Cross-Border Mobilisations: Struggles, Protest and Movements in Europe

Abstract

T here are books that aim to answer old questions about a recurring theme in line with short-term changes, while others attempt to formulate upstream questions or reformulate long forgotten issues. Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox, the editors of Understanding European Movements, point to two issues worth thinking seriously about. The first is the existing confusion between ‘European social movement theory’ and ‘new social movement (NSM) theory’. The second is the continuity or not, and beyond local and national diversities, of any set of features that could support the idea of the existence of a common link between social movements across Europe. Regarding the first issue, it is claimed that the richness and diversity of approaches adopted in the study of social movements is not contemplated by the myth of the NSM approach. For the development of the answer to the second question, the book presents several national and transnational cases, the processes of inspiration between movements that constitute Europe as a common space, a few cross-national comparative cases, and the historical and cultural roots of different movements. The contributions to the book are sorted into four parts: a theoretical reflection; the precursors to the Global Justice Movement (GJM); the construction of the European ‘movement of movements’; and the ‘European Spring’ as a new wave of anti-austerity and outrage mobilisations. After the theoretical reflections in Part I, the chapters in Part II analyse the history of a few new social movements (NSMs) and the alter-globalisation movement, or GJM, in recent demonstrations in Italy around the exceptionalism of the Italian left (M. Osterweil) and the social centres