Division of Labour in Social Movements: The Interplay between Legal Mobilization and Protest Strategies in Mining Resistance

Following rising demands for mineral extraction, Europe experiences increasing popular resistance against new mining projects. In response to public protests, states often attempt to integrate affected stakeholders into state-led permit processes to mitigate conflicts relating to natural resource projects. However, despite emphasis on integration of conflicts, anti-extraction movements continue using public protest actions in parallel to legal mobilization in permit processes. This interpretive study investigates a heterogenous anti-extraction movement mobilizing against a suggested mine in Kallak/Gállok in northern Sweden. The study follows the movement’s actions over an eleven-year period, using frame analysis to explore how movement actors’ interpretations of opportunities in permit processes relate to their strategy-making. In line with expectations our results indicated that movement actors seeing themselves as ‘insiders’, with access to permit processes, tended to use legal mobilization, while ‘outsiders’ tended to emphasise actions in public, e.g., demonstrations. Our study ads by finding that both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ interpreted their own action opportunities by comparing them to the opportunities of other movement actor. A mutual awareness of other movement actors’ institutional locations and expected roles amplified strategic specialization in the movement. With insiders specializing in legal mobilization and outsiders in public protest actions. ‘Insiders’ opportunities for legal mobilization were thus interpreted as increasing ‘outsiders’ opportunities for public protest, and vice versa. Instead of mitigating public protest action, integration of some movement actors into state-led permit processes may thus paradoxically bolster a division of labour in the movement and increase other movement actors’ willingness to protest in public.