In early 2024, revelations concerning a meeting of far-right actors to discuss large-scale deportations triggered one of the largest waves of protest in modern German history. What brought people into the streets was not outrage at these plans alone, but also a deeper anxiety about the trajectory of liberal democracy, intensified by the growing strength of the Alternative f & uuml;r Deutschland (AfD). Against this backdrop, the present article draws on theories of grievances, mobilizing structures, political opportunity, and micro-mobilization to examine both the geography of protest and the determinants of participation. Combining protest event data with survey evidence, we suggest that mobilization was shaped less by grievances related to deportation threats than by the organizational strength of, and individual affinities with, parties of the center left. We also identify a curvilinear relationship between the legacy of far-right mobilization and anti-far-right protest: moderate levels of prior far-right activity tend to stimulate anti-far-right protest, while high levels may suppress it-particularly in contexts where mobilizing structures on the center left are weak or absent. In sum, these findings underscore the complexity of mass protest in defense of democracy, pointing to the interplay of various structural, organizational, and individual dynamics.

Building upon recent debates on the (a)political qualities of refugee support, this article draws from a quantitative survey among refugee supporters in Germany (n=2000) to assess the prevalence of political motivations and practices, the existence of a distinct “political” type of refugee supporters and potential dynamics of politicization during engagement. Our data document a) a diverse field of action with widespread political and non-political motivations and practices; b) notable attitudinal differences between politically active or motivated volunteers and those that are not; and c) our findings tentatively suggest that involvement in supporting refugees brings about political implications for those involved. Essentially, however, our study documents the need for a nuanced perspective on the motivations and forms of engagement to gain a fuller understanding of this multifaceted and dynamic field of civic action.

Despite their precarious legal status, largely hostile contexts, and limited social and cultural capital as newcomers in "host" societies, precarious migrants have (temporarily) appropriated niches to organize collectively, against all the odds. However, restrictive contexts and contentious interactions of players with competing interests have kept mobilizations precarious and prone to fragmentation. To scrutinize such dynamics of protest in contexts of marginalization, this chapter draws from and integrates insights from theories of political mobilization, migration, and (performative) citizenship. Building upon these literatures, the chapter develops a microinteractionist framework for analyzing precarious migrant protest. Such a perspective draws particular attention to the lived experiences of the actors involved, their concrete interactive practices, and the spatial settings of these encounters.

Protest event analysis (PEA) is the core method to understand spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of protest. We show how Large Language Models (LLM) can be used to automate the classification of protest events and of political event data more broadly with levels of accuracy comparable to humans, while reducing necessary annotation time by several orders of magnitude. We propose a modular pipeline for the automation of PEA (PAPEA) based on fine-tuned LLMs and provide publicly available models and tools which can be easily adapted and extended. PAPEA enables getting from newspaper articles to PEA datasets with high levels of precision without human intervention. A use case based on a large German news-corpus illustrates the potential of PAPEA.

The study of weakly resourced and less organized forms of protest […] requires that we pay more attention to the sociological analysis of constituencies, the patterns of their immediate social environment and the disruptive activities embedded within them.The macroscopic pictures of political contentions need thus to be complemented by a microscopic analysis of the social fabric of disruptive practices." 1

Polarised positions over the issue of migration became vocal in the German public sphere as the ‘long summer of migration’ in 2015 unfolded. These positions are mirrored in both ‘solidarity cities’ with inclusive practices of migrant reception and ‘anti-solidarity cities’ with a dominance of anti-migrant sentiment and mobilisation. In this chapter, we unpack these ambivalent dynamics by analysing migration-related protests between 2014 and 2018 in two medium-sized towns in East Germany, Neuruppin and Plauen. Based on a combination of quantitative protest event data and qualitative interviews, we explain why Neuruppin has evolved as a ‘solidarity city’ with high levels of pro-migrant protest, while in Plauen, anti-migrant actors have dominated the streets. Investigating the contentious and contingent nature of migrant solidarity from a comparative perspective and focusing on medium-sized towns, this chapter complements the widespread focus on single case studies of ‘solidarity cities’ in large urban centres.

In early 2012, the suicide of an Iranian asylum seeker in Wurzburg initiated the most disruptive precarious migrant protests in German history. Starting as a spark of protest against the living conditions in one specific asylum facility in southern Germany, the dissent soon spread. Tent camps emerged in other cities and in September 2012, the scattered camps joined forces and organized a bus tour as well as a 600 km protest march to Berlin. This chapter analyzes how precarious migrants were able to raise public attention and mobilize asylum seekers and the media by moving from socially and spatially isolated locations into urban centers. In organizing central protest camps, marches and bus tours, they broke the routine of precarious migrant invisibility or victimization. In and through contested spaces, they temporarily succeeded in tapping the resources needed to sustain political mobilizations.

In summer 2015, precarious migrants, mainly from the Horn of Africa and Asia, sought protection underneath an elevated metro line at La Chapelle, in the northeast of Paris. Dozens of tents, cardboard boxes and mattresses precariously accommodated several hundreds of protesters. From the moment the government intervened and broke up the makeshift camp, the situation, previously perceived as a humanitarian emergency, became increasingly contentious. This chapter scrutinizes the processes of political mobilization in the most disadvantageous contexts. It traces the visible and invisible acts of resistance by precarious migrants, incubated in autonomous spaces, such as makeshift camps and squats, where the interaction of migrants and supporters mobilized resources and temporarily created visible sites of contention.

