Donatella della porta

European University Institute | EUI · Department of Political and Social Sciences

The increasing availability of digital video material has led to its widespread use in the social sciences, especially in research adopting processual and relational approaches. However, methodological reflection has not developed at the same pace. In this article, we propose ways to extend classical protest event analysis using videos of contentio...

The chapter explores the processes of identity formation concerning Amazon drivers and food-delivery couriers. Such processes are located within a ‘solidarity in action’ framework, which emphasizes the dynamic and processual components of workers’ political identity. In doing so, we draw on Alessandro Pizzorno’s concept of recognition struggle, loo...

This volume offers a first systematic attempt to combine social movement studies and industrial relation studies in the analysis of the new labour conflicts in the platform economy. Contributing to the increasing interest in the workers’ voice in platform labour and in worker protest in the platform economy, the book offers a comparative analysis o...

Summarizing the empirical results of the research and discussing our main theoretical achievements for the explanation of the new mobilizations of platform workers, Chapter 6 provides several arguments as to why a renewed social movement approach is key for understanding and explaining the new labour conflicts in the digital context. More specifica...

This chapter offers an overview of the vast array of organizational forms and action repertoires that Amazon drivers and food-delivery couriers have adopted over the course of the last decade in order to improve their working conditions. We do so by drawing on our research fieldwork, and on the growing empirical research in the fields of industrial...

The chapter looks at the structural transformations triggered by the processes of digitalization by showing how they have been able to redefine global competition based on digital innovation, at the macro-level, restructure companies in terms of a network-based organization at the meso-level, and change the nature of the workplace and its constrain...

The chapter presents and discusses the main structural and political challenges underlying platform workers’ organizational processes of collective action. Firstly, we present the definition of digital work on which we base our analysis of the rise of platform worker mobilizations. Drawing on the extant literature on the subject, we look at the mai...

The first chapter provides a critical review of the relevant literature in the fields of social movement studies and industrial relations on the issues of capitalist transformations, workers’ collective voice and identity formation in the digital era by highlighting their points of tensions and of interaction. In this way, the core arguments of the...

Disponible en: https://www.prometeoeditorial.net/productos/como-los-movimientos-sociales-pueden-salvar-la-democracia-donatella-della-porta/ --------- Resumen: El malestar democrático generalizado ha puesto en tela de juicio la identificación del significado de la democracia con las instituciones actualmente existentes. Pero las épocas de crisis, a...

This book offers a complete view of the new labour conflicts in the platform economy. Through case studies in advanced economies in Europe and the US and with an original approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations, it provides a radical interpretation on the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age.

This book offers a complete view of the new labour conflicts in the platform economy. Through case studies in advanced economies in Europe and the US and with an original approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations, it provides a radical interpretation on the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age.

Defining digital work Having defined the general conditions of platformization in the previous chapter, in order to understand the emergence and the various forms of these new categories of workers, it is now necessary to distinguish the specific challenges and opportunities of various types of digital labour. If the pivotal role of digital platfor...

Collective identity in formation: from 1960s factory workers to digital workers The current phase of digitalization and the rise of platform capitalism has revived old dilemmas regarding worker collective action, while digital technologies have triggered both new opportunities and challenges. Although digitalization creates new constraints, such as...

Couriers IC1 Interview with food-delivery courier – Turin, 16 June 2018 IC2 Interview with food-delivery courier – Milan, 5 July 2018 IC3 Interview with food-delivery courier – Bologna, 17 September 2018 IC4 Interview with food-delivery courier – Bologna, 18 September 2018 IC5 Interview with food-delivery courier – Bologna, 18 September 2018 IC6 In...

Social movement and industrial relations studies: concluding reflections Labour mobilizations have been springing up and spreading all over the world in recent years, marking a new era of worker resistance and labour unrest that have specific characteristics depending on their location and function in the world economy. This has even been the case...

