Pro-migrant protest in times of COVID-19: intersectional boundary spanning and hybrid protest practices

ABSTRACT

Public policies implemented to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections created unprecedented challenges for social movements. Most striking was the de facto temporary suspension of the right to assembly. Using the case of pro-migrant mobilizations in Germany as an example, we analyse how social movements are affected by and respond to this exceptional context. Instead of a breakdown, we find evidence for a proliferation of mobilization. This is surprising since COVID-19 related restraints were particularly accentuated for pro-migrant mobilizations. We argue that this puzzle can be explained by looking at the particular framing strategies and the hybrid online and offline protest practices used by activists. Integrating empirical insights of social movements in times of crisis, theoretical approaches to boundary spanning, intersectional frame bridging, and hybrid combinations of online and offline protest, our article provides an analysis of pro-migrant mobilizations in times of pandemic. It also sketches-out avenues for future research on plural alliance formation in diverse societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• civil society
• migration
• intersectionality
• Germany
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Lamont and Molnár (2002: p. 186) define symbolic boundaries as ‘conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space (…) that separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership’.

2 https://www.unteilbar.org/sogehtsolidarisch/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabrina Zajak

Sabrina Zajak leads the department ‘conflict and consensus' at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and is professor for political sociology at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Her recent publications include ‘Social Stratification and Social Movements. Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives on an Ambivalent Relationship’ (Routledge, with Sebastian Haunss).

Katarina Stjepandić

Katarina Stjepandić is a PhD candidate at the Humboldt University of Berlin and a research assistant at the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM). She studied political sciences at Eberhard-Karl's University Tübingen, SciencesPo Paris and Free University of Berlin. Her research focusses on migration and integration studies, social movements and collective action in plural societies.

Elias Steinhilper

Elias Steinhilper is a postdoctoral researcher at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) in Berlin. Trained as political sociologist in Berlin, Freiburg and Florence, he has a particular interest in migration studies, political conflict, protest and human rights. His research has been published in various peer-reviewed journals including Sociology, Social Movement Studies, International Migration and Critical Sociology.