Mixed signals: Understanding the democratic work of narratives in pro-immigrant protests across local policy environments

The question of how to alter undemocratic environments from within is a central concern of activists and theorists interested in radical democratic change. Illuminating this issue, geographers and others have studied how immigrant rights activists make claims in hostile environments. This scholarship tends to privilege the work of organizations in national or specific metropolitan contexts. We broaden the discussion by attending to hostility in subnational immigration policy environments across the United States and by comparing the “narrative signals†that protesters send in more and less hostile environments, regardless of organizational affiliation. Results show that narratives are shaped by the environments in which they circulate. In hostile environments, however, narrative signals include a broader variety of justifications than the extant literature emphasizes. In such environments, activists justify protest both with appeals to notions of universal human rights and with more limited articulations of community concerns and specific immigrants’ attributes. We argue that while the type of narrative justifications observed in more hostile local environments can undermine democratic politics, they can also disrupt official orderings and contribute to more robust public formation around immigrant rights. Where dehumanizing policy is sharpest, they can amplify immigrant voices in the public sphere and they can draw in participants who might otherwise see themselves as disconnected from immigrant rights struggles. In shedding new light on the geography of environment-narrative dynamics, this article contributes to ongoing explorations of emplaced experiences of political work and the democratic potential of that work in hostile environments.