Professional Description

Dr. Walter J. Nicholls is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He received a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles. His main area of research has been the role of cities in in broad social movements. He has also been studying how immigrants construct a political voice in hostile political environments. Most of his research has been performed in the United States, France, and the Netherlands. His main teaching interests are urban sociology and politics, immigration, qualitative methods, and social movements.

For direct links to his papers: 

• Academia.edu
• Scholar Google

Books

(2013) The DREAMers: How the Undocumented Youth Movement Transformed the Immigrant Rights Debate. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=22645

(2013) Spaces of Contention: places, scales, and networks of social movements (edited with Byron Miller and Justin Beaumont), Aldershot: Ashgate. www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754677789

(under contract) Contention and Control in Cities. A Comparative Study of Immigrant Social Movements in Amsterdam, Paris and Los Angeles, (with Justus Uitermark). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, Studies in Urban and Social Change series.

Guest Editorships  

(2013) “Urban Social Movements”, Urban Geography (with Byron Miller and Justin Beaumont), forthcoming.

(2012) “Cities and Social Movements,” Environment and Planning A, (with Justus Uitermark and Maarten Loopmans), 44 (11).

(2008) “Plural Governance, Participation, and Democracy in Cities”, (with Justin Beaumont), International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32 (1).

(2007) “Investigating the Geographies of Justice Movements”, (with Justin Beaumont) Environment Planning A, 39 (11).

(2004) “The Urbanization of Justice Movements? Theories and Evidence”, (with Justin Beaumont) Space and Polity 8 (2)

Articles and Book Chapters

(2014) “The Ambivalent Roles of Specific Intellectuals in Social Movements: A comparative study of Immigrant Rights and LGBT Movements”, (with Justus Uitermark), in Jan Willem Duyvendak and James Jasper  (eds.) Players and Arenas. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, forthcoming.

(2013) “Making Undocumented Immigrants into Legitimate Political Subjects: A Comparison of France and the United States”, Theory, Culture and Society 30 (3): 82-107.

(2013) “Fragmenting Citizenship: Dynamics of Cooperation and Conflict in France’s Immigrant Rights Movement”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36 (4): 611-631.

(2013) “From Politicization to Policing: The rise and decline of social movements in Amsterdam and Paris”, Antipode (with Justus Uitermark), (Early view, DOI: 10.1111/anti.12025)

(2013) “Rules and Divides: A Comparison of Minority Politics in Amsterdam and Los Angeles, 1970-2000”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (with Justus Uitermark), 39 (10), forthcoming.

(2013) “Social Movements in Urban Society: The City as A Space of Politicization”, Urban Geography (with Byron Miller), 34 (6), (Early view, DOI:10.1080/02723638.2013.786904)

(2013) “Voice and Power: The case of the Undocumented Youth Movement in the United States”, in Cecilia Menjívar and Daniel Kanstroom (eds) Constructing Illegality in America: Immigrant Experiences, Critiques, and Resistances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

(2013) "Introduction: Conceptualizing the Spatialities of Social Movements", (with Byron Miller and Justin Beaumont) in W. Nicholls, J. Beaumont, and B. Miller (eds) Spaces of Contention: places, scales, and networks of social movement. Aldershot: Ashgate.

(2012) “Immigration and Citizenship Regimes: The Case of France, 1950s - 1990s”, Citizenship Studies, 16 (3-4): 511-530.

(2012) “The Urban Basis of Greece’s anti-Neoliberal Movement,” Environment and Planning A (with Athina Arampatzi), 44 (11): 2591-2610.

(2012) “A Relational Approach to Cities and Social Movements: Theorizing beyond Rights to the City,” (with Justus Uitermark and Maarten Loopmans) Environment and Planning A, 44 (11): 2546-2554.  

(2012) “How Local Networks Shape a Global Movement: Comparing Occupy Mobilizations in Amsterdam and Los Angeles,” (with Justus Uitermark) Social Movement Studies, 11 (3-4): 295-308.

(2012) “Rights through the City: The Role of the City for Immigrant Rights Movements”, (with Floris Vermeulen) in Michael Peter Smith and Michael McQuarrie (eds.) Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City. New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers.

(2011) “Cities and the unevenness of social movement space: the case of France’s immigrant rights movement”, Environment and Planning A 43 (7): 1655-1673.

(2011) “The Los Angeles School: Difference, Politics, City ,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35 (1): 189-206.

(2009) “Place, Relations, Networks: The Geographical Foundations of Social Movements”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34 (1): 78–93.

(2008) “The Urban Question Revisited: The Importance of Cities for Social Movements”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(4): 1468-2427.

(2008) “Plural Governance, Participation and Democracy in Cities,” (with Justin Beaumont), International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, 32 (1): 87-94.

(2007) “Between Relationality and Territoriality: investigating the geographies of justice movements in The Netherlands and the United States”, (with Justin Beaumont), Environment and Planning A, 39 (11): 2554-15574.

(2007) “An Introduction to the Geographies of Social Justice Movements”, (with Justin Beaumont), Environment and Planning A, 39 (11): 2549-2553.

(2007) “The Geographies of Social Movements”, Geography Compass, 2 607-622.

(2006) “Associationalism from Above: Explaining Failure in the Case of France’s La Politique de la Ville”, Urban Studies, 43 (10): 1779-1802.

(2006) “Between Growth and Exclusion in Technopolis: Managing Inequalities in Toulouse, France”, City and Community, 5 (3), 319-345.

(2006) “Power to the Periphery: Suburban Empowerment in Toulouse, France”, Environment and Planning A, 38 (9): 1715-1737.

(2005) “Power and Governance: Metropolitan Governance in Contemporary France”, Urban Studies, 42 (4): 783-800. 

(2004) “The Urbanization of Justice Movements? possibilities and constraints for the city as a space of contentious politics”, (with Justin Beaumont), Space and Polity 8 (2): 119-135.

(2004) “Guest Editorial: The Urbanization of Justice Movements”, (with Justin Beaumont), Space and Polity 8 (2): 107-117.

(2003) “Forging a ‘New’ Organizational Infrastructure for Los Angeles’s Progressive Community”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27 (4): 881-96.

(2003) “Poverty Regimes as Constraints on Urban Democratic Politics? Lessons from Toulouse, France”, European Urban and Regional Studies 10 (4): 359-372.

• No ancillary activities