The Role of Social Capital in Migrants’ Engagement in Local Politics in European Cities

Abstract

European scholars studying migrants’ political participation largely privilege explanations based on structural approaches that link political participation to structures of opportunities and constraints. On the one hand, the political opportunity structures (POS) approach, developed within the social movements field, focuses on how the citizenship regime defines different sets of individual and collective rights for migrants, as well as different opportunities for the emergence of migrants’ collective action (Koopmans and Statham, 2000a; Koopmans et al., 2005). On the other hand, other work focuses more on the opportunities and constraints set by organizational structures, specifically ethnic organizational structures and how they increase levels of migrant political participation (Fennema and Tillie, 1999 and 2001; Fennema, 2004). With respect to the latter approach, however, a recent debate has emerged as to whether different types of organizational structures that lead to the formation of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social capital may have a varying impact on migrants’ political integration (Phalet and Swyngedouw, 2002; Jacobs and Tillie, 2004). The main claim is that different types of organizational structures and links shape opportunities, constraints and resources in non-uniform ways, and hence will have potentially divergent effects on migrants’ political integration.