Rich kids of Europe? Social basis and strategic choices in the climate activism of Fridays for Future

Donatella Della Porta,Martín Portos

doi:10.1017/ipo.2021.54

Abstract

AbstractIn 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg began a school strike that quickly spread across the globe. After a ritual strike every Friday by school pupils to call for urgent action against climate change had gone on for several months, what had become Fridays for Future (FFF) called for various global days of action throughout 2019, bringing millions of people out onto the streets in the largest climate protests in world history. Drawing on unique protest survey data on FFF events across European cities in 2019, this article explores the structural bases of organized collective mobilization for climate justice. Nuancing narratives that focus on either the privileged background of climate justice protesters or the environmentalism of the poor, our results show the heterogeneity of the social composition of the protests, suggesting the need for cross-class alliances for mass mobilizations. Moreover, our analysis reveals that the social background of protesters shaped their attitudes regarding what institutions and approaches can be relied upon to tackle climate and environmental challenges. This suggests an important and under-studied connection between social background and the strategic choices of environmental movements.

Highlights

In 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg began a school strike that quickly spread across the globe
After school pupils had ritually gone on strike every Friday over several months to call for urgent intervention against climate change, on 15 March 2019, Fridays for Future (FFF) organized a global day of action for climate justice that saw 1.6 million protesters participate worldwide (Wahlström et al, 2019)
To what extent is this transformation in framing reflected in the social basis of those who participated in the global strike for climate? Broadly speaking, we know that throughout history, economic and political shifts have been closely associated with the rise and fall of social movements (Chase-Dunn and Almeida, 2020)

Summary

Introduction

In 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg began a school strike that quickly spread across the globe. While labor unions and blue-collar workers in ‘old’ social movements asked for a more equal redistribution, in ‘new’ social movements, the emerging middle classes seem to mobilize around post-materialist values and cultural issues (Inglehart and Catterberg, 2002; Eggert and Giugni, 2012, 2015; della Porta and Portos, 2020, 2022) This narrative has been contested, especially in the context of the global justice movement and anti-austerity protests (della Porta, 2015), we know little about the social bases of protest in transnational, coordinated events addressing climate justice. Our results do suggest that upper-class protesters tend to rely on governments and companies in solving environmental problems to a greater extent than do working- and middle-class activists

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion