Introduction

This chapter begins by outlining important societal effects of the 2015 refugee crisis on Western European nations, focusing in particular on the increasingly heated political discussion surrounding immigration. It presents the discrepancy between widespread negative attitudes towards immigration among Western European citizens and the relative minority who mobilize against it. In light of the current political climate, it raises the question of why so few people in fact protest against immigration. From here, it will discuss the emergence of bottom-up protests against the arrival of asylum seekers across Western European nations, fuelled by the impression that asylum seekers pose a (material and/or cultural) threat to Europeans. In doing so, this chapter also addresses the particular relevance of urban communities in studying anti-immigration sentiment and mobilization, as they tend to face a combination of challenges related to ethnic diversity, increasing socio-economic inequalities, and the wider effects of globalization in a post-industrial context. Next, this chapter introduces the two focus points of the book, by explaining how this project addresses mobilization at the level of communities, through an analytical lens of storytelling.