Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

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Political Geography
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / p o l g e o

Producing-resisting national borders in the United States,

France and the Netherlands
Walter J. Nicholls *
Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, Univeristy of California, Irvine, CA, USA

A R T I C L E

I N F O

Article history:
Available online 8 January 2016
Keywords:
Immigration
Borders
Resistance
Social movements

A B S T R A C T

Since the 1990s, governments in the United States, France, and the Netherlands have expanded their capacities to police their national borders against immigrants. The paper examines how such efforts have
contributed to the growth of centralized policing agencies and the devolution of powers to individualized border enforcers (local police, service providers, nonprot organizations, etc.). The paper argues that
bordering strategies have closed some holes in national walls, but they have also introduced countless disagreements, disputes, and resistances by undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents,
national citizens, and frontline border enforcers. Many of these small resistances stay small and do not
evolve into large contentious struggles. Others scale up and present more important challenges to government efforts. Rather than simply producing smooth governing machines that sharpen boundaries
between the national citizen and the foreign Other, bordering strategies generate waves of small and big
struggles that puncture and blur these facile boundaries.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In a number of northern countries, a growing consensus emerged
during the 1990s that immigrants presented a threat to national
communities and that states needed to get tough on this population (Berezin, 2013; Joppke, 2007, 2008). While there have certainly
been differences in how governments (e.g. United States, France, and
the Netherlands) have developed and enacted bordering strategies, there have also been similarities. This paper suggests that one
similarity has been the concentration of power in central government agencies (law enforcement, courts, detention and deportation
facilities) and the devolution of bordering powers to individualized border enforcers (local ocials, service providers, private
employers, ). The paper maintains that this effort to construct more
impermeable borders has not resulted in smooth governing machines to separate populations. Bordering strategies have instead
politicized immigration as an issue and opened up governmental
practices to disagreements, resistance, and contentious struggles
(Strunk & Leitner, 2013; Vigneswaran, 2008). The paper therefore
addresses two interlinked questions: How does the concentration
diffusion of bordering powers contribute to the proliferation of
resistances, and how do some (but not all) small resistances grow
into larger disruptive political forces?

* Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, Univeristy of California, Irvine, CA,

USA. Tel.: (949) 824-6323; Fax: (949) 824-8566.
E-mail address: wnicholl@uci.edu.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2015.12.001
0962-6298/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper argues that more restrictions enacted in more locations produce small disagreements, doubts, and resistances among
immigrants, supporters, and newly deputized border enforcers. Early
resistances generate thousands of small debates across localities and
institutional sites (local schools, police departments, state legislative bodies, and so on) over whether restrictive measures are
legitimate, moral, and just. Some of these small seeds of resistance can fester, sharpen, and spread through complex networking
processes. As certain seeds grow into potent mobilizations, they can
present important disruptions and challenge to government policies and rationalities.
The paper illustrates the theoretical argument by drawing on secondary literature and the authors long-term research. The author
has performed extensive research on immigrant rights movements in the United States and France (Nicholls, 2013a, 2013b), and
continues to perform research on the United States. The research
in the United States and France depended on semi-structured interviews, archive analysis of key immigrant rights organizations, and
the construction and analysis of large newspaper databases. The
Dutch case relies more on secondary materials. The Amsterdam campaign discussed in the nal section of the paper draws on ten semistructured interviews with immigrant activists and nonprot
organizations, a newspaper analysis, and the informative insights
provided by several students who participated in and studied the
mobilization. This short discussion is not intended to be a denitive account of the campaign but only a brief illustration of how
conicts grow from small resistances into a big, complex, and tangled
mobilization.

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W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

While not wanting to do violence to the particularities of any

single case, a three-country comparison provides a conceptual platform to make more general claims about the nature of state power
and resistance. By highlighting commonalities, we gain a better
understanding of the contradictions, holes, and inherent fragility
of expansive government strategies. The paper begins with an outline
of the basic theoretical argument. The second section describes
the new bordering strategies in the U.S., France, and the Netherlands. The third section analyzes how these strategies trigger
grievances, conicts, and resistances among undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents, national citizens, and newly
deputized border enforcers. The nal section uses a case in Amsterdam to describe how a small resistance took root in a specic
geographical environment and scaled up into a messy and large
mobilization.

Growing seeds into entangled, disruptive mobilizations

We still lack theoretical tools to understand the links between
more state power, small resistances, and upscaling small resistances into larger disruptive mobilizations. To address the connection
between these links, the paper draws inspiration from Michel Foucault and James Scott. Taken together, their work provides insights
into how modern governments create bounded categories to separate licit from illicit populations, how modern state power is deeply
fragmented, how governing powers become diffused across space
through localized relays, and how the enactment of power (against
illicit populations/conduct) in specic places generates a plurality
of resistances that undermine the bordering capacities of the state.
The subsection outlines four interlinked processes to address how
the expansion of a repressive governing apparatus (a bordering
regime, in this instance) multiplies resistances, and how these resistances sometimes grow into large and disruptive political forces.

Enforcingresisting borders
Contentious immigrant rights politics
Scholars studying immigrant social movements have largely
drawn from the theoretical toolkit provided by the social movement literature (Ireland, 1994; Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, & Passy,
2005; Voss & Bloemraad, 2011). While European scholars have drawn
mostly from the opportunity structure tradition of the social movement literature, their U.S. counterparts have turned more to the
resource mobilization tradition (Nicholls, 2013a; Voss & Bloemraad,
2011). For instance, Koopmans et al. (2005) focused on national level
political and discursive opportunity structures to understand variations between large immigrant rights mobilizations in four countries.
Voss and Bloemraad (2011) added to these insights in their study
of the big 2006 immigrant rights mobilizations in the U.S. by suggesting that resources (economic, cultural, political capital) were
essential for making these massive mobilizations possible. This literature says much about the factors that shape large-scale
mobilizations, but less about how small resistances emerge in response to growing government repression, and how small conicts
evolve into system threatening mobilizations.
Political geographers (Coleman, 2007; Strunk & Leitner, 2013;
Vigneswaran, 2008; Walker & Leitner, 2011) have shown that national governments have created more powerful, totalizing, and
sophisticated bordering regimes. These regimes have presented
limited political opportunities for many immigrant activists and undermined their legitimacy, but they also spur small resistances in
different localities and institutional settings (Strunk & Leitner, 2013;
Walker & Leitner, 2011). Other geographers have shown why and
how smaller conicts scale up into larger mobilizations (Miller, 2000;
Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005). Mobilizations emerge in localities, but political barriers and challenges at these scales may
precipitate leaders to switch to more fortuitous geopolitical scales
(Miller, 2000). While some scholars help explain why activists shift
scale, others have spent more time analyzing how scale shifts occur
(Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). Networks make it possible for activists in a locale to reach out to distant
others, obtain information concerning opportunities and constraints, access a broader variety of resources, expand organizational
infrastructures, and increase the number and diversity of possible
allies.
The sociological literature therefore helps us identify the political and organizational conditions that favor large social movements,
but it is less useful for understanding how small resistances proliferate in response to growing state power. Political geographers
have helped ll the gap by showing that people resist state power,
and why and how small resistances shift scale and become larger
mobilizations.

