments – they have covert reformist ambitions.
Highlights
Strengthening national sovereignty and taking back control over national borders have become rising political imperatives across Western democracies
We will present the developed typology for political change aspirations in anti-deportation protests which we developed and which provides the conceptual scheme for our analysis
We developed and applied a typology of political change aspirations, and we examined the scope of political change that antideportation protests are engaging for
Summary
Strengthening national sovereignty and taking back control over national borders have become rising political imperatives across Western democracies. The forced removal of unauthorized residents plays an important role in this political agenda. The political commitment to deportation is often pursued in the name of “the people”, as a response to citizens’ discontent with irregular immigration (Drotbohm and Hasselberg 2015, 565; Wong 2015). There have been protests staged by advocacy groups, affected migrants, organized activists and by concerned citizens. Instances of case mobilization in particular, i.e. cases in which people have protested against the enforcement of deportations in solidarity with specific immigrants, have gained much public attention and visibility (Buff 2018; Ellermann 2009; Freedman 2011)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
