ECRP08 Collaboration led by the University of Antwerp: Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualising Contestation (CCC)

This study is about social movement protests / mobilisations in the UK and Europe. It shall collect data through surveys of participants in three or four large-scale protest events per year in the period 2009-2012 in the UK. But it shall address three key research questions by analysing data from a combined data set of country-cases in the broader project: the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. It shall ask: Who attends protests?Longitudinal biographical and attitude data will be collected to develop an understanding of who attends protests. Why do people attend protests? What is it about conventional politics that leads members of the public to attend such protest marches? Do protesters see it as an alternative, and perhaps more effective means of influencing politics than voting? Are they dissatisfied with the current political system? Do they decline to vote? And to what extent do they trust governmental institutions to deliver fair and just policies? What is the current status of the global justice movement?Is there continuity in protest participants? Do activists perceive themselves to be a part of the global justice movement?