Political Opportunities, Collective Identity Building and Regional Social Mobilisation versus Free Trade in Southeast Asia and Latin America

Abstract

Transnational activism related to social justice claims is a watershed research area in social movements research. In particular, trade protests have a transnational dimension that was marked by the collapse of the Ministerial Meeting at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to push for further liberalisation. Between 2001 and 2007, several protests targeted international institutions representing neoliberalism. Disruptive and sporadic in nature, global protests aimed to derail the deepening of the neoliberal development model using the free trade debate as a core policy arena. This article maps out a framework to analyse social mobilisation led by civil society actors at the regional level where it emphasises collective identity-building as a central tenet to successfully change the politics of trade policy making. In this paper, I examine the insufficiency of political opportunity structures as an explanation to regional level activism. Whilst the existence of regional institutions as targets and democratisation as a window of opportunity to mobilise are relevant explanations, transnational activism requires more identity construction to forge transnational solidarity. The paper shows this using the cases of the anti-free trade network in Southeast Asia and the anti-FTAA movement in Latin America, particularly the Hemispheric Social Alliance. Whilst Southeast Asian activists frame anti-free trade positions in a less radical fashion, the HSA used trade protests as a springboard for further mobilisation against the broader neoliberal agenda. And although framing processes in activist coalitions have some imilarities, especially at the level of global movement, more differences can be found with regard to strategies due to the contrast in contexts of activism, which overall reflect collective identity formations in regions. Finally, ‘cycles of protests’ in Latin America and Southeast Asia demonstrate how previous protests against trade liberalisation in Latin America bring about more protests compared to Southeast Asia, wherein only anti-FTA campaigns have emerged and where other forms of neoliberal resistance have yet to be linked to the FTA campaigns.