Migrants’ Collective Action by Angela Adami

Migrants’ Collective Action by Angela Adami

Adopting an interpretivist approach, this book examines how highly diverse migrant constituencies coalesce into collective formations that mobilize as migrants.

With a focus on three Italian cities, Naples, Rome and Bologna, this book utilizes a unique approach to understanding migrants’ mobilizations by integrating Social Movement Studies and Critical Studies of Migration with a focus on temporality. Investigating biographical trajectories, collective memory and identity-building processes, it reveals the invisible dynamics that occur between visible mobilizations and beyond-migration experiences. Readers gain insights into how participants construct shared social pasts and negotiate collective identities, in both public representation and political belonging.

Migrants’ Collective Action is essential reading for scholars, students and researchers in Migration Studies, Social Movements, and Urban Studies. It is particularly relevant for those exploring the intersections of temporality, identity and collective action, as well as practitioners working with migrant communities.

"While social science research has delved in-depth in the analysis of solidarity actions for migrant rights, studies about how migrants themselves mobilize are rareCombining an original theoretical model with rich empirical evidences, this path-breaking analysis bridges social movement studies with critical approaches to migrations, contributing to the reflection on the temporal dimension in mobilization processes as visible in the biographical paths of the activists, the collective memories at the group level as well as the complex construction of collective identities."

Donatella della Porta, Full Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, and Director of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS)

Angela Adami is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore. Her current research explores forms of resistance and protest around total institutions in times of democratic backsliding, with a specific focus on migrants’ detention. As a member of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS), she conducts research on migrant detention, social movements, migration, memory and biographical studies. Her research has been published in Italian and international scientific journals.