Scholars of racism have highlighted the ambivalences of antiracism arguing that it can sometimes serve as a strategy to immunize racism from criticism, thereby contributing to its perpetuation. This article draws on a unique population survey on racism in Germany (N = 5.003) which contains a novel set of items related to antiracist action and the denial of racism to empirically assess these claims. Indeed, our findings suggest that despite the broad willingness in the population to engage against racism, antiracist action can often coexist with racism denial, thus contributing to the reproduction of racist discourses. Yet, we also find nuanced patterns with those actively participating in demonstrations scoring much lower on racism denial compared to those engaged in other forms of action or those not engaging at all. This research underscores the necessity for a more comprehensive approach to the complexities of (anti)racism.

In May 2008, three sans-papiers collectives occupied the Bourse de Travail in Paris, the headquarters of the CGT trade union. This was the start of one of the largest precarious migrant protests in recent French history. The sans-papiers protested against the trade union push for leadership in a movement previously self-organized by migrants. Analyzing the interactive dynamics in these protests, the chapter carves out a key aspect of such precarious mobilizations: the fragility of ties both between migrants and allies as well as within heterogeneous precarious migrant collectives.

The decision by the German government in 2016 to resume summary deportations to Afghanistan sparked a series of protests in which thousands of Afghans, mostly asylum seekers with a precarious legal status, organized marches, sit-ins and petitions in the German capital. This chapter traces the interactive dynamics leading to temporary mass protests despite contexts of marginalization of a group which has previously mostly abstained from contentious action. The chapter documents the role of Afghan diaspora and migrant support groups in Berlin in providing spaces of encounter and trust building. In these spaces, and in the context of an existential threat for precarious migrants at risk of deportation, a deeply ingrained fear and internal cleavages within the Afghan exile community could be temporarily overcome.

Protest never emerges in a vacuum, but is strongly shaped by sociopolitical contexts. Situating episodes of precariousness therefore requires scrutinizing the respective regulatory, discursive and social movement contexts in which marginalized actors mobilize. They influence both the arenas of migrant protest and the players acting therein. This chapter maps the context of precarious migrant protest in Germany and France, tracing the history of politicization of migration, the regulatory context of irregularity and asylum and the histories of migration-related protest in the two countries.

This article scrutinizes linking social capital formation between informal civil society and local administrations during and after the 2015 European refugee reception crisis. Drawing from 61 semi-structured interviews with members of civil society organizations and local administrations in two German cities, this study documents that the production of linking social capital is by no means guaranteed. Structural power asymmetries and different logics of action between volunteers and local administrative officials regularly create tensions that can serve as relational breaking points. Accepting these inherent tensions and creating platforms to work things out against the odds are essential to produce trustful and responsive relationships.

Law, Discourse and Mobilization in Germany and France "In an asylum accommodation system [like the French one], which leaves the vast majority without any accommodation, there is no way for those few who have received accommodation to express dissent.No matter how difficult the circumstances are."

While antiracist protest has gained increasing prominence in Europe in recent years, the lack of representative data has so far prevented an assessment of the scope and drivers of antiracist protest outside of the United States. This paper addresses this gap drawing from a unique survey (N = 5003) on racism in Germany. Building upon sociological and social psychological theories of protest, the article explores the scope and role of key demographic, cognitive, and emotional factors for protest practice and protest potential. Our data suggests that antiracist protest is supported by considerable parts of German society and finds that mediated experiences of racism and emotional reactions matter as drivers of mobilization: those with and without a personal experience of racism are more likely to protest if they were told of racist experiences by others. This effect is even more pronounced if participants are emotionally affected by personal and mediated experiences of racism.

This article addresses the puzzling relational void in the analysis of collective action consequences by exploring how protest waves affect local network structures in two German towns. We compare three periods of time: a preprotest wave latency period, a protest wave period, and a postwave latency period, as defined in relation to contentious collective action around the refugee reception crisis in 2015. Adopting a field perspective, our analysis uses digital communication data to capture the referencing practices between all actors involved in local migration-related protests irrespective of actor type or political orientation. This results in networks of both supportive and antagonistic interaction. Applying network analysis, especially multiple regression quadratic assignment procedures (MRQAP), we find significant and distinct patterns of change and stability for supportive and antagonistic ties. We argue that these findings provide stepping stones for the emergent literature on relational consequences of collective action.

Zusammenfassung Antirassistischer Protest hat in Deutschland zuletzt deutlich an Sichtbarkeit gewonnen. Aufgrund mangelnder Daten sind allerdings einige grundlegende Fragen ungeklärt, darunter: Wie groß ist das Mobilisierungspotenzial für antirassistischen Protest und welche sozialen, psychologischen und politischen Faktoren erklären Protestpotenzial und -praxis? In diesem Beitrag greifen wir auf empirische Daten zurück, die im Rahmen einer repräsentativen Panelstudie des Nationalen Diskriminierungs- und Rassismusmonitors erhoben wurden. Unsere Daten zeigen, dass antirassistischer Protest in Deutschland ein großes Mobilisierungspotenzial in breiten Teilen der Bevölkerung hat und sich nicht auf eine kleine soziale oder politische Nische beschränkt. Darüber hinaus dokumentieren unsere Daten, dass relationale und emotionale Einflussfaktoren die Protestteilnahme und das Mobilisierungspotenzial positiv beeinflussen.