Urban Continent, Urban Activism? European Cities and Social Movement Activism

Abstract

The European Union is currently experiencing a major protest wave. Citizens all over the continent are taking to the streets in droves to express their dissatisfaction with austerity policies, high unemployment, ineffective leadership and other issues. Many of these protests have been centred in large cities, but while some scholarly work notes the expressly urban nature of contemporary social movement activity, no studies test the effect of urban residential status on the likelihood of social movement participation in the presence of other factors. I hypothesise that cities positively influence the prevalence of social movement activity in the countries of the European Union. Using the multilevel 5th wave of the European Social Survey, I examine how urbanity, resources and grievances influence the likelihood of participation in four different forms of activism: wearing a protest badge, boycotting a product, signing a petition and participating in a demonstration. A series of multilevel mixed-effects regression models indicate that resources and urban status best predict the likelihood of participation in the four activities, indicating that cities offer better environments for social movement activity. I conclude with a discussion about European movement activity and urban society.