1. Illegality and bordering

State power in the 19th century, as Foucault famously noted,
focused on producing and managing life. It was a power bent on
generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than
one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit (Foucault,
1978, p. 136). Discourses arose concerning what constituted a good,
moral, and healthy population, and such discourses differentiated
this population from decient and polluting others. This resulted
in constructing a collective norm around which to distinguish
normal from abnormal populations (Foucault, 1978, p. 144).
While certain deviants (people veering from socially constructed norms) could be disciplined and normalized, others could
not. They were banished through symbolic and institutional sanctions that rendered their activities illegal and turned those engaging
in them into criminals. The process of making certain populations
illegal (illegalized) was therefore a political project to ensure the
wellbeing of the normal, licit, and legal population:
At the point of departure, then, one may place the political project
of rooting out illegalities, generalizing the punitive function and
delimiting, in order to control it [] The criminal designated as
the enemy of all, whom it is in the interest of all to track down, falls
outside the pact, disqualies himself as citizen and emerges, bearing
within him as it were, a wild fragment of nature; he appears as a
villain, a monster, a madman, perhaps, a sick and, before long,
abnormal individuals (Foucault, 1979, p. 101, emphasis added).
Fostering normal life in modern society required disallowing irreducibly abnormal lives (wild fragment of nature) from taking
root in society, often to the point of death (Foucault, 1978, p. 138).
This stimulated the production of categorical and institutional boundaries to exclude the threat from good society.
Bordering, as used in this paper, has been a central normative
rationality and technology to territorialize boundaries between good
and bad, legal and illegal populations (Fassin, 2011). The b/order,
as critical border scholars have long claimed, is an active verb (Van
Houtum et al., 2005, p. 3). It entails developing discourses for why
the Other is a threat, the construction of legal codes and administrative categories to translate subjective norms into formal criteria
and metrics, and the creation of repressive agencies, materials, and
institutions dividing desirable and undesirable populations. Those
on the other side of borders are rendered outside the law, making
it virtually impossible for citizens to recognize them as subjects of
solidarity and as beings with the right to have rights in the country
(Arendt, 1973; Ngai, 2004).
2. Concentratingindividualizing bordering powers
Protecting good and licit populations precipitates governments
to block the threatening Other from entering and settling within

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

its borders. Enhanced bordering capacities disallow (Foucault, 1978)

threatening life forms from taking root in society. This hastens governments to concentrate power in the central organs of the state
(police, courts, executive, legislative bodies). While the state amasses
and consolidates restrictive powers, large centralized institutions
lack the dexterity and reach to seal off the small cracks that allow
threats from taking root in society. This requires the introduction
of individualized techniques to seal off small and imperceptible openings in territorially bounded communities (Foucault, 1979).
To extend its reach downward, the state diffuses repressive powers
to countless actors who encounter the threatening Other in their
everyday lives. These relays of government power (teachers, police,
landlords, service providers, voluntary organizations, neighbors) are
essential because they are both the eyes and ears of the state and
gatekeepers of life-sustaining resources (Miller & Rose, 1990). Enlisting them in the war against the illegalized Other enhances the
reach of the central government into the micro-spaces of daily life,
enabling it to close access to essential resources and services. Efforts
to maximize borders in response to an enemy population like undocumented immigrants therefore induce a move that is unique to
the modern state (Foucault, 1978, 1979): concentrating powers in
central institutions of the state and empowering tens of thousands of people to assume responsibility in producing and enacting
borders.
3. Proliferating resistances and border transgressions
Modern (state) power produces as much as it denies (Foucault,
1978). Every time power is enacted, it gives life and differentiates
lives, while seeking to disallow the lives of others deemed to be
a threat to society (Foucault, 1978, p. 138). This results in the production of other subjects (groups that were named, categorized, and
kept apart from good, legal, normal society) while disallowing these
others the conditions needed to have full and normal lives. The Janusfaced nature of power (productive-denying) produces subjects with
the will to resist bordering practices. Where there is power, there
is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never
in a position of exteriority in relation to power (Foucault, 1978,
p. 95). The will to resist that develops from power relations complicates government goals to create a smooth, compliant, and wellordered society with clean lines to demarcate populations.
Illegalized populations like undocumented immigrants become
familiar with their exclusion not only through abstract discourses
and big government policies but also through interactions with the
specic border enforcers they encounter in their local, everyday
worlds (Menjvar & Abrego, 2012). These encounters deny access
to resources and services needed to sustain life. They also reinforce their essential inequality and irreducible otherness. A landlord,
nonprot organization, or medical practitioner denies a person a
life-sustaining service because she or he has been categorized as
illegal by the government and therefore an irreducible threat to
society. It is not simply the denial of life-giving resources that is troubling to this person but the rationale underlying this denial (stigma,
inequality, otherness). The countless small acts of denial, disrespect, and discrimination whether at a bank, a service counter, a
school, the streets, work, etc. reinforce profound feelings of marginalization and the need to assert their lives, dignity, and equality
in the face of recurrent exclusions. The will to resist is forged in the
small and specic struggles to secure life and recognition in the face
of everyday aggressions. People certainly had complex political lives
before their placement into a category of illegality. But their placement into this category becomes constitutive of their life and comes
to shape their political dispositions, concerns, and urges to resist
(Derby, 2014; Menjvar & Abrego, 2012).
Equally important, bordering measures are directed at a target
population (undocumented immigrants), but the broad nature of
these measures often spillover and trigger grievances and moral

