ABSTRACT
Despite their precarious legal status, largely hostile contexts, and limited social and cultural capital as newcomers in “host” societies, precarious migrants have (temporarily) appropriated niches to organize collectively, against all the odds. However, restrictive contexts and contentious interactions of players with competing interests have kept mobilizations precarious and prone to fragmentation. To scrutinize such dynamics of protest in contexts of marginalization, this chapter draws from and integrates insights from theories of political mobilization, migration, and (performative) citizenship. Building upon these literatures, the chapter develops a microinteractionist framework for analyzing precarious migrant protest. Such a perspective draws particular attention to the lived experiences of the actors involved, their concrete interactive practices, and the spatial settings of these encounters.
