ABSTRACT
In all of the analyzed countries, the global justice movement (GJM) has brought about a wave of mobilization, linking local and global issues. As with previous waves of protest, this one has innovated the repertoires of collective action. Common characteristics of the GJM in our countries are the development of transnational and cross-issue networks, the bridging of various frames around concerns for global justice and “democracy from below,” the combination of old and new forms of action in common protest campaigns. Owing to the very nature of this movement—networked, transnational, heterogeneous—research on the GJM must address organizations and issues that were once treated separately, by specialized areas of social movement studies. Since local and transnational campaigns on global issues involve ecologists and unionists, feminists and communists, religious groups and autonomous squatted centers, large NGOs and affinity groups, our accounts also had to address and link all of these various streams. In this sense, the chapters of this book can be read as a dense description of some emergent trends in contentious politics. We can add that these trends seem to be here to stay. All of our chapters stressed the vitality (at least in Europe) of a movement that, notwithstanding rapid ups and downs, is still active, consolidating and expanding transnational networks and multiplying protest campaigns.