45

shocks (Jasper, 1997) among populations not directly targeted by

the measures (e.g. citizens, permanent legal residents, naturalized
citizens). Rather than clearly delineate populations (licit and illicit),
bordering measures can blur boundaries by prompting legal residents and citizens to resist government measures and forming
feelings of solidarity with illegalized people where none had previously existed. First, the larger the population of undocumented
immigrants, the more likely the population has direct contacts to
permanent residents and citizens. Residents and citizens may have
family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers or acquaintances
directly targeted by bordering measures. This spreads the costs and
pain (nancial, physical, psychic, emotional) to those with strong
ties to undocumented immigrants (especially in mixed status families). When bordering measures are enacted in concrete places,
supporters may become morally shocked and aggrieved by the effects
of these measures on people they know, like and love. Second, streetlevel border enforcers (police, teachers, mayors, landlords, nonprot
organizations) are important components in the ght against undocumented immigrants (Vigneswaran, 2008). However, complying
with this role can conict with their professional responsibilities
and personal ethics (Van der Leun, 2006). This can introduce new
grievances and efforts to resist (passive and active) bordering roles.
Thus, maximizing state bordering powers, against a population that
has been rendered illegal, can plant seeds of resistance among the
targeted populations (undocumented immigrants) and the people
they come into regular contact with (legal permanent residents, citizens, etc.). These are not necessarily large mobilizations but, more
often than not, specic acts that question and push back on government efforts to enact bordering practices.
4. From small resistances into messy, entangled mobilizations
Resistances proliferate in localities and institutional settings in
response to the concentration, diffusion, and multiplication of state
power, but many of these resistances stay hidden, passive, and small.
In spite of their location, form, or size, resistances still generate important effects on dominant institutions and ideologies, and some
(but not most) small and uncoordinated acts of petty resistance
may aggregate to a point where they jeopardize state structures
(Scott, 1985, p. 344).
To address how and where some resistances aggregate, the paper
builds on the scaling and networking literature discussed above
(Diani, 2014; Miller, 2000; Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005). Small
resistances are geographically pervasive because they emerge where
state bordering powers are enacted (detention centers, neighborhoods, housing blocks, workplaces, street corners, and so on).
However, not all resistances succeed in aggregating into larger scale
mobilizations. Certain contexts provide more supportive environments for small seeds of resistance to grow into entangled networks
of contention (Goodwin & Jasper, 1999; Miller, 2000; Nicholls, 2009).
Some localities may possess more favorable norms and discourses;
concentrate more supportive organizations and resources; and
contain friendlier political elites. These contexts make it easier for
activists in budding resistances to sustain their struggles and make
demands on public ocials.
Growing a seed of resistance into a large mobilization is not automatic even in favorable contexts. It depends on people connecting
to one another through a complex networking process (Diani, 2014;
Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). The paper
aims to contribute to the literature by drawing attention to three
networking mechanisms that, when combined within a supportive context, can unleash the growth of small resistances into large
and tangled mobilizations: 1) Brokering refers to actors who connect
their comrades in a specic action to previously unconnected people
and organizations (Diani, 2014; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). This
enables the original group of resistors to reach beyond themselves and gain more access to information and resources from their

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W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

environment. 2) Extending networks occurs when recently connected allies, who had been connected through a broker, serve as
brokers in their own right. They introduce the original resistors to
their circle of friends. This extends the degrees of separation from
the original point of resistance, diffuses the message to multiple
publics, and creates important opportunities to draw in more resources, support, and information. 3) Amplifying occurs when the
resources, skills, and talents of different stakeholders complement
and amplify one another in powerful ways. For instance, someone
may possess good writing skills and another person may have connections to a newspaper editor. These resources apart are not very
important, but when they are brought together they produce amplication effects that can signicantly raise the public prole of an
action. This, in turn, draws in more supportive connections and resources to an emergent mobilization. When brokering, extending,
and amplifying mechanisms are unleashed, complex interactions
can occur between the mechanisms and contribute to a rapid buildup
in momentum, power and force. Growing a resistance beyond an
initial point of conict is important to disrupt government rationalities and practices. However, scaling up results in more people,
more heterogeneity and inequalities, and a greater likelihood of fragmentation (Nicholls, 2009; Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam,
2005). Growth comes with risk, but the risk is acceptable when marginalized actors are provided a pathway to disrupt government
repression.
In sum, by enacting sharp dividing lines, bordering as a government rationality and technology destabilizes society as it seeks to
protect and rationalize it. Rather than produce a sharp line in the
sand between good and bad people, we are left with countless
battles, cracks, and heated struggles concerning rights and equality in the national polity. The technologies of modern government
therefore politicize exclusionary practices as much as they depoliticize,
resulting in an unstable and permanently contentious sociopolitical order.

Constructing the immigrant threat

Immigration regimes vary by country, but many scholars agree
that there has been some convergence since the late 1980s (Berezin,
2013; Calavita, 2005; Joppke, 2007). For natives who attribute their
own precariousness to the decline of the nation-state (Berezin, 2013),
the immigrant is conceived as the personication of the problem.
It is a population that needs to be banished as the rst step to restoring an orderly and healthy society.
The United States witnessed a major surge in the immigrant
threat discourse in the late 1970s, with this discourse eventually
becoming a consensus position by the 1990s (Chavez, 2008; Massey
& Pren, 2012). Based on a review of news publications between 1965
and 1995, Massey and Pren (2012, p. 7) found that the pairing of
terms like crisis and Mexican immigrants increased from 1 per
year in 1965 to 39 in 1990. High prole personalities (intellectuals, pundits, politicians) emphasized different aspects of this threat.
Some stressed that their lack of morals made Mexicans a threat to
public welfare institutions. Others stressed that their lack of AngloSaxon culture threatened the national identity (Chavez, 2008). The
relentless propagandizing that accompanied the shift had a pervasive effect on public opinion, turning it decidedly more conservative
on issues of immigration (Massey & Pren, 2012, p. 8). As public
opinion became more conservative, so too did leading politicians
on the left and right. In his rst months in oce, President Clinton
(Democrat) noted that, The simple fact is that we must not and
we will not surrender our borders to those who wish to exploit our
history of compassion and justice (Clinton, in Nevins, 2002, p. 1).
National political leaders used bordering norms (surrender our
borders) to construct a divide between the good national self (our

