Worth the Effort: Protesting Successfully Against Deportations

Abstract

This chapter explores patterns of success and failure of anti-deportation protests. Based on 15 qualitative case studies from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the authors identify four relevant mechanisms that may explain successful protest outcomes: public preferences with regard to the issue of asylum and deportation, political access to decision-making authorities, judicial means, and disruption by protest actors and/or people to be deported. These mechanisms do not exist exogenously, but need to be activated. All of them involve different degrees of risk and unintended consequences. To what degree they can be successfully activated also depends on the context of the case and reflects political opportunity structures. Furthermore, the reconstruction of the cases initially understood as unsuccessful has led the authors to problematize the criterion of success. They therefore propose a chronological perspective for the evaluation of success that goes beyond the specific deportation event and highlights the role of support that is continued in the post-deportation phase and often leads to the person's return to the country from which he or she has been deported. © The Author(s) 2018.