UC Irvine

This dissertation examines why, in response to their similarly disadvantageous citizenship arrangements, indigenous social movements in the U.S. have historically responded to ensuing marginalization in different ways and to different effects. Applying a two-pronged research design, I first employ a comparative historical strategy to evaluate why two social movement organizations – the American Indian Movement and the United Farmworkers Movement – who represented constituents that stemmed from pre-existent U.S. colonial groups, such as the American Indians and Mexicans in the Southwest, engaged in varying forms of protest against policies of incorporation and why some were able to renegotiate their situations more effectively. Next, I perform mixed-methods analyses to investigate why these similarly situated groups also experienced such divergent coverage in the media. I argue that that variance in chosen protest approaches and consequent political and media based outcomes can be explained by what I refer to as a process of “captive legalities,” where three factors: 1.) the legal statuses of the SMO actors, 2.) the institutional target to which the SMO seeks to leverage change, and 3.) the nature of the specific grievance - interact to limit or bind options for mobilization and potential impacts. Taken as a whole story, this dissertation is an account of how citizenship policies leave path dependent effects that mediate protest actor’s strategic choices.