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Mobilization Fall Update
Advancing the Science of Contentious Politics
Social Movement Scholar,
From the dynamics of partisan protest in Lebanon’s October 17 Revolution to the strategic choices of youth-led climate groups in the U.S., our new issue of Mobilization is filled with compelling new research. We are proud to share these articles, alongside important news about the Mobilization conference and a forthcoming special issue.
Our 2026 Conference theme is set! We're pleased to announce “Rethinking Our Field: The Future of Social Movement Research,” which will be held June 22-23 at San Diego State University. Please mark your calendars and prepare your submissions!
We invite your submissions for our upcoming Special Issue on “Social Movements and the Law: Legal Mobilization in a Comparative Perspective,” guest edited by the distinguished team of Federico Alagna, Scott Cummings, and Donatella della Porta. See our Call for Papers for more details.
The Fall 2025 issue is here! Our latest collection of cutting-edge research is now online and in your mailbox. This issue explores the mechanisms of movement survival, the complexities of partisan protest, the challenges of coalition endurance, and the nuances of institutional engagement. See highlights below.
The newest articles in Mobilization
How Local Brokers Keep Interaction Going: Pro-Refugee Communities After Heightened Mobilization
Clara van den Berg and Swen Hutter
Can movements sustaining diverse coalitions maintain cohesion after mobilization recedes? Van den Berg and Hutter investigate this question through Germany's pro-refugee communities, developing a behavioral theory of how brokers maintain interaction. Analyzing 83 interviews, they show that local brokers employed three complementary strategies: organizing non-contentious support activities, facilitating policy advocacy forums, and connecting refugee solidarity work to broader social justice campaigns. These insights demonstrate how internal movement dynamics, particularly diversified engagement opportunities, enable survival during periods of low mobilization. Read the article.
From the Streets to the Ballot Box: Approaches to Electoral Organizing among Youth-Led SMOs
Johnnie Lotesta, Jerusha Osberg Conner, Miranda Febus, and Morgan Laverty
Can electoral organizing inadvertently deepen inequalities within progressive movements? Examining five youth-led organizations mobilizing around climate justice and gun violence prevention before the 2020 election, Lotesta and colleagues uncover how approaches to voting diverged sharply along racial lines. National groups led by predominantly white youth made electoral work a central focus, gaining substantial media coverage and donor support. In contrast, the Black-led organization prioritized community healing, while groups with interracial leadership emphasized education and direct action. This research reveals how racialized stratification influences organizational strategy and how electoral success can concentrate attention and resources among already privileged actors. Read the article.
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The Formation of Cross-Movement Coalitions and the Challenges to Their Endurance: The Rise and Fall of Unidad Social in Chile
Antoine Maillet, Sofía Donoso, Antoine Faure, and Joaquín Rozas-Bugueño
Through process tracing and interviews with movement leaders, Maillet, Donoso, Faure, and Rozas-Bugueño demonstrate how rapid political change can fragment even well-established coalitions. The authors analyze Chile's Unidad Social, formed in June 2019, which united over 200 organizations from unions, student movements, feminist collectives, and environmental groups. Coalition brokerage, frame bridging, and shared threat attribution initially facilitated the creation, but the October 2019 social uprising triggered polarization and frame dilution, weakening cohesion. This research reveals that mechanisms enabling coalition formation differ from those required for endurance. Read the article.
Conflictual Engagement: How Italian Feminist Movements Navigate Institutional Interaction While Preserving Radical Identity
Anastasia Barone and Giada Bonu Rosenkranz
How do radical feminist movements engage with institutions they fundamentally oppose? Drawing on thirty interviews with activists and politicians, Barone and Bonu Rosenkran introduce "conflictual engagement," a framework showing how anti-institutional movements interact with state actors while preserving autonomy. The study challenges binary interpretations of movements as either purely antagonistic or fully aligned with institutions. This research advances our understanding of movement-state relations in contexts where radical identity and institutional interaction coexist. Read the article.
Towards a Globalized Understanding of Black Political Subjectivity: Black Lives Matter in the UK, Sweden, and Global Civil Society
Ludvig Sunnemark
Sunnemark advances a globalized understanding of Black political subjectivity by analyzing how BLM movements in Sweden and the UK navigate transnational activism. Drawing on thirty interviews with activists and politicians, the study demonstrates that BLM's diffusion cannot be reduced to simple adoption-adaptation processes between national contexts. Instead, movements engage with global civil society spaces, cultivating discourses and solidarities that transcend borders while responding to local specificities. By centering race as a supranational power structure shaped by colonialism and slavery, this framework illuminates why BLM resonated globally and how diasporic identification enables cross-border solidarity. Read the article.
Plus, new book reviews, edited by Kelsy Kretschmer, covering major recent works on social movements and technology, populism, political economy, and cultural forms of activism. In this issue:
Paul-Brian McInerney reviews Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge by Elisabetta Ferrari, which explains how social movements think about digital technologies by introducing the concept of "technological imaginaries" and contrasting the "imaginary of Silicon Valley" with activists' strategies of appropriation, negotiation, and challenge.
Tomás Gold reviews Be Water by Ming-sho Ho, a mixed-methods study of the 2019-2020 Hong Kong anti-extradition protests that uses extensive data to assess how existing social movement theories explain the movement's distinctive features, such as leaderless spontaneity and tactical innovation.
Benjamin Heim Shepard reviews Graceful Resistance by Lauren Miller Griffith, an ethnography of action based on participant observation that examines the connection between the Afro-Brazilian art form of capoeira and social activism, including marching against racial discrimination and pursuing economic justice.
Sarah Gaby reviews Youth Organizing for Reproductive Justice by Chris Barcelos, which argues for a broader framework where all youth organizing is reproductive justice organizing and focuses on how small wins are important for the lives of youth, even if they do not create larger social change.
Yagmur Karakaya reviews Populist Mobilization by Paris Aslanidis, which seeks to save populism from its negative connotations by arguing it can arise from the grassroots and should be treated as a discursively constructed collective action frame that can fuel progressive mobilization.
Katherine Everhart reviews The Revolution Will Be Hilarious by Caty Borum, a book that uses interviews and case studies to argue for collaboration between comedians and social justice activists, positioning comedy as a cultural form that can combat activist fatigue and build civic power.
David J. Bailey reviews Legitimating Austerity by Tiago Moreira Ramalho, which takes a political-economy and constructivist approach to analyze how austerity was legitimated in Southern Europe during the 2010s and how this pro-austerity discourse was contested by protest movements.
Ange-Marie Hancock reviews Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism by Wendy Sarvasy, a genealogical exploration that recasts the activism of Progressive Era feminists as a moment of democratic "refounding" from the bottom up, analyzing their work through concepts of "intersectional bridging" and "intersectional conversations".
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