{"title":"Representational Hierarchies in Social Movements: A Case Study of the Undocumented Immigrant Youth Movement","authors":"Tara Fiorito, Walter J. Nicholls","doi":"10.1086/726582","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"During the late 2010s, the undocumented immigrant youth movement embraced inclusive and intersectional representations. Directly impacted activists deconstructed language and symbolic categories that excluded. However, their movement continued to stratify activists along representational lines. This article combines theories of intersectionality and symbolic power to develop the concept of “representational hierarchy.” Producing representations requires legitimacy, and the resources needed for legitimacy (i.e., symbolic capital) are unevenly distributed to activists. Activists in possession of these resources can rise to the top and exert control over the means of representation. Dominant activists enforce representations and their positioning through coercive (“calling out”) and consensual (“calling in”) mechanisms. Our project employs ethnographic data from two periods of investigation: 2011–12 and 2018. The data include interviews with new and experienced activists, analysis of movement documents, and 400 hours of participant observations. For this specific article, we draw mostly on interviews conducted in 2018.","PeriodicalId":7658,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726582","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
During the late 2010s, the undocumented immigrant youth movement embraced inclusive and intersectional representations. Directly impacted activists deconstructed language and symbolic categories that excluded. However, their movement continued to stratify activists along representational lines. This article combines theories of intersectionality and symbolic power to develop the concept of “representational hierarchy.” Producing representations requires legitimacy, and the resources needed for legitimacy (i.e., symbolic capital) are unevenly distributed to activists. Activists in possession of these resources can rise to the top and exert control over the means of representation. Dominant activists enforce representations and their positioning through coercive (“calling out”) and consensual (“calling in”) mechanisms. Our project employs ethnographic data from two periods of investigation: 2011–12 and 2018. The data include interviews with new and experienced activists, analysis of movement documents, and 400 hours of participant observations. For this specific article, we draw mostly on interviews conducted in 2018.
期刊介绍:
Established in 1895 as the first US scholarly journal in its field, the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) presents pathbreaking work from all areas of sociology, with an emphasis on theory building and innovative methods. AJS strives to speak to the general sociology reader and is open to contributions from across the social sciences—sociology, political science, economics, history, anthropology, and statistics—that seriously engage the sociological literature to forge new ways of understanding the social. AJS offers a substantial book review section that identifies the most salient work of both emerging and enduring scholars of social science. Commissioned review essays appear occasionally, offering readers a comparative, in-depth examination of prominent titles. Although AJS publishes a very small percentage of the papers submitted to it, a double-blind review process is available to all qualified submissions, making the journal a center for exchange and debate "behind" the printed page and contributing to the robustness of social science research in general.