history of compassion and justice) and the nefarious foreigner (to

those who wish to exploit).
The Netherlands experienced a similar discursive turn in the
1990s and 2000s (Schinkel, 2013; Uitermark, 2012). Anti-racist and
pragmatist discourses of the 1980s were eclipsed by anti-immigrant
discourses in the 1990s and 2000s (what Uitermark, 2012, calls
culturalist discourse). This discourse maintains that immigrants
posed a threat because they lacked the essential cultural attributes (religion, morality, values) needed to assimilate in the country.
This discourse became adopted by prominent intellectuals, politicians, and media personalities in the late 1990s and 2000s. While
it is true that disenfranchised natives formed a core constituency
of culturalists, the discourse was also mobilized by intellectuals, academics and politicians who sought to challenge the pragmatist
political culture and to redene power relations in the civil sphere
(Uitermark, 2012, p. 118).
The increased prominence of the far right party (National Front)
in France precipitated similar shifts in public discourse in France.
French political ocials increasingly drew upon hard conservative frames to talk about immigrants (Berezin, 2013). In 1991 Jacques
Chirac (mayor of Paris, future president) argued,
How do you want a French worker who works with his wife, who
earns together about 15,000 francs and who sees next to his social
housing apartment, a piled-up family with a father, three or four
spouses and twenty children earning 50,000 FF via welfare benets, naturally without working If you add to that the noise
and the smell, well the French worker, he goes crazy. And it is
not racist to say this. We no longer have the means of honoring
the family reunication policy, and we need to nally start the
essential debate in this country, as to whether it is moral and
normal that foreigners should prot to the same extent as French
people, from a national solidarity to which they dont participate, as they pay no income taxes (Jacques Chirac in Blin, 2005,
p. 67).
The statement is striking in its similarity to Clintons statement cited above: both helped legitimate sharp symbolic boundaries
between two populations (national and immigrants) and contrasted the virtues of one with the malevolence of the other.
The immigrant threat discourse is not new (see Ngai, 2004;
Weil, 1991), but it has enjoyed prominence at different historical
junctures. This period (1990s2000s) marked a juncture in which
the discourse became normalized in these three countries (Berezin,
2013). The prominence of these discourses lay the ground for considering immigrants with precarious legal status as illegals with
minimum (if any) rights in these countries (Fernandez-Kelley &
Massey, 2007; Menjvar & Kanstroom, 2013; Simant, 1998; Van der
Leun, 2006).
Concentratingindividualizing bordering powers
Concentrating bordering powers
In the United States, the 1990s was a major turning point in restrictive measures. Responding to growing anti-immigrant sentiment,
the Clinton administration introduced Operation Gatekeeper in 1994.
This measure increased border efforts in the southwest, and especially California. This single measure increased the budget of
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from $400 million in
1993 to $800 million in 1997. It also contributed to increasing the
number of border agents from 4200 to 9212 between 1994 and 2000
(Nevins, 2002, p. 3). This measure was followed by groundbreaking
legislation in 1996: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). The law introduced new crimes that could
make one ineligible for residency status, streamlined deportation
procedures, reduced the discretion of judges considering

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

hardship cases, required immigrants seeking to regularize their

status to do so from their home countries, among other things
(Durand & Massey, 2003; Varsanyi, 2008). Along with Operation
Gatekeeper, the law spurred the extraordinary growth of the INS
(Durand & Massey, 2003; Massey & Pren, 2012; Nevins, 2002). The
war on terror reinforced these punitive tendencies. Congress
created the Department of Homeland Security and incorporated the
INS into it as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Bordering (internal and external) was now made a central component of the new security state. Congress passed ve restrictive laws
that directly targeted immigrants, and the Bush White House introduced 12 different bordering measures (Massey & Pren, 2012,
1011). The policies accelerated the rates of deportation, resulting in the record removal of approximately 403,000 undocumented
immigrants per year during 20092013 (Gonzalez-Barrera, 2014).
The Netherlands also experienced a sharp increase in its border
enforcement capacities. Government ocials introduced what it
called discouragement policies. Restrictions have been placed on
family reunication, resulting in measures to detect fake marriages, raise the minimum age for foreign spouses, establish income
requirements for partners, and introduce language requirements
(Doomernik, 2010). These new restrictions were designed to allow
the country to meet its international obligations on family reunication while reducing the number of people eligible for this right.
There have also been important restrictions imposed on asylum
seekers. In 1996 the government created the Central Agency for the
Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) to monitor and coordinate asylum
procedures. The New Aliens Act (Vreemdelingenwet) of 2000 shortened procedures, ended direct and indirect government supported
shelter for refused asylum seekers, and introduced preventive detention. Restrictions continued with the creation of new detention
and expulsion centers, a Return and Departure Service in 2007, and
the streamlining of removal procedures. Broeders and Engbersen
(2007, p. 1602) remark that The assumption is that a prison regime
will encourage immigrants to reveal their true identity. Detention
is also considered to be a deterrent to prevent immigrants from
coming to Europe through undocumented channels. To deny undocumented immigrants access to labor markets, the government
introduced new measures during the 1990s: Compulsory Identication Act, the Employment of Aliens Act, and the Law on the Chain
Liability. These laws required employees to present a social security number to employers, made direct and indirect employment
of undocumented immigrants a criminal offense, and introduced
important sanctions on employers for hiring migrants without proof
of residency status.
France pursued similar measures during the 1990s and early
2000s. The Minister of Interior in 1993, Charles Pasqua, authored
legislation to restrict legal migration to the country (Hayward &
Wright, 2002). The so-called Pasqua Laws raised the criteria needed
to qualify for legal residency through family reunication and asylum.
The government also expanded holding centers at airports, ports,
and cities to detain undocumented migrants and facilitated identity checks and detentions by local law enforcement agencies
(Hayward & Wright, 2002). The Debr Law (1997) required French
residents to register foreign visitors to their homes (reporting arrivals and departures of foreigners to city hall), adopted ngerprinting
of non-European Union foreigners, restricted residency permits to
asylum seekers, reduced legal appeals for those denied legal residency, and enhanced the capacities for police to stop and detain
suspected undocumented immigrants and immigrant trackers
(Emmons, 1997, p. 9). The Sarkozy and Hortefeux laws of the 2000s
increased the barriers to acquire legal residency through family reunication and asylum, made cultural integration a criteria for
gaining legal status, blocked access to housing markets and welfare
provisions, and introduced deportation quotas.

