TEAM

Chiara Milan and Federico Alagna

WEB SITE

START YEAR 2020

END YEAR 2023

In recent years major mobilisations and protests, from the ‘Fridays for Future’ youth movements for climate justice or the transnational wave of anti-racial discrimination mobilisations generated by ‘Black Lives Matter’, raised and developed throughout Europe and the world. Furthermore, the pandemic scenario is having the potential to generate profound transformations in our society and raises important questions about work, environment, climate, health, redistribution. In an interconnected and interdependent world, these are all challenges of a supranational nature, involving actors engaged in collective action at a transnational and globalized level. For these reasons the study of transnational political dynamics in Europe is an emerging field of research: it looks at the interaction of practices and processes that cross national borders and impact on the functioning of democracy inside and outside the EU.

The project TraPoCo “Transnational Political Contention in Europe” contributes to the advancement of research on mobilisation and contestation practices (protests, legal activism, strikes, advocacy) of actors such as social movements, activists, civil society organisations, trade unions, etc. in transnational political arenas on issues related to European integration. In particular, TraPoCo investigates how, in what forms and under what conditions societal actors involved in the enlargement of the area of fundamental rights benefit from transnational political spaces at the EU level and, in turn, contribute to European integration in some form. The focus is to study collective action, its impact, and the different forms it takes, with regards on issues such as environmental protection and climate justice, migration, labour policies and anti-discrimination – all areas on which transnational alliances are increasingly emerging. The research intends to examine the extent to which the different actors manage to put their demands on the European political agenda, moving conflicts and claims from the national to the European level, or vice versa how they use European institutions and instruments to protect fundamental rights and promote democracy and participation in their own countries.

TraPoCo is an international network of universities, think tanks, and associations that brings together scholars from different disciplinary areas – including sociology, law, and European studies – and involves the Scuola Normale Superiore (Faculty of Political and Social Sciences), the think tank Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (Trento), the University of Belgrade (Department of Sociology), University College Dublin (School of Politics and International Relations and UCD College of Business), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Institute of Forest, Environmental, and Natural Resources Policy) of Vienna, and the organization The Good Lobby (Bilbao/ Brussels). The University of Trento is an associate partner.

FUNDING

Jean Monnet Network, Erasmus + program of the European Union (GA 620881)