This chapter examines how different groups of immigrants become visible in public debates and especially looks into the networks that produce different types of images and claims. The chapter's empirical argument is that there has been a divergence in asylum politics between two different kinds of groups. The first group consists of people who are strongly integrated into local communities and receive substantial support in their quest to reverse a negative decision on their application. The second group consists of rejected asylum seekers who do not conform to the idealized image of the integrated immigrant. This group is embedded in very different sets of relations and places from those in the first group and relies strongly on movement networks in cities, especially Amsterdam. Beyond the specifics of mobilization networks, the chapter shows that contention surfaces even in a hostile discursive climate and a context of massive investments in managing immigrant flows.
Walter J. Nicholls Justus Uitermark, Cities and Social Movements: Immigrant Rights Activism in the United States, France, and the Netherlands, 1970–2015, 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.