Crossing Borders: Transnational Activism in European Social Movements

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, the Global Justice Movement (GJM) has emerged as a major force in the global political arena. It has successfully organized growing numbers of cross border mobilizations on a range of global issues addressing justice, peace, and democracy. How has this surge of cross-border activism been possible? In this chapter we explore the complex factors — both external and internal to social movements — that have put global issues at the centre of transnational activism in European countries (as well as around the world). While the rest of the book addresses the visions and actions of GJMOs and their conceptions and practices of democracy as a fundamental element of their cross-border mobilizations, in this chapter we aim at identifying the key sources and dynamics of transnational activism, and the characteristics of the organizations of major European countries that are most active in cross-border mobilizations.

This chapter was prepared during Mario Pianta’s sabbatical leave as a Fernand Braudel fellow at the European University Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences. For their comments, we thank Donatella della Porta, her colleagues at the EUI, Marco Giugni, and the participants in the May 2007 ECPR workshop in Helsinki, where this paper was first presented. We thank Tommaso Rondinella and Elisabetta Segre for their suggestions on the statistical analysis.