The disciplinary fields of immigration and social movements have largely developed as two distinct subareas of sociology. Scholars contend that immigrant rights, compared to other movements, have been given less attention in social movement research. Studies of immigrant-based movements in recent decades have reached a stage whereby we can now assess how immigrant movement scholarship informs the general social movement literature in several areas. In this article, we show the contributions of empirical studies of immigrant movements in four primary arenas of social movement scholarship: (a) emergence; (b) participation; (c) framing; and (d) outcomes. Contemporary immigrant struggles offer social movement scholarship opportunities to incorporate these campaigns and enhance current theories and concepts as earlier protest waves advanced studies of collective action.

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The “immigrant spring” of 2006 dramatically placed social movements by excluded social groups on the national stage in the United States. The protest campaign against House Bill 4437 resisted the increasing criminalization of immigrants with mass marches, resulting in some of the largest demonstrations in US history. In addition, the 2006 campaign reached many smaller cities and towns with scant history of collective action. Such large‐scale mobilizations and contemporary immigrant struggles offer social movement scholarship occasions to enhance current theories and concepts.