47

Individualizing bordering powers

While central governments have concentrated their bordering
powers, they have also enlisted local public agencies and frontline
service providers to share responsibility in enforcement practices.
By devolving border enforcement responsibilities to law enforcement agents, school ocials, welfare providers, nonprot
organizations, medical professionals, building contractors, bus drivers,
and so on, governments have been better able to penetrate the everyday lives of immigrants and rene and individualize bordering
practices.
The United States government pursued several measures that devolved more authority to state and local-level public ocials. The
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
(1996) introduced new restrictions that made undocumented immigrants ineligible for publicly funded state and local services. This,
according to Monica Varsanyi (2008, p. 889), was a major turning
point because states were now authorized by the federal government to to discriminate against noncitizens in deciding eligibility
for their programs, an act that prior to 1996 was considered an unconstitutional encroachment into federal powers over membership
policy. IIRIRA (1996) introduced a program (287 [g]) to create agreements between federal and local law enforcement agencies. The
program introduced a Memorandum of Understanding between the
federal Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies.
Local police participating in the program were given special training in immigration matters and granted authority to work in concert
with the federal immigration agencies. 287[g] was superseded by
the Secure Communities program, which was introduced in 2008.
This program required local police agencies to report on the status
of immigrants in detention and placed holds on those people
lacking legal status. Lastly, nationals began to target state and local
governments to develop restrictive immigration policies of their own,
with approximately 271 such measures passed between 2005 and
2010 (Coleman, 2007; Strunk & Leitner, 2013; Varsanyi, 2008; Walker
& Leitner, 2011). States passed their own anti-immigrant measures. The rst comprehensive anti-immigration law was passed in
Arizona in 2010 (S.B. 1070), which was then followed by ve other
states.
The Linking Act in the Netherlands required public service providers working in health, housing, and education to deny services
to undocumented immigrants. Immigration status had never been
a criterion to obtain these services. Now, street level bureaucrats in housing, health care, and education assumed direct
responsibility in verifying documents and providing essential services strictly on the basis of legal status (Van der Leun, 2006). These
measures required street level bureaucrats (from public housing
ocials to bus drivers) to report suspected immigrants to the police.
The division of labor between the national immigration police and
the local police was also recalibrated to better use the local police
to detect and detain undocumented immigrants in their jurisdictions (Broeders & Engbersen, 2007; Doomernik, 2010).
France has a long tradition of enlisting department and municipal level ocials in enacting government immigration policies (De
Barros, 2004; Hayward & Wright, 2002). Department prefects (equivalent to state governors) have long been charged with implementing
national laws. In order to enhance restrictions on family reunication, the Minister of Interior in 1977 required that applicants present
a certicate of decent housing issued by mayors. Facing tight
housing markets and discriminating mayors, many immigrants had
diculty obtaining the certicates (Pchu, 1999). Consequently, thousands of families entered the country without residency visas during
the 1980s and 1990s and settled in dilapidated hotels and abandoned buildings, which made it more dicult to obtain the requisite
housing certicate. For immigrants, housing takes on a dimension that it simply does not have for French families. It affects the

48

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

right to live as a family and to obtain papers for the family which are
in order (Pchu, 1999, p. 734, emphasis added). Lastly, the Pasqua
and Debray Laws restricted the ability of community and nonprofit organizations to provide support for undocumented immigrants
and required mayors to report and monitor immigrant visitors to
their towns.
Proliferating resistances and border transgressions
Restrictive measures increased detention and deportation rates,
and discouraged unauthorized migration to the point of causing the
deaths of thousands of people at important crossing points in Europe
and the United States (Isaacson & Meyer, 2013; Kiza, 2008). The same
measures, however, intensied deep grievances, outrage, and resistances among undocumented immigrants and broad sectors of
the legal population (migrants with permanent legal status, natives,
local border enforcers).

them with strong legal, political, and moral foundations for their
struggle (Nicholls, 2013a). In France, increased restrictions placed
on family reunication during the 1990s rendered thousands of immigrant parents of French-born children into undocumented
immigrants (sans papiers) (Blin, 2005; Nicholls, 2013b; Simant,
1998). This precipitated a two-year struggle, which resulted in the
legalization of this particular subset of the population (e.g. parents
of French children). In the Netherlands, increased restrictions on
asylum-seekers and long detentions for asylum-seekers have also
triggered important resistances across this country (see nal section).
Enhanced enforcement has therefore intensied the grievances of undocumented immigrants and provided many with a
certain will to resist. This will has become acute for those pushed
to the outer limit of legality. These cases oftentimes have more resources, greater urgency, and more support to press their cases. Their
positioning makes them more likely to move into open resistance.
Resistant legal permanent residents

Resistant undocumented immigrants

Daily life for many immigrants became a mineeld of controls
and formidable risks (Menjvar & Kanstroom, 2013). An immigrant in the United States comments, You watch the news and you
learn. Nobody is safe. They take people from work[] For these
people [ocials], it doesnt matter that weve lived here for 15 years,
that weve been raising children who are good people []All they
see is that we are illegal (Maricella, in Abrego, 2013, 142). Just
as important, restrictive bordering measures reinforced the status
of immigrants as illegals and feelings of stigma borne by this population. An undocumented immigrant in France remarked that
They used to look at us with suspicion but without knowing very
well why. Now its clear: we are and will stay undocumented (sans
papiers). For the man on the street, that would mean religious
fundamentalist. For the small business owners, that would mean
delinquent. For the police, that would be all of that and a clandestine. Why? Because the Pasqua Laws say so (Anonymous
immigrant, Le Monde, 1995, emphasis added).
Enhanced border enforcement magnies the stigma associated
with being an immigrant, and transmits this stigma through the
many people they encounter in daily life (man on the street, small
business owner, police).
Such experiences often result in depression and isolation, but
they can also intensify grievances and deep feelings of moral outrage.
Such feelings have become particularly acute for subgroups of immigrants nding themselves on the cusp of the legal system. As
governments have raised the qualications for legal residency status
through legal avenues (family reunication, asylum, work), people
who had once been eligible for legal status under previous legal arrangements now found themselves in a state of illegality. These
subgroups often feel particularly deserving of legal status and they
perceive a small window of opportunity (legal, moral, discursive)
to push their claims forward (Chauvin & Garcs-Mascarenas, 2012).
During the 1980s and 1990s, El Salvadorans and Guatemalans in
the United States were denied asylum status because they ed governments that had been supported by the U.S. government (Coutin,
2003; Menjvar, 2000). The denial of legal status to a population that
deserved it fueled a sense of moral outrage among denied asylum
seekers and their allies. It also provided them strong legal and political foundations to assert their claims in courts and the U.S.
Congress. Similarly, undocumented children had a constitutional right
to public schools, but the enforcement of restrictive rules at adulthood forced them to come to terms with their illegality (Gonzales,
2011; Nicholls, 2013a). Sitting on the outer edge of a normal (i.e.
legal) life fueled a sense of moral outrage among many undocumented youths (who came to be known as Dreamers) and provided

