Current Research and Challenges on Political Participation and Mobilization

In the past decade, some contentious issues became more and more relevant in Europe and across the world, including migrant and refugee rights, climate change and environmental protection, gender-oriented challenges, and the increasing rise of the far-right. While older cleavages have not disappeared, political participation and mobilization around the more established contentious issue like economic inequalities or human rights protection necessarily cross their paths with these new themes. Furthermore, the space and the modes of individual and collective participation are affected by the diffusion of digital media which, in turn, challenge the established ways of conceptualizing and studying these processes. This Section aims at bringing together Panels that are able to deal with these multifaceted challenges in the field of political participation and mobilization, focusing on current empirical research, sharp methodological reflections and thought-provoking theoretical proposals related to what does it mean to participate and mobilize in the political sphere today across the world. Potential Panel themes are: 1. Political participation and social movements for environmental democracy 2. The effects of political participation and social movements 3. Far-right political participation and social movements 4. Digital media and organizational patterns in social movements and political participation 5. Gender-oriented mobilizations and social movements 6. The diffusion of social movements and contentious collective action 7. Social movements, political participation and human rights 8. The visual side of mobilization in current social movements and political participation experiences