
978-3-031-86209-0
Areas: Italy
Category: Rights, Migrations, Civil society
Tag: TraPoCo
Language: Inglese
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Erasmus + Programme under the Jean Monnet Network “Transnational
Political Contention in Europe” (TraPoCo) (GA 620881).
The European Commission’s support for the production of
this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents,
which refect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be
held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Seizing Transnational Opportunities in Times of Political Backlash: The Transformation of Civil Society Organizations’ Activism in Italy
06/2025 - Autori: Luisa Chiodi, Fazıla Mat, Oliver Schmidtke
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.