New migrant activism: Frame alignment and future protest participation
| Author | Georgios Karyotis,Stratos Patrikios,Dimitris Skleparis |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/13691481211037988 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211037988
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2022, Vol. 24(2) 381 –400
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211037988
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New migrant activism:
Frame alignment and future
protest participation
Georgios Karyotis1, Dimitris Skleparis2
and Stratos Patrikios3
Abstract
New migrant movements increasingly rely on unconventional forms of protest, which they
strategically frame in rational terms, rather than as ‘acts of desperation’ that dominate public
representations. This article demonstrates this empirically through a prototypical case of new
migrant activism, employing discourse analysis to explore the collective framing of a hunger
strike involving irregular migrants in Greece, which was, however, contested by other protest
users. Drawing on rare and pertinent data collected through face-to-face interviews with hunger
strikers, we find that the strategic or rationalist framing of the hunger strike, promoted by its
leaders, was largely shared with individual protesters at the basis of the mobilisation, contrary to
the publicly proliferated affective frames. Using quantitative methods, we show, for the first time,
that the degree of frame alignment is not only important for the legitimacy of a movement but is
also a significant predictor of future remobilisation in radical types of protest activity.
Keywords
frame alignment, Greece, migration, mixed-methods, protest, social movements
Introduction
Participation in protest by undocumented migrants is considered improbable. This is not
only because of their limited resources and networks, but also because of their perceived
inability to constitute a ‘community’ and construct a positive identity that could form the
basis for the emergence of a protest movement (Siméant, 1994). When irregular migrants
do mobilise, political and media discourses tend to depict such actions as acts of despera-
tion. In this reading, destitute and powerless individuals resort to protest, overrun by their
negative emotions about their predicament. This is especially applicable to non-Western
migrants and to more radical forms of protest. Headlines like The Mirror’s (2016)
1University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
2Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
3University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Corresponding author:
Georgios Karyotis, University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Building, Room 1306, 40 Bute Gardens, Glasgow
G12 8RT, UK.
Email: georgios.karyotis@glasgow.ac.uk
1037988BPI0010.1177/13691481211037988The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsKaryotis et al.
research-article2021
Original Article
382 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24(2)
‘Desperate migrants sew their mouths together in protest at Calais Jungle’ serve as a fre-
quent reminder of the perceived affective and spontaneous reaction of migrants to their
harsh living conditions and destitution. This arbitrary interpretation adopts a particular
‘Orientalist’ frame (Said, 1978), which seems to have captured the imagination of Western
societies that host such migrants.
The characteristics, frequency and salience of political mobilisations over the last dec-
ade by refugees and irregular migrants in Europe and beyond question the validity of this
narrative (Ataç et al., 2016), leading some to describe this as a ‘new era’ of migrant or
refugee protest (Ataç et al., 2015: 5). Migrant activists increasingly react against deten-
tion, deportation and dispersal policies, and mobilise in favour of human rights, freedom
of movement, as well as access to asylum procedures and labour markets (Oliveri, 2016).
In July 2019, around 700 undocumented African migrants – self-labelled as the ‘Black
Vests’ movement in reference to the recent ‘Yellow Vests’ anti-government protests –
stormed the Pantheon Mausoleum in Paris calling for the right to stay in France. Other
prominent recent examples include the 2010 riots in Rosarno, Southern Italy, the 2012
occupation of Oranienplatz square in Berlin, Germany, the march of hundreds of Syrian
refugees towards Turkey’s land border with Greece in 2015, and several hunger strikes
across Europe. These ‘new migrant movements’ appear to be strategic in how they project
their voices, whom they connect with and what repertoires of action they employ (Oliveri,
2016). Specifically, they challenge depictions of irregular migrants and refugees as either
criminals or victims that lack political agency and are driven to protest by their emotions
alone. Instead, their ‘strategic framing’ (Schön and Rein, 1994) draws attention to an
alternative consideration: a common ground that migrants/refugees share with citizens in
terms of core moral values, experiences of injustice and calls for structural changes that
would be mutually beneficial (Oliveri, 2016).
Nevertheless, the more interweaved structures and communicative frames characteris-
ing new migrant movements leave them exposed to attacks about their integrity and repre-
sentativeness. For one, due to the unequal distribution of scarce and valuable mobilisation
resources among the multiple actors that comprise them, quite often natives tend to assume
dominant positions in managing how the legal and cultural claims of immigrants are
framed in the public sphere (Della Porta, 2018: 14). For another, the frames promoted by
protest organisers and leaders may not be representative of the views among movement
participants. Prior studies have found that the claims put forward by movement grassroots,
as opposed to movement leaders, tend to be more ‘existential’ – promoting individual
gains – rather than political – promoting systemic change (Chimienti and Solomos, 2011).
These provide fertile ground for opponents to question the independent organisation of
new migrant movements and adopt affective and restrictionist frames, which aim to nullify
the protesting ‘Other’ and contest the legitimacy of the movement’s motives and claims
(Rosenberger, 2018: 10). The extent to which there is ‘frame alignment’ between protest
organisers and individual participants in a movement has been shown to have significant
implications for both its internal cohesion and external standing, yet it has rarely been
studied empirically and never in relation to new migrant movements (Ketelaars et al.,
2014: 3–4; Opp, 2009).
This article seeks to address this gap through an empirical assessment of an early
instance of ‘new’ migrant activism in Greece, which represents a ‘prototypical’ case
(Rose and Mackenzie, 1991). In January 2011, about 300 irregular migrants originating
from the Maghreb countries and residing illegally in Crete travelled to the two major
Greek cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, and commenced a hunger strike that lasted for
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