Abstract

This paper examines how social movement organizations shift scale through the case of the immigrant rights movement. This was largely a local movement for the first decades of its existence. However, in the late 1990s, repressive federal policies increased the salience of national politics for many organizations. While recognizing the importance of national politics, many organizations remained mostly engaged in local politics for nearly a decade. The aim of this paper is to examine why immigrant rights organizations stayed local for so long after the threat shifted to the federal level and why they actually shifted to the national scale when they did. It does so by focusing on the case of Los Angeles.

摘要

本文研究了社会运动组织如何通过移民权利运动的案例来改变规模。在成立的最初几十年中，这很大程度上是一场本地运动。但是，在1990年代后期，压制性的联邦政策提高了许多组织对国家政治的重视。在认识到国家政治的重要性的同时，许多组织在近十年中仍主要从事地方政治。本文的目的是研究在威胁转移到联邦一级后，为什么移民权利组织会在当地停留这么长时间，以及为什么这样做后实际上又转移到了国家规模。它通过关注洛杉矶案来做到这一点。