Iris Beau Segers

• Segers, Iris Beau (2020). The “Brick and Mortar” of Mobilization? Storytelling and Materiality in Anti-Asylum Seeker Center Protests in the Netherlands. Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest.  ISSN 2572-7184.  8(2), s 53- 73 . doi: 10.3167/cont.2020.080204
• Segers, Iris Beau (2019). New neighbours or a security threat? The role of local stories in anti-asylum seeker centre mobilization in the Netherlands. International Communication Gazette.  ISSN 1748-0485. . doi: 10.1177/1748048519883514 Full text in Research Archive.

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• Segers, Iris Beau (2020). ‘Not in my backyard’: A story-based local approach to anti-asylum-seekers’ centre mobilization in the Netherlands. Show summary

  This thesis seeks to explain why certain communities in the Netherlands mobilized against asylum seekers’ centres (‘AZCs’) in the aftermath of the European refugee crisis. It presents a study of one case of protest that occurred in late 2015, in a relatively deprived, multi-ethnic neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city of Rotterdam. The existing literature predominantly focuses on macro-level factors such as material and/or cultural grievances, and institutional and/or discursive political opportunity structures, in explaining anti-immigration attitudes and/or mobilization among European citizens. Although these theories all provide partial answers as to why large numbers of European citizens are increasingly skeptical towards (non-Western) immigration, they fail to explain why only some communities actively mobilize against the establishment of an AZC in their area, whereas most do not. In response to the current limitations of the existing literature, this thesis provides a supplementary explanation that integrates the significance of local storytelling with existing theories. Based on a multimethod, qualitative approach that combines the analysis of interviews, mainstream media and social media, this thesis studies if and how local stories at the community level contributed to anti-AZC mobilization. In doing so, it recognizes that anti-AZC mobilization is inherently a meso-level phenomenon, contrary to dominant mobilization literature that emphasize macro-level mobilization factors. This thesis presents a theoretical model that suggests that macro-level mobilization factors such as grievances and opportunities may apply to local cases of anti-AZC mobilization, but only when these issues become relevant to the community, through local storytelling. Overall, it argues that anti-AZC mobilization at the local level is shaped by interactions between individual perspectives, storytelling, and broader ‘objective’ material, cultural, and political conditions.

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