Taking Sides: Protest Against the Deportation of Asylum Seekers. A Comparison between Germany, Austria and Switzerland

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Helen Schwenken
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 236619640

Taking Sides: Protest Against the Deportation of Asylum SeekersIn the era of the so called deportation turn within liberal democracies, certain sections of the population express unease and moral outrage towards the forcible expulsion of non-citizens from the state territory. Against this background, the project Taking Sides analyses anti-deportation protest trajectories in the three D/A/CH countries, Germany (D), Austria (A), and Switzerland (CH), trans-nationally, over a period of 15 years, and by developing a new synthesis of different theoretical strands to explain variation. Aiming at exploring and explaining the goals, form and degree of diverse anti-deportation protest activities across countries and time (1995-2010), the project seeks to answer the following research questions: What shapes the trajectories of protest against the deportation of asylum seekers and what is characteristic and even distinct about anti-deportation protest? How can we explain variation in the goals, forms, and degree of anti-deportation protest, both across countries and over time? How relevant are structural factors vis-à-vis agency and resources? What role do emotional and social ties to deportees play in explaining anti-deportation protest?Assuming that variation not only occurs across nation states, but also within countries and even between individual deportation cases, we will apply and redefine a tripartite explanatory model developed for this project proposal. The model considers (a) the political opportunity structure for anti-deportation protest that is characteristic for each of the three countries, (b) dynamics resulting from changes in the political environment as well as from previous protest in the field, and (c) material and non-material resources available to protest actors and deportees. Thus, by establishing a dialogue between migration research, political science, and social movement research, the project develops an integrated perspective combining the political opportunity structure approach with the resource mobilization perspective and further develops the two by integrating political dynamics and emotional processes into the analysis. The project applies a mixed method approach for data collection and analysis. A media claims analysis will be completed by a series of in-depth case studies to collect information on the composition of protest groups and their resources, their social ties to deportees, and the course and reach of the protest. The added value of investigating protest in three (partly similar, partly different) countries is to fill the lack of comparative analysis across national contexts and longer periods of time that would provide insights into the dynamics of such protest, the composition of protest groups and their aims and protest activities. The expected results will contribute to explaining factors of these altruistic, small-scale protest activities.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Gianni D' Amato; Professorin Dr. Sieglinde Rosenberger