Undocumented immigrants constitute important parts of immigrant communities, especially in gateway cities with high
concentrations of immigrants. They are not a population apart from
immigrants with legal permanent residency but a major group with
extensive ties to the general immigrant population. In the United
States the population of undocumented immigrants increased from
3 to 12 million between 1990 and 2010. In France, the Minister of
Interior estimated the number to be between 200,000 and 400,000
in 2005 (Documentation Franaise, 2012). In the Netherlands, the
number ranged from 70,000 to 100,000 in the early 2000s (Broeders
& Engbersen, 2007). Additionally, more undocumented immigrants and greater restrictions on family reunication visas have also
contributed to the growing number of mixed-status families. In the
United States, Passel (2006) observed that these mixed status families represent about one-third of all unauthorized families and ve
out of six unauthorized families with children (p. 13).
Immigrants with mixed-family status have consequently become
important contributors to resistances and struggles in France over
the past 20 years. Major campaigns in the 1990s and the 2000s
emerged in response to the grievances of families with mixed status
(Simant, 1998). Similarly in the U.S., grievances among mixedfamilies continue to feed a range of different resistances and
mobilizations. In their survey of participants in the large 2006 mobilizations, Pallares and Flores Gonzlez (2011) found that although
most were U.S. citizens, nearly half (47 percent) lived in mixedstatus families [A] signicant number of marchers had family ties
to undocumented immigrants, even when they themselves were U.S.
citizens (p. 163, emphasis added). Thus, restrictive measures negatively impacted the broader community of legal permanent
residents as they found family and friends on the other side of the
legal line.
Just as important, the growing use of legal status as a qualication for work and services, the widespread use of employer
sanctions, and the increased use of municipal police to detain residents suspected of unauthorized residency have placed all people
of immigrant origin under increased scrutiny. Employers, police,
public service workers, contractors, landlords, and so forth use ethnic/
racial markers to identify suspect populations. As early as 1971,
Mexican American advocacy organizations vigorously contested employer sanctions on hiring undocumented workers because of the
potential for racial proling (Gutirrez, 1991). More recently, Latinos
complained about restrictive bordering measures enacted in Long
Island, New York. One Latino resident expressed this frustration by
saying, We are not all illegal. Im not illegal. My daughters are not
illegal. You cant say that about all of us! (Long Island resident, New
York Times, 2004). Arizonas S.B. 1070 increased harassment of immigrants with and without legal residency status (Johnson, 2012;

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

Nill, 2011). The broad reach of enforcement raised the ire of the
broader Latino community and spurred many (Latino citizens, legal
permanent residents, undocumented immigrants) to mobilize for
the repeal of the measure. Espino (2013, p. 32) found that the hostile
rhetoric surrounding this legislation appears to have unied rather
than divided Latinos across party lines.
Politicians were once able to drive a wedge between good legal
and bad illegal immigrants, but this has become more dicult as
interdependent connections have developed between these populations, and as all immigrants have been made into suspect
populations by increasingly repressive government measures.
Resistant national citizens
For national citizens, border enforcement has become concrete
and tangible. Enforcement now occurs in their towns, schools, streets,
and neighborhoods. The violent practice of bordering has ceased
being carried out in distant areas (deserts and seas) to a dehumanized Other. Bordering has come home, targeting seemingly normal
people that citizens had come to know and, in certain instances,
like.
In France, the practice of targeting elementary schools for deportation raids in the 2000s resulted in sharp conicts with
immigrants, teachers, school administrators, and French parents.
Many French parents joined small struggles at specic schools
because they did not want the parents of their childrens friends
threatened with deportation at school during pickup and drop off
hours. These early conicts gave rise to a new and relatively informal network, Reseau Education Sans Frontier (Education Without
Borders Network [RESF]). One close observer of these struggles and
a long-time immigrant activist in Paris noted that, RESF was a struggle in daily life, with faces, men, women, children. There was a
network of parents of children that went beyond the normal militants. There were people from the right and left because it was the
friend of their children who was being targeted (director, ACORT,
2007, personal interview). The aggressive and highly intrusive bordering practices of the state (deportation raids at schools, for
example) exposed such practices as unjust and morally outrageous. Another Parisian activist observed,
At the instant in which there were children in schools, a grand
parent who was detained by the police while picking up his
grandchild from school; all those are things that the French public
does not like. Sarkozy [then the Minister of Interior] saw that
the parents of students were not good for him. He opened a door
to regularization on a case-by-case basis (organizer, SUD, personal interview).
The violent and disruptive nature of deportations was brought
home and made tangible to the native French population. This triggered ourishing resistances in the specic sites where bordering
measures were enacted.
In the Netherlands, there has been a wave of small campaigns
by Dutch residents (20092013) who believed that certain immigrants deserved an exemption from restrictive laws. In one case,
minors who had been granted temporary protected status were
scheduled for deportations at adulthood (Versteegt & Maussen,
2012). Many of these youths had been raised in local neighborhoods, attended schools, participated in local social life (church,
sports, civic activities), and interacted regularly with Dutch natives
throughout the course of their lives. These immigrants dressed,
spoke, and acted like normal Dutch people and did not resemble
the stereotypical images of illegal immigrants. This prompted Dutch
nationals to view the scheduled deportations of the children as
morally outrageous. The imminent deportation of one boy sparked
one small campaign in a provincial city, with a local politician arguing
that

