Chapter 5 - Transnational Social Movements, Solidarity, and Resistance

Summary

Transnational social movements are social organisations and processes that reach across borders to unite social movements. They are a likely platform for civil resistance, understood as organised but non-violent resistance to injustice that steps outside the realm of accepted political discourse. This is highly contextual. The labour movement in the Global North, for example, does not regularly engage in civil resistance because it operates within liberal democratic norms, while in the Global South trade unionism often carries with it extreme risks.

Transnational social movements are potential sources of solidarity amongst the global poor. This because they generate solidarity amongst distant strangers. This is not solidarity derived from abstract political principles, but derived from the shared experience of oppression. This shared experience need not be uniform; it is necessarily diverse.

The chapter looks at two test cases, the labour movement and indigenous rights movement, as examples of just-seeking and injustice-evading resistance. It concludes by examining criticism that civil resistance does not capture the urgency of global poverty.