The spatialities of contentious politics

TLDR

Space shapes the mobilisation, practices, and trajectories of contentious politics, with scale, place, networks, positionality, and mobility all implicated and often used together. The study argues that all spatialities must be considered together because their interrelations produce unexpected effects on contentious politics. The authors illustrate these co‑implications through the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride in the United States.

Abstract

The question of how space matters to the mobilisation, practices and trajectories of contentious politics has frequently been represented as a politics of scale. Others have focused on place and networks as key spatialities of contentious politics. Yet there are multiple spatialities – scale, place, networks, positionality and mobility – that are implicated in and shape contentious politics. No one of these should be privileged: in practice, participants in contentious politics frequently draw on several at once. It is thus important to consider all of them and the complex ways in which they are co‐implicated with one another, with unexpected consequences for contentious politics. This co‐implication in practice, and its impact on social movements, is illustrated with the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride in the United States.