49

Yossef is a boy with a Sudanese nationality who has become a

Dutch child, an Alkmaar boy who has his friends in this city, who
is a member of the soccer club and is attending school here. Let
him live with his mother in Alkmaar as long as there is no clarity
about possible expulsion to his country of origin. This child should
not be more damaged by this procedure, which has been dragging on for years; children have rights too (in, Versteegt &
Maussen, 2012, p. 54).
The incorporation of immigrants in localities and their connections with Dutch citizens normalized (become a Dutch child)
these people. This complicated senses of solidarity and made the
deportation of friends (who happened to be immigrants) seem
morally repugnant.
These were localized resistances against the specic enactment of government bordering policies. Certain immigrants were
not perceived threatening and had actually become normal
members of local communities. This complicated the symbolic
boundaries between nationals and foreigners and infused nationals with a sense of outrage when immigrants they knew and liked
became targets of government repression.
Resistant border enforcers
The devolution of border enforcement has incorporated thousands of local ocials, politicians, civil servants, nonprot
organizations, and service providers directly into an issue area that
was once the reserve of national government agencies. While these
locals have been expected to enact enforcement measures, some
have had conicting concerns over how to do this.
After the passage of the Linking Act, Dutch medical professionals were expected to deny non-emergency medical services to
immigrants lacking legal documentation (Van der Leun, 2006). Their
new enforcement responsibilities conicted with their professional ethics to serve all patients irrespective of their legal status. Many
medical professionals used their discretion to provide immigrants
coverage under the emergency clause of the provision, eventually pushing the government to modify its policy. Similarly,
government restrictions on providing undocumented immigrants
assistance have given rise to policy dilemmas for city ocials
(Chauvin & Garcs-Mascarenas, 2012). Ocials have been in charge
of evicting immigrants whose asylum cases have been rejected from
social housing and denying access to assistance and shelters once
on the streets. These restrictions contributed to the rapid growth
of homeless undocumented immigrants in Dutch cities. In 2005, the
Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) sent a formal petition to parliament and the Minister of Justice, indicating that it
was impossible for mayors to comply with government restrictions because it conicted with their primary obligation of
maintaining public order in their cities (Doomernik, 2010).
In the United States, many local police agencies have embraced their roles in the major enforcement programs of Secure
Communities and 287(g). Nevertheless, many others have expressed concern because such measures were seen as eating into
the trust in immigrant rich communities. This would undermine their
abilities to fulll policing and safety obligations (Johnson, 2012;
Theodore, 2011). Some ocials used their discretion to circumvent full implementation of Secure Communities, while others
supported local measures to minimize participation in federal enforcement programs (Strunk & Leitner, 2013). In California, mayors
and police chiefs in large cities like San Francisco came out against
the Secure Communities program and supported a state law to curtail
compliance with this federal program (TRUST Act).
The central aim of government bordering strategies has been to
clarify the boundary between populations. However, these efforts
have resulted in the unintended consequence of deepening the

50

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

grievances and outrage of undocumented immigrants while spreading resistances to populations not directly targeted by these
measures. The exact nature of resistances varies sharply according to national contexts, the specic ways and places in which
restrictive bordering measures are enacted, and the mobilization
capacities of local populations. In spite of their diversity, they all
introduce small yet important disruptions in how to conceive and
enact national borders. If borders are everywhere (Balibar, 2004),
so too are acts of resistance.
Scaling up: growing seeds into entangled,
disruptive mobilizations
Enhanced bordering powers have been deployed across locations and settings within these countries. This has resulted in the
geographical diffusion of resistances. In France, small resistances
emerged at schools across the country in response to government
bordering efforts. An early supporter of RESF describes the geographically ubiquitous nature of these resistances, There are now
networks of RESF in every department of the country, and every
time the creation of new one follows the same logic: there is a young
student who is arrested or at least his family is arrested; sometimes at school and other times outside school. This is then followed
by small mobilization of support for the family (director, FSU, 2007,
personal interview). In the Netherlands, resistances have also multiplied everywhere. Recent struggles for regularizing the status of
children facing deportation arose in many different localities. Disputes between mayors and the central government have also been
geographically ubiquitous (Chauvin & Garcs-Mascarenas, 2012).
Moreover, as the Dutch government has moved many of its detention and deportation centers to provincial locations, these localities
have become ashpoints of small struggles by rejected asylum
seekers. In the United States, Secure Communities has catalyzed resistances in localities across the country. The Secure Communities
program may be the most ambitious effort to achieve full immigration enforcement coverage across the country, but this ambition
has been challenged by immigrant advocacy groups and networks
operating at multiple scales: the local, regional, and national (Strunk
& Leitner, 2013, pp. 7576).
The geographical extension of internal border enforcement has
contributed to the diffusion of conicts and resistances outward,
but certain contexts of mobilization provide fertile soil for resistances to take root and grow into larger mobilizations. When initial
resistances emerge in these environments, they may draw in a
greater diversity of supporters with different forms of knowledge
and resources; and supporters with extensive networks and
brokering skills. The geographical concentration of opportunities
and resources therefore makes certain areas more supportive of early
resistances than others. Large gateway cities (Amsterdam, Paris, Los
Angeles, Chicago, etc.) tend to provide more supportive contexts
(Walker & Leitner, 2011).
Scaling up from an initial point of resistance to a collective mobilization is a complicated networking process and certain contexts
favor these networking processes more than others (Nicholls, 2009;
Routledge, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005). This last section lays
out the basic mechanisms (brokering, extending, amplifying) involved in the process and draws on the Dutch case for illustration.
This part of the paper is based on research on the We Are Here campaign (20122014).
In September 2012, several rejected asylum seekers requested
assistance from a sympathetic ally in Amsterdam. Their demands
for asylum had been rejected by restrictive government policies. They
had been turned into undocumented migrants with limited access
to shelter and work. The immigrants expressed outrage that their
well-founded petitions for asylum were rejected and that they were
denied a life in the country. We are here. We are not animals, we

