Le mouvement immigré du printemps 2006

The spring 2006 demonstrations that took place in the United States against a bill to further crack down on undocumented immigrants came as a great surprise. Bringing together millions of immigrants and their supporters, this atypical event may be studied as a political mobilization of workers – a rare event in today’s United States. I begin my discussion by sketching the main stages in the history of labor unions and ethno-racial minorities in order to show how the 2006 movement partly diverged from this context. I then consider the degree to which this movement involved the entry en masse of workers onto the political scene. Drawing upon the first studies devoted to this major mobilization as well as a field study carried out in Chicago during and after the protests, I emphasize the role played by “intermediary” activist circles whose members’ activities are frequently informed by the workers’ movements of their home countries and who retain a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the US organizations to which they often belong. Finally, I discuss the limits of the transformations brought about or entertained by this movement, which, irreducible to the issue of labor alone, stands as confirmation that certain political and ethno-racial fault lines play a significant role in US social movements. ■

Art · Autonomy · Context (archaeology · Humanities · Immigration · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Surprise · Education, sociology, and vocational training · History · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

• Race, Ethnicity and the US Immigrants’ Rights Movement

  James Cohen, James I Cohen•Revue française d’études…•2018

  Add to list