Class and contention: an introduction The structural transformations driven by the process of digitalization pose new questions regarding its effects on work and worker agency. Looking at the relationship between digital technologies and work through the lens of contentious politics allows for an understanding of class development in the new digita...

Digitalization of labour and global value chains It is necessary to investigate digitalization as a global phenomenon that responds to the new logics of capital accumulation and expansion in terms of both space and time. While Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have enabled the rise of a network-based company structure, they have als...

Variations in the mobilization processes of digital workers: forms of organizing Social movement studies have often considered the importance of existing resources and organizational structures for mobilization (della Porta and Diani, 2020, Ch. 5). Mainstream IR literature has emphasized the role of trade unions in setting mobilization processes in...

The increase in income and wealth inequality in Italy is well documented, but less attention has been devoted to its association with social and political outcomes. This article investigates the association between inequality and several variables on socio-economic conditions with the evolution of Italian politics over the 1994–2018 period. Voting...

Social movement studies have traditionally stressed conflict as a dynamic element in our societies. Social movements are conflictual not only because of their stakes, but also because of their forms of action. Defined in the sociology of social movements as a “resource of the powerless,” protest has been considered as the main repertoire of action...

A repertoire of contention comprises what people know they can do when they want to oppose a public decision they consider unjust or threatening. In the definition developed by Charles Tilly, it includes the entire set of means that individuals and groups have at their disposal when they want to put forward their claims. While his first conceptuali...

Social movements not only challenge political institutions, but also interact with them in diverse arenas. The characteristics of these interactions affect the form and intensity of the challenge as well as its probabilities of success. These are the main tenets of the so‐called political process approach that pointed at the links between social mo...

Developing in a period of perceived decline of the labor movement, social movement studies have for a long time paid only limited attention to struggles against social inequalities and, more generally, the structural conditions for the development of some fundamental conflicts. Only recently, addressing social struggles for global justice and again...

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy. It offers thirty-one different methods that scholars use for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy. Each chapter presents one method by explaining its utility in delibe...

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy. It offers thirty-one different methods that scholars use for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy. Each chapter presents one method by explaining its utility in delibe...

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, progressive social movements have been engaged in an incredibly intense period of contestation. Confronted with the unprecedented extent of the crisis, the current wave of mobilization brought together both older and newer actors, bridging generations and movement sectors, building on past experiences of...

Although social movements have been said to propose alternative visions of democracy, social movement studies have only rarely addressed the issue of democracy in movements, from either the empirical or the normative point of view.

“Europeanization” indicates not only the construction of the institutions of the European Union (EU), but also changes in the politics and policies of member states. Studies of Europeanization look at the impact of the European Union on the national systems of member states, addressing processes of resistance, transformation, and adaptation to EU p...

The Charlie Hebdo attacks refer to the shootings that took place on 7 January 2015 at the offices of the satirical magazine in Paris. The perpetrators, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, were French citizens of Algerian descent who self‐identified as belonging to al‐Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They planned the attack as a revenge for the magazine's lampo...

Democracy is usually defined as a specific method of decision‐making, in which elected representatives are accountable to the citizens through regular elections. Social movements have always been concerned with democracy, keeping those who govern accountable, but also in many cases advocating and practicing alternative conceptions of democracy than...

While social movements and civil wars have empirical overlaps, the respective fields of study rarely consider each other, as civil war studies focused mainly on macro root‐causes rather than on the meso dynamics of collective action. As Elisabeth Wood noted, “scholars who work primarily on social movements and on civil wars largely work in isolatio...

A crucial and yet often overlooked component of social movements' potential to produce change consists of their capability to create and disseminate alternative knowledge about the world they live in and how to transform it. While social movement studies have mainly focused on what happens in the streets, a large part of movement activities aims at...

Social movements are increasingly considered as relevant actors in theorizations about democracy. Recently, an empirical linkage between movements and democratization processes has also been established. On the one hand, many of the processes that cause democratization generally promote social movements and democratization itself further encourages...

