The Emergence of Pro‐Regularization Movements in Western Europe
| Published date | 01 August 2007 |
| Author | Barbara Laubenthal |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2007.00412.x |
| Date | 01 August 2007 |
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
© 2007 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2007 IOM
International Migration Vol. 45 (3) 2007
ISSN 0020-7985
* Ruhr-University Bochum, Department of Social Sciences, Bochum, Germany
The Emergence of Pro-Regularization
Movements in Western Europe
Barbara Laubenthal*
ABSTRACT
Contrary to the image conveyed by existing research on irregular migrants as
powerless and exploited victims of restrictive immigration policies, irregular
migrants in some European countries display a strong potential for collective
action. In France, Spain and Switzerland since the mid-1990s pro-regularization
movements have emerged which have claimed the collective regularization
of illegal migrants. At the centre of these new social movements were illegal
migrants from sub-saharan Africa, Latin America and former Yugoslavia who
went public and claimed a legal residence status. This article starts form the
assumption that despite important differences between the three countries,
they share several central characteristics which enabled the emergence of these
pro-regularization movements. In order to identify these preconditions, three
country studies, based on an innovative social movement research approach,
were carried out. The ndings of the country studies show that the ndings
of the country studies shows that in the three countries the same specic pre-
conditions existed which encouraged the emergence of the pro-regularization
movements.
InTRoduCTIon
Since the mid-1990s, some European states, have witnessed the emergence of
people who were “not supposed to exist” going public and becoming political
actors.1 In France in 1996 and in Spain and Switzerland in 2001, illegal migrants
from Mali, Ecuador, and the former Yugoslavia, among other countries, initiated
church occupations and demonstrations, claiming their right to live legally and
102 Laubenthal
© 2007 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2007 IOM
permanently in their host countries.2 The migrants were supported by civil soci-
ety organizations, trade unions, political parties, and celebrities who demanded
the opening of collective regularization processes and the abolishment of recent
restrictive changes in immigration laws. Social movements emerged which
succeeded in organizing and in geographically extending the protest events, in
initiating national pro-regularization demonstrations with 10,000 (Switzerland),
40,000 (Spain), and 100,000 (France) participants, and in making the topic of
regularization a top news issue. As a consequence of the protests, national regu-
larization processes were opened in France in June 1997 and in Spain in June
2001. In Switzerland, although the movement did not achieve any changes in
governmental policy, illegal immigration was established as a political issue in
public discourse. As a result of the mobilization, advice bureaus and lobby groups
for illegal migrants were created.
The emergence of these pro-regularization movements calls for an explanation.
In principle, mobilizations of illegal migrants appear improbable. Undocumented
migrants do not possess the rights of democratic participation that would enable
them to put demands on the state. On the contrary, they already trespass the law
merely by being where they are. Existing research on illegality has focused on
the lack of political, social, and economic rights of illegal migrants that follows
from their illegal status and impedes the possibility of their collective self-or-
ganization. As Gibney notes, “One feature of this rightlessness is that they are
deprived of a public stage on which to express their grievances. They are locked
in a position of social and political invisibility” (Gibney, 2000: 3).
Both national and comparative European research on illegal migration have
stressed that the constitutive feature of migrants’ illegal status is the need to
render themselves invisible (Anderson, 1999; Alt, 1999; Jurado Guerrero, 2000).
Consequently, existing research has overwhelmingly ignored the collective action
of illegal migrants and their supporters. Exceptions include a study by Siméant
(1998) that deals primarily with migrant protests in France before 1996, and a
study by Lindemann (2001) on the framing of the French movement. For the
Spanish case, a few purely descriptive studies exist although they are regionally
limited (Aierbe, 2001; Montalbán López, 2004). The protests in Switzerland
similarly have only been the subject of locally delimited university papers (Ca-
hannes, 2003; Röthlisberger, 2003). To date, neither a theoretical examination
nor a comparative study of pro-regularization movements exists.
This article aims to address this research gap by identifying preconditions in
national contexts that encourage the emergence of pro-regularization movements.
It hypothesizes that France, Spain, and Switzerland display specic common
features that enabled the emergence of pro-regularization movements. All three
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The emergance of pro-regularization movements of western Europe
© 2007 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2007 IOM
have witnessed the emergence of pro-regularization movements although they
differ strongly in terms of, rst, the politico-institutional settings they offer for
the emergence of social movements and, second, their national migration tradi-
tions and migration regimes.
First, the countries’ various politico-institutional settings can be compared.
France has the characteristics of a strong, exclusivist state that does not offer
many points of access for challengers and is “associated with protest character-
istics diametrically opposed to those of the Swiss movements” (Koopmans and
Kriesi, 1995: 52). Protest in France generally takes place in unconventional and
disruptive forms. In Switzerland, the political system possesses a high degree of
openness and strong direct-democratic and consensual elements which favour the
emergence of moderate forms of mobilization and the rapid institutionalization
of social movement organizations. In Spain, various factors have contributed
to the specic characteristics of civil society and movement emergence. As a
result of the dictatorship, which lasted until 1975, civil society organizations
only emerged in the 1980s; before that, emergent social movements had been
dominated by political parties. The New Social Movements in Spain “… are
not just late, they are extremely weak. This weakness is derived, on one hand,
from Spanish society’s traditional incapacity for civil organization and action
away from the state, and, on the other, from the consolidation of a system of
representation that is controlled by the top leadership of the political parties”
(Alvarez-Junco, 1994: 320).
Secondly, these three countries differ regarding their migration traditions and
migration regimes. France and Switzerland are “old” immigration countries.
As early as the second half of the nineteenth century, France developed into a
country of “mass immigration” (Weil, 1994: 253). Both countries have witnessed
labour immigration since the middle of the nineteenth century and have served
as places of refuge for political emigrants. In contrast, Spain turned from an
emigration into an immigration country only at the end of the twentieth century
(Aparicio, 2003: 213). Despite these surface similarities, France and Switzerland
differ strongly regarding their model of integration of foreigners. The French
immigration model was inuenced by the principles of the French Revolution,
and its origin was based on an assimilationist philosophy (Hollield, 1999;
Withol de Wenden, 1999: 100). In contrast the Swiss migration regime is highly
restrictive. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, it has been founded on
the fear of an “overforeignization” of Swiss society and has aimed at preventing
the permanent settlement of foreigners (Mahnig, 2003: 141).
Nonetheless, despite the differences in politico-institutional structures and nation-
al migration schemes, the three countries have seen the emergence of extremely
similar pro-regularization social movements. Social movements, understood as
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