The US Student Antisweatshop Movement's Presence and Success at the Campus Level: Impacts of Collective Identity Strength and Network Density¹

Abstract

College students and campuses have played key roles in social movements because colleges' cultural and structural features tend to facilitate movements. But such attributes vary across campuses. This quantitative study models how two campus features that correspond to core elements of social movement theory—students' collective identity strength and social network density—appear to impact United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) groups' presence and success on 1,265 US 4‐year public and private nonprofit campuses during 2000–2006, operationalizing success as schools' joining the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) monitoring organization. Results generally indicate that collective identity strength and network density promote USAS presence and that network density facilitates WRC membership. USAS presence is pivotal, though not required, for WRC membership. Our logistic regression models also confirm that campus opportunity structures and off‐campus movement actors' roles help account for these USAS outcomes; notably, antiunion location (“Right‐to‐Work” states) undermines and Roman Catholic school affiliation encourages USAS presence and success. We identify theoretically why certain factors may promote only some forms of student activism (e.g., conscience constituent but not beneficiary‐based groups).