Anchored locally - Linked globally. Transnational social movement organizations in a (seemingly) borderless world ∗

Abstract

Dial locally -act globally: this slogan seems to appropriately reflect, under prevailing conditions of globalization and disembeddedness, the seemingly unrestrained possibilities of a variety of actors to influence events - without being present - anywhere on the planet. While focusing on a broadly conceived group of transnational social movement organizations - from non-governmental organizations to loosely linked transnational advocacy networks - the aim of this paper is to give evidence of the fact that geography - and all manner of borders - still matters even for these actors. Despite being linked with the world, they continue to act from deeply embedded local contexts, very often not triggering true transnational interaction but much more limited translocal encounters. In doing so, however, they literally cause collisions between different worlds while not only modifying existing but also constructing new spaces.