are not criminals, we are not gangsters, we are not hobos, we are
just refugees!Even a monkey wouldnt suffer here. Birds dont
suffer either. Everything is in order in this country! Why are they
leaving us on the street? And they know, we have showed them a
great face, very polite, so they can maybe someday think about doing
something good for us. But they refuse All of the governments
measures were bad for us (activist 1, We Are Here campaign,
interview).
The Amsterdam ally served as an initial broker in the city and
connected the asylum seekers to the Protestant Diaconate. After
several meetings, the Diaconate permitted a handful of asylum
seekers to install tents in its courtyard in central Amsterdam. This
marked the beginning of the We Are Here campaign. The small
group of immigrants and early supporters brokered relations within
their distinctive worlds. Immigrant activists at the encampment
reached out and connected to other rejected-asylum seekers in the
Netherlands, and members of the Diaconate connected to the world
of Dutch Protestant humanitarians. Each new connection between
the original group and subsequent people created new brokers in
parallel and distinctive worlds. The brokers diffused the news of the
action, its message, and its sense of moral outrage across these relational circuits. This helped expand and reinforce the Protestant
churchs support of the emergent campaign while simultaneously
drawing other rejected asylum seekers to the Diaconates courtyard.
The growing assortment of brokers had friends and acquaintances in other sociopolitical worlds as well. This permitted the
immigrant activists and their supporters to extend deep into their
own primary worlds (immigrant communities, Protestant humanitarians) and, just as importantly, to extend outward across
Amsterdams diverse social, organizational, and political environment. For example, an immigrant activist who had settled at the
camp after the initial upsurge informed one of his contacts at a nonprot organization. The caseworker at one nonprot remembers,
I heard about it for the rst time when my client. He needed a place
to stay but I could not arrange it for him. I called him later and he
told me he was in the camp. I was trying to look up what he was
talking about. The day after that it was in the newspaper (employee ASKV Refugee Support, interview). Through this microlevel mechanism, the encampment in central Amsterdam soon drew
in a wide variety of individual supporters with a diverse range of
resources and skills, including university students, experienced radicals, humanitarians of various political stripes, a dedicated
contingency of activist squatters, journalists, among others.
The camp grew and required activists and supporters to move
to another location on the outskirts of the city. The encampment
swelled to approximately 250 immigrant activists and 100 Dutch
supporters with diverse backgrounds. While the growing diversity of immigrant activists and Dutch supporters introduced certain
disagreements, it also permitted the ow of diverse resources. Some
resources were essential to maintain the life of the activists. Individuals and religious organizations surrounding the encampment
provided food, tents, clothes and blankets. One immigrant activist
remembers that, the churches, the mosques helped a lot. Mosques
around Osdorp, Turkish, Moroccan The Moroccans they knew
where I came from but they still gave me food. They werent stopped
by the fact that our countries used to ght each other (activist 2,
We Are Here campaign). Others provided more intangible resources like activist knowledge in Amsterdam. Frans [pseudonym]
is a brother, one of the best for me. An activist. I really like him
because he has eight years of experience. He really knew how to get
things done (activist 1, We Are Here).
While tangible and intangible resources were essential for bolstering the campaign, some resources complemented and amplied
one another. Amplication occurs when activists combine resources derived from different network sources to create potentially
powerful synergies. For instance, the experiences and individual

W.J. Nicholls/Political Geography 51 (2016) 4352

stories of immigrants provided compelling testimony of the moral

limits of the countrys immigration system. Dutch supporters with
extensive public relations experience helped train some of the immigrants to transform the raw accounts of immigrants into sharp
and compelling stories that specically targeted the moral ambiguities of the Dutch public. Other supporters had contacts to Dutch
media outlets and supportive politicians. The experiences of the immigrant activists, the skills of the public relations supporters, and
the political and media contacts of allies complemented one another
and produced important amplication effects. In Osdorp, the government came everyday, TV channels came everyday. Each day there
were discussions, speeches (activist 2, We Are Here). The intensive media attention eventuated in an invitation to interview with
a Dutch national television station at the news station. We went
there, three women with four men. We went there to the big television! We were sitting there, we discussed with the journalists.
They talked about our problem and more than 100,000 Dutch people
watched us on the same air that night (activist 1, We Are Here).
The broad and positive media coverage resulted in more news coverage by both national and international news outlets including the
BBC and Al Jazeera. Thus, by combining resources derived from different networks (migrant experiences, media training, connections
to journalists and politicians), We Are Here was able to create powerful synergies and amplication effects, resulting in a buzz that far
exceeded the original point of conict.
After achieving this buzz, new possibilities opened up to further
expand the scope and allure of the struggle. More supporters entered
the fray, new supporters replaced and reinforced older ones, they
assumed brokering roles in their own right, they extended the struggle into new directions across their sociopolitical worlds, and their
resources and skills produced unanticipated and unplanned amplication effects. The sharp upturn in resources and attention helped
the campaign expand the message and draw in more support from
broader elements of the region and country. At this stage, the original point of resistance had been transformed into a powerful
disturbance that brought to light the wrongs of the governments
bordering policies. What the government did was no longer assumed
to be natural. Its bordering practices had been denaturalized through
this complex networking process, forcing the government to justify
its policies, both morally and legally.
The network mechanisms highlighted here do not explain for the
organizational infrastructures that xed the mobilization at a
broader geographical scale, but they do provide insight into how
the mobilization moved from a very small and imperceptible seed
of resistance into a potent and disruptive mobilization. After achieving a certain ability to pull in greater resources and attention,
participants could then develop an infrastructure to stabilize and
steer it. Prior to this stage, however, a resistance needs to move
beyond its original point of origin and generate sucient buzz to
puncture the public sphere and draw attention, resources, and
support.
Concluding remarks
The argument of the paper is that government-led bordering
strategies have produced resistances and mobilizations that continually destabilize, disrupt, and blur the sociospatial boundaries
separating legal from so-called illegal populations. The growing
power of states to police national borders unleashes small resistances that scale up and out, eating into and hollowing out the states
capacities to effectively achieve its ultimate bordering ends. The progression of bordering measures has planted thousands of doubts,
disagreements, and resistances that disrupt the smooth transmission of power. Many of these small disruptions do not grow into
larger scale struggles for immigrant rights. Government ocials have
great skills and capacities to contain conicts and repair any damage

51

that may come from them, but certain points of resistance escape
their reach and become larger-scale mobilizations.
Struggles may not force governments to completely recongure their bordering rationales and strategies, but they often unsettle
the common sense that rendered bordering strategies into normal
parts of civic, political, and administrative life. These struggles assert
that government strategies are wrong because the people targeted for exclusion are equals who merit basic rights. The growing
resonance and legitimacy of such arguments compel government
ocials to justify practices in public debate. In certain cases, struggles
may compel governments to introduce measures that provide some
subgroups (children, assimilated youths, families, asylum seekers)
an exemption from normal exclusionary rules. More bordering has
therefore not resulted in an impermeable fortress Europe or fortress America. Instead and quite unexpectedly, it has given rise to
countless resistances and countless debates over who belongs and
doesnt belong in these countries. These resistances and heated
debates have complicated the lines separating populations while
also perforating small and large holes into national walls.
Lastly, it must be stressed that this paper is not about a single
and cohesive social movement. Just as the state has developed different and specic ways to exert its bordering powers against
immigrant populations, the resistances and mobilizations are differentiated and specic as well. Each resistance has its own specic
congurations (grievances, participants, ideas, and so on). As different seeds of resistance grow, they may become entangled with
other struggles, but they also retain their specic raisons dtre, passions, claims, and goals. Rather than viewing these mobilizations
as integrated parts of massive immigrant rights movements, it would
be more accurate to say that they are specic struggles against the
very different ways in which governments enact power against immigrant communities. These differentiated resistances and
mobilizations eat multiple and varied holes into the lines separating legal from illegal populations, eating into state border
rationalities and capacities.
Conict of interest
There are no conict of interest.
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