Mobilizations by and in support of migrants have proliferated since the 1980s in response to the securitization of migration policies and the increasing diversification of societies in various parts of the world. In Europe, these practices amplified and gained broad public visibility during the so‐called “long summer of migration” of 2015, when hun...

On 12 and 13 June 2011, 27 million Italians (57% of the electorate) voted in a national abrogative referendum, thereby achieving the 50%+1 threshold required by Italian law. Two of the four questions submitted for the popular vote addressed the privatization of water, namely the obligation of public authorities to select the providers of water serv...

Relying mainly on protest as a means to put pressure upon decision‐makers, social movements challenge the power of the state to impose a monopoly on the use of legitimate force. Taking to the streets, often forcing their presence beyond the legal limits in order to get their voices heard, they directly interact with the police, who are supposed to...

While all research is to a certain extent comparative, the concept of comparative research usually refers to studies that compare more than one unit of analysis or, in less inclusive definitions, more than one country. Even though comparative sociology starts to spread, it is especially in political science – with its focus on political institution...

Social movement studies have addressed the issue of nostalgia within two perspectives, focusing, respectively, on emotions and on memory. Our contribution looks at nostalgia in social movements by building upon the combination of these two streams in social movement studies. Going beyond a stereotypical vision of reactionary movements as backward l...

While the normative debate on European integration has addressed the importance of the construction of truly democratic institutions as well as the establishment of social rights at EU level, the role of progressive social movements has not been much debated. Building upon theorization and research in social movement studies, I argue that progressi...

Since the beginning of the Millennium, attention to globalization as well as transnational forms of political participation has grown. Economic globalization has been a main target for progressive social movements, which have held it responsible for changing material conditions, labor market dynamics, and increasing inequalities within and across n...

Social movement scholars challenging the dominant normative use of conflating radical beliefs with violent means have started to refer to radicalization as an individual or organizational process that leads to a shift from nonviolent forms of action to violent ones in order to promote or oppose political, social, and/or cultural change. Their appro...

The relationship between working conditions and the development of collective solidarity has been much debated in sociology over the past century. The article contributes to this debate by exploring two recent cases of worker mobilization in the context of the Italian platform economy, concerning Amazon delivery drivers and food delivery couriers....

Following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 and inspired by the actions of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, in June 2020 a wave of protest events spread across Europe as well. Based on in‐depth interviews with key informants involved in the BLM campaign and a systematic mapping of protest events, the article analyses th...

In resisting climate change, to what extent can lifestyle forms of activism be considered to be political? What are their determinants and to what extent do they differ from the determinants of other forms of action? What role do generational factors play? Does the centrality of lifestyle changes for young participants translate into a disaffection...

On 12 and 13 June 2011, 27 million Italians voted in a national abrogative referendum, the only type of referendum allowed by the Italian Constitution. They represented around 57% of the electorate, significantly beyond the 50% plus 1 threshold required by Italian law for its results to be valid. This threshold had not been reached in any of the 24...

In September 2014, the Scottish National Party (SNP)-led government reached an agreement with the United Kingdom (UK) Conservative government and held a referendum on independence from the UK. Despite the unionist win, a relevant 44.7% of Scots opted for secession. Catalan authorities, by contrast, strove to introduce an official referendum on sece...

Social science literature on referendums and other mechanisms of direct democracy has pointed at their increasing use, especially as a result of the malfunctioning – on the input side – of the institutional system and the de-alignment of the party system (Qvortrup, 2014a;, 2014b). Referendums proliferate especially where parties are weaker but, inc...

Social movements and referendums: an introduction The Great Recession that hit Europe in 2008 can be seen as a critical juncture, triggering not only socioeconomic but also political transformations. In the area hardest hit by the financial crisis, particularly in the European periphery, waves of protest challenged the austerity policies adopted by...

Social movements formed in response to austerity measures have played an increasingly important role in referendums. The book uses unique case studies to illustrate the ways the social movements have affected the referendums’ dynamic and results. It also addresses the way in which participation from below has had a transformative impact.

