Dealing with (non-)Responsiveness of the European Commission – Network Formation among “Equality CSOs”

The European Union as a supranational political arena allows heterogeneous social movements to participate in (democratic) governance apart from the national level. The EU arena is constantly changing, and therefore social movements with usually limited resources need to cope with institutional changes and fragile access possibilities. With this proposition, the paper asks: How do social movements organised around different grounds of discrimination, in the author's terms “equality CSOs” form networks to deal with the (non)responsiveness of the European Commission? To what degree apply social movements intersectional approaches to cope with heterogeneous aspects of their constituents? Using Qualitative Network Analysis (QNA), the paper explores intersectionality as a probable mobilisation aspect of “equality CSOs” to better understand the way policy networks are set up and maintained on a supranational level. When resources are limited, and movements need to decide which connections to promote and sustain, it may matter where their topics overlap and where they can join forces to lobby for the same issue from different perspectives, yet the same interest. As a benefit, it becomes easier to identify similarities and differences of, for instance, mobilisation strategies.