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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Publications

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Beyond Euroscepticism: radical left and right ‘visions of Europe’ across party and protest arenas

Journal Article - 2026

Author: Caiani, M., & Fenner, L. S.

This article for Journal of European Public Policy makes a case for reassessing what counts as pro- or anti-European identity. Over the past decade, the rise of radical right mobilisations has prompted many progressive social movement organisations and parties within the EU to anchor their activism in a defence of ‘Europe’ and in resistance to… more
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Feminist strategies against the far right in Chile: the #EnContra campaign and the 2023 exit plebiscite

Journal Article - 2026

Author: Rosario Freire Saray

The article examines the feminist campaign #EnContra, which emerged in Chile in response to the 2023 constitutional plebiscite led by far-right actors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between September and December 2023, this study analyses how autonomous feminist groups collectively diagnosed the socio-political threat posed by the proposed constitution and mobilized against it through a… more
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Invisible Politics: Lessons from the Iraqi Tishreen on Unaffiliated Activist Trajectories and Long Revolutions in Divided Societies

Journal Article - 2026

Author: Alice Franchini

Non-ethnic mobilization in divided societies is often read through a lens of exceptionalism shaped by the adoption of narrowly outcome-oriented paradigms. Processual approaches have problematized such interpretative distortions by introducing longitudinal explorations of movement trajectories, but often apply rigid distinctions between explicitly political forms of mobilization and those which, occurring outside recognizable political organizations, are… more
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Nationalism as sovereignty? Renegotiating state-citizen relations through counterhegemonic discourse in the Iraqi Tishreen revolution

Journal Article - 2026

Author: Alice Franchini

Nationalist mobilization is mostly associated with ethnic and territorial grievances. However, studies in recent uprisings, such as the SWANA revolutions of 2011 and 2019, found that nationalist discourse prominently featured in social movements’ repertoires of contention. A widely understood signifier, nationalism was reappropriated by movements to build consensus on ideas of popular sovereignty and direct… more
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The Temporal Turn in Social Movement Studies: Political Readings of Temporality

Journal Article - 2026

Author: Nerea Montejo-López

The study of temporality has gained increasing prominence in sociology and social movement studies. As this wave of research on temporality has risen, scholars have increasingly argued that time should not be understood as a neutral backdrop but as a dimension of power and conflict. Building on the concept of the capitalist timescape as a… more

Communication creates partial organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Journal Article - 2025

Author: Marco Deseriis, Lorenzo Zamponi, Diego Ceccobelli

ABSTRACT: This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the climate action movement Fridays for Future, namely, the relationship between its mediated communication practices and its early organizational processes. Drawing from a strand of organizational communication that underscores the constitutive dimension of communication to organizing processes, we analyze the significance of mediatized leadership and networked… more
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From ‘Wokeism’ to ‘Le Wokeisme’: Diffusion of Anti-Wokeness as a Far-Right Master Frame From the United States to France

Journal Article - 2025

Author: Batuhan Eren, Manuela Caiani

The transnationalization of the far right is a noteworthy and evolving phenomenon, characterized by extensive networks of actors, their collaborative activities and the exchange of novel ideas and frames. The emergence and cross-national spread of ‘anti-wokeness’ is a recent trend in the ongoing transnationalization process. As a concept to criticize the woke ideas while promoting the illiberal… more
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Normalization through transnationalization? Far right international coordination and cooperation

Journal Article - 2025

Author: Manuela Caiani

This paper examines the normalization of the far right via the transnationalization of identities, networks and mobilization. Normalization is related to transformations in the socio-political landscape, and the travelling across borders of discursive strategies and practices of backlash political players play a role on it. Focusing on the crucial Italian case, first, we distinguish extent… more
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Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Journal Article - 2025

Author: Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli

Based on an approach to power resources that links studies on social movements with those on labour sociology, in this article we examine the mobilizations that took place at Mondo Convenienza, a large Italian company involved in the logistic sector, against extreme forms of exploitation. We suggest that, in order to understand these forms of… more

Movement party as a framing strategy: comparing left-wing and right-wing actors in Serbia

Journal Article - 2024

Author: Karlo Kralj, Ivan Tranfić

Researchers typically define movement parties as political parties that attempt to innovate party-political organizing through social movements’ action repertoire. Apart from being analyzed as a specific type of political party, movement parties can also be analyzed as a type of framing strategy that actors use to enhance electoral mobilization. Although this kind of analysis has… more

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Publications

Edited Volume - 2026

Conspiracism and Political Conflict

Manuela Caiani, Marco Solinas, Hans-Jorg Trenz

Monograph - 2025

Free download for "Contentious Politics of Global Health Movements"

Donatella Della Porta, Stella Christou

Journal Article - 2025

Communication creates partial organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Marco Deseriis, Lorenzo Zamponi, Diego Ceccobelli
This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the climate action movement Fridays for Future, namely, the relationship between its mediated communication practices and its early organizational processes. Drawing from a strand of organizational communication that underscores the constitutive dimension of communication to organizing processes, we analyze the significance of mediatized leadership and networked communication for the foundation and early development of two national chapters of Fridays for Future: Youth for Climate (YFC) Belgium and Fridays for Future Italy (FFFI).

Journal Article - 2025

Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli