Contentious Politics in the Transnational Arena

This Open Access book investigates the transnational dimension of activism — exploring how and why non-state actors scale up contention from the local to the transnational arena, how they translate their grievances and claims into the transnational arena, and how they organize across borders. Moving beyond the analysis of individual campaigns, or a single-country or single-issue focus, which are already well represented in the literature, this volume takes a comprehensive approach. It investigates transnational activities across various policy fields and their respective transnational arenas of contention — namely migration, labour struggles, human rights, and environmental/climate justice — across a range of geographic contexts. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the contributions in this volume examine cases of transnational contention spanning the EU and its broader neighborhood, from the Western Balkans to the South Caucasus and the Mediterranean. Focusing on European spaces as the arena where civil society actors mobilize, this volume offers insights into their diverse repertoires of contention and discursive strategies, and how they refer to the European Union as the direct or indirect target of their claims.  Key cases include grassroots movements, NGO campaigns, pro-European forces, Eurosceptic parties, healthcare and climate justice activism, and the organizational dynamics surrounding migration-related contentious politics.

Offering guidelines for future research on civil society actors in the EU and its neighbourhood, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students of political sociology, political science, European studies, as well as practitioners and policy makers concerned with the future of civil society activism in the transnational arena.