The Immigrant Rights Struggle, and the Paradoxes of Radical Activism in Europe

Abstract

This paper discusses one of the dilemmas inherent in social movement mobilizations: the lack of an aligned frame within a movement. It shows how the existence of a dominant and a subordinate faction (European activists and refugees) with different social and ideological identities within the immigrant rights mobilizations in Berlin led to the emergence of paradoxes, and became counterproductive. This had two consequences: first, a power structure emerged which privileged European activists over the very people they sought to empower. Second, some refugees began to adopt the European activists' framing of the issue as anti-colonial/capitalist, in spite of the fact that it contradicted their primary demands concerning permission to work and reside in Germany.