Securitization and Unconventional Mobilization

Abstract

The main objective of immigrant mobilization is political empowerment that involves various activities—not only voting but also donating, signing a petition, writing to officials, lobbying, and demonstrating. Research over the last decade has emphasized the importance of exploring all these avenues of ethnic and immigrant mobilization (Martiniello, 2009; Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad, 2008; Martinez, 2005; Ramakrishnan, 2005). “There is more to participation than simply formal politics,” Michael Jones-Correra pointed out, and therefore the “definition of political incorporation should be expanded to include both participation in electoral and non-electoral forms of politics, and indeed in forms of organizational life that might not be overtly considered political at all” (2005: 75–76).