Claiming Justice in the Global South

Abstract

Our book began with the principal objective of exploring the scalar politics of how marginalized social groups demand justice in the Global South. We presented six empirical case studies, which demonstrate how organized and everyday forms of resistance emerge and are played out. These forms of resistance take vastly differing approaches to building coalitions, solidarity networks, and political alliances; but they share the fact that all seek to challenge the hegemony of powerful institutions and investments. The movements we discuss here also utilize, albeit in varying degrees, a rights-based approach to defend their mobilizational practices. In this concluding chapter, we now bring together the main insights from these case studies. We stress six principal themes that have emerged from the cases: (a) the importance of the form of subordination and inequality for understanding mobilization; (b) the triggers that give rise to activism and the factors enabling justice claims to be made; (c) the varied forms of contentious politics and everyday resistance; (d) the scalar politics of local-national-transnational linkages; (e) the value of rights-based claims; and (f) the extent to which justice claims have been successful. Based on a comparative analysis of these cases, this chapter suggests some more general patterns and arguments. We recognize that research on justice-based social mobilization by apparently powerless groups is still limited in number and for this reason, we end the chapter by setting an agenda for future research on struggles for justice in very difficult contexts.