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Comparative research has been rare in social movement studies and scholars who embark on this path are confronted with several analytical and methodological challenges. This paper offers an avenue for developing comparative analytics using 'local spaces of protest' as path for comparison. We first situate this concept vis-à-vis other models available (field, space, arena, networks). We then define the three dimensions of 'spaces of protest': specific aim prompting collective action; particular distribution of political actions along different poles (electoral, protest, concerted and participation) and specific scales of protest (local, societal or/and global/glocal). By invoking critical geography to enhance the definition of place and scales of actions, we propose a systematic set-up for comparison. The last part of the paper shows how this notion allows for the comparison of local social forums (gatherings of activists fighting against neoliberal globalization) in two societies, France and Québec. The data presented have been gathered during extensive fieldwork and semi-structured interviews conducted between 2010 and 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines experts testifying before U.S. and French courts and legislatures on same-sex marriage debates between 1990 and 2013. Experts provide special weight to political arguments, which I call expert capital. For this reason, social movements and decision-makers solicit them. Yet, because of specific national conditions, this article shows that not all experts have the capacity to use their respective academic and professional resources to impact policymaking. Drawing on 71 in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation in both the U.S. and France, I analyze how progressive and conservative experts have struggled for dominance in their fields. Results show that American progressive experts have achieved a degree of power in their fields as their conservative counterparts turn to resources outside the academic mainstream. In France, progressives have only recently challenged conservatives' dominant position. This power distribution is due to: 1) size and centralization of knowledge regimes; 2) disciplinary and university reactions to research on gender and sexuality; 3) academic and professional organization strength; 4) social acceptance of gay families; and, 5) division among allied experts. These findings show that nationally specific knowledge production fields constrain and enable the ability of experts to provide expert capital to their activist and decision-maker allies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyse the process of Europeanization of social movements mobilizing around the asylum policy since the middle of the 1990s. Taking the example of the principal French associations which have mobilized on this topic, the paper explores the dynamics that lead these associations to increasingly address the European institutions since the launching of the process of harmonisation of asylum policies. In particular, it shows that particular attention shall be given to the relationship between the associations that have constituted at the national level and the set of actors that are mobilized on this issue exclusively at the European level (which is defined as a European advocacy coalition). Through the analysis of this relationship, it can be seen that the French associations follow different processes of Europeanization. Some follow a process of inclusion into the existing European advocacy coalition while others create alternative mobilizations at the European level. This study allows us to observe and to analyse the similarities and differences in the interactions between social movements and institutions in the national political space and in the European political space on this particular issue. In doing so, it seeks to present an original perspective on a process of 'Europeanization from below'. This research is based on the in-depth analysis of 11 associations which are representative of the diversity of the movement related to the asylum issue in France. It uses different methods that were developed in social movements studies: frame analysis, protest-event analysis and network analysis. It is based on several sources: associative discourses and publications, in-depth interviews, and associative internal literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines public contestation of Europe by the far right in France. It investigates whether far-right mobilization on the EU has changed over time, and how it diverges in the party and non-party sectors. Specifically, we follow a politicization approach and address mobilization in terms of three interrelated dimensions: intensity, issue focus, and action repertoire. This allows comparing collective action in the electoral and protest arenas, thus assessing how the far right politicizes Europe in public debates. The study relies on a mixed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the content of the press releases posted by far-right parties and movements on their official websites, scraped automatically from 2012 to 2019. The results show that European integration is increasingly at the core of far-right politics in France, but its politicization unfolds in different ways in the protest and electoral arenas. As political conflict over the EU expands, far-right parties and non-party actors are challenged to differentiate their respective profiles. These findings complement existing research on the linkages between protest and elections, and suggest that the rooting of the far right in society is reconfiguring the structure of political conflict in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France, political opposition to the inclusion of so-called 'gender theory' in school curricula reached a peak during the debate over gay marriage in 2012–2013, where many observers were surprised by the strength of the opposition to government reforms promoting gender equality. The Catholic church played a leading role in this 'anti-gender' protest movement, seeing an opportunity to integrate conservative sexual morality into the movement's broader ideological framework. Here, I discuss this movement in order to draw out the shortcomings of the 'classical' movement-countermovement theoretical perspective, which often views conservative religious movements as monolithic actors, locked into a binary relationship with progressive forces. I argue however that the key outcomes of the 'anti-gender' movement are its effects not on its political opponents, but on the Catholic community itself. Indeed, the shaping of 'gender' as an imaginary enemy has powerful performative effects, including on the very group that invented it, including the reinforcement of Catholic identity 'we feeling' processes. Its effects include access to a wider audience, appealing to atheists in a global context of panic over the stability of sexual identities, and alliance with other religious groups, on the basis of shared moral values. Nevertheless, this strategy also has its drawbacks: it has revived old conflicts within the Church, and accelerated the internal division of the Catholic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of political opportunity structures (POS) on the activity choices of women's groups in the UK, France, and Germany in order to determine whether political opportunities, specifically elite alliances and changes in electoral cleavages, are gendered. We ask how/whether various institutional structures impact the activity choices of women's groups, gauging whether women react to opportunities in a similar manner as other social groups, namely environmental groups. We find that social democratic elite allies and electoral cleavages prompted by de-alignment influence activity choice among women's groups in a similar manner as among environmental groups, yet the data show that women's groups are disenfranchised from direct contact with policymaking elites through consultation, thus suggesting the presence of gendered POS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did a majority of French voters reject the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe in the 2005 referendum? We argue here that the collective mobilization of the left-wing 'No' camp made the decisive difference through its formation of 'Collectifs pour le non', a coalition which facilitated the public expression of an anti-liberal and pro-European position capable of bringing together the Green and Socialist electorates, along with other parts of the left. Using a comprehensive analysis of the multi-organizational field of protest constituted by the mobilization of the left-wing 'No' camp, we show first that the mobilization was a 'European affair', in the sense that it developed a pro-European position in the context of struggles against liberal forces. Second, we show that the mobilization was also a 'French' affair because it relied on the high valuation of the 'national' mode of belonging, through the defence of the French state model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent social movement research has focused particularly on movements whose lack of organizational structures makes their emergence rather mysterious. The study of identity politics has been an important paradigm in this line of research, most of which examines the 'new social movements' of the past four decades. But, as Calhoun and others have noted, identities have always been a constitutive element of social movements. Analysis of new social movements has simply added a few new markers, like gender and race, to the standard identity repertoire of class and nation. The nineteenth century French teachers' movement is an excellent example of a resource-poor movement and, I argue, would not have been possible without a particular self-understanding on the part of the teachers. But, rather than draw from one of these standard identity markers and research paradigms, I use two tools derived from social scientific studies of how states impose identities on subject populations: categories and professionalism. I explore the rise of the teachers' movement by studying the ways that state elites sought to impose categorical distinctions between secular and religious educators. Teacher training institutions created a model for politically orthodox, professionally competent schoolmasters: hard-working, modest, and subservient to the parish priest. The attempt at introducing secular teachers into primary education, a realm traditionally dominated by the priests, created friction between secular and religious schooling authorities. The teachers' anticlericalism was the unintended consequence of the French state's school reforms. When the French state secularized the education system in the 1880s, the teachers' appropriated their teacher training institutions for the purposes of political mobilization. Their demands for professional autonomy from state employers were the legacy of decades of localized oppression by ecclesiastical authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]