The Dynamics of Immigration Rights Protest in Illinois, 2005-2014

• In Event: 129 - Section on Latino/a Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Latino/a Sociology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Latino Social Movements and Civic Engagement

Abstract

In seeking to understand the dynamics of Immigration Rights protest in Illinois in the last 10 years, we ask 3 questions: 1) which organizations are involved in immigration protest; 2) How do these organizations make decisions about when and where to protest, what tactics to used and which other organizations to work with; 3) What does a network analysis look like for immigration rights organizations? Which organizations have a high degree of centrality? Where are the structural holes in the network(s)? How dense are the network ties? Data was collected by performing Boolean String searches of an online repository of newspapers in order to find candidate articles detailing Immigration Rights protest. Events were coded for location, organizations involved, size and other protest features. After gathering the names of the organizations involved, they were contacted and semi-structured interviews were used to understand the decision making process, as well as identify the other organizations they work with to engage in protest--which provided the data for the network analysis. Preliminary analysis of the semi-structured interviews shows a significant discrepancy between numbers of events covered in newspapers relative to documentation of events provided by the organizations, suggesting some potential newspaper coverage bias against immigration rights protest. We also found variation across organizations as to which tactics to employ and willingness to coordinate with other groups (based on the network analysis) irrespective of the organizations stated desires in interviews to work with other organizations.

Authors

• Simon Weffer-Elizondo, Northern Illinois University

• Sara Biseno, Northern Illinois University