Referendums present a rare occasion for movements to have a central role in political developments and emerge from the shadow of the usually more dominant political parties. Tarrow and McAdam have argued that the interaction of parties and movements intensifies around elections: movements can mobilise proactively prior to elections, or reactively t...

The referendum in Scotland and the non-binding unofficial consultation in Catalonia dominated the two entities’ political agendas in 2013–14. Despite their different natures and legal statuses, the two votes radically changed their respective political debates, triggered massive media and academic interest, and constituted momentous events that hav...

This chapter examines the concept of political violence. Political violence is analysed through the process of radicalization, escalation, transformation, and disengagement resulting from interactions between multiple actors. The chapter explains how processual approaches offer a new way of trying to understand dynamic and continuously changing phe...

Drawing upon interview material, together with extensive data from the authors’ original social movement database, this book examines the development of social movements in resistance to perceived political “regression” and a growing right-wing backlash. With a focus on Italy and the reaction to increasing inequalities and welfare state retrenchmen...

In 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg began a school strike that quickly spread across the globe. After a ritual strike every Friday by school pupils to call for urgent action against climate change had gone on for several months, what had become Fridays for Future (FFF) called for various global days of action throughout 2019, bringing millions...

Political violence by non-state actors, whether in the form of clandestine groups, riots, violent insurgencies, or civil wars, o en emerges in the context of social movements, can shi back to non-violent methods of contentious collective action, and in many cases does not mark a new and separate phase of contention but proceeds in parallel with str...

The special issue of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics on ‘The political consequences of inequality’ introduces an interdisciplinary perspective on the drivers and effects of divides in incomes and wealth, with contributions from economists, sociologists and political scientists. The focus of the articles is on Europe and the United States, w...

To what extent, among progressive social movements, has critical Europeanism ceded terrain to Euroscepticism, including within this alter-European vision, is a central question this article seeks to address. After summarizing the theoretical debate on Europeanization and social movements (part 2), the article looks at three main sets of frames. As...

The violent death of George Floyd caused by a police officer on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, MN, has not only sparked mass mobilizations in the United States, but also led to an unprecedented diffusion of “Black Lives Matter” protests in Europe. Floyd’s death served as a catalyst for civil society actors to more broadly denounce police violence and...

Since the Global Financial Crisis, European countries have faced economic stagnation, rising inequalities, worsening social conditions and strains on public services. The capacity of nation-states to combine economic growth with social cohesion has declined and domestic social compromises have been undermined. Attachments to the nation-state have i...

Our interest in feminist alliances and intersectional solidarity originates from the belief that they have the potential to breed inclusive political projects and strengthen the fight against all inequalities. Given that social justice struggles are inevitably connected by the presence of interlocking systems of domination, several questions arise....

In this article, I discuss the conceptualization of movement parties and bridge it with that of communication practices. In particular, I show how the analysis of communication practices within movement parties allows going beyond the technological determinism implicit in concepts such as online populism or digital parties. At different moments in...

The Catalan 1-O referendum can be read as a massive contentious performance, a key turning point within the independentist cycle of mobilization which contributed to shape secessionist milieus. While large civil society organizations took the lead of mobilization, staging several mass demonstrative events since 2010, the 1-O events represented a la...

The focus of this special issue is on social movements' alternative visions and practices of ‘another Europe’. As trust in the European Union (EU) is dramatically falling amongst its citizens, research on alternative visions of Europe ‘from below’ appears all the more relevant in order to understand the potential for changes in EU politics, policie...

Chapter 5 compares the debates that took place among left-wing groups and those engaged in civil-rights advocacy after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It argues that the attacks had a serious impact on reemphasizing differences inside left-wing public spheres, particularly on unsettled issues with religion and freedom of expression. These tensions refer...

This volume focuses on the debate that developed in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom after the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, in January 2015. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the unfolding of the public debate in terms of content of claims making, framing, and justifications as well as the...