Division of Labour in Swedish Mining Resistance: The Interplay between Legal Mobilization and Public Protests in Social Movements

More knowledge is needed about how the design and implementation of legal processes shape the strategies and actions of social movements. We explore how movement actors’ interpretations of opportunities and constraints within legal processes shape their choices of strategies and actions. We particularly investigate how actors’ interpretations relate to their access to legal processes (i.e. legal standing) and to their understanding of opportunities in alternative action arenas in society, such as policy-making processes and public protests. We investigate an anti-extraction movement and its mobilization against a mining project in northern Sweden over eleven years. Using social movement theory and frame analysis, we explore the interpretations, strategies, and actions of movement actors who have or lack legal standing within the project’s permit process (i.e. legal insiders or outsiders). Key results indicate that movement actors’ actions are shaped by their understanding of opportunities in societal arenas, their action traditions, and their interpretations of expected roles amongst other actors in the movement. To understand how legal standing shapes actions, we must acknowledge that actions are shaped by both a logic of consequences and a logic of appropriateness. Results also indicate that insiders’ legal engagement did not diminish outsiders’ use of public protests. On the contrary, outsiders’ motivation to use protests increased via a division of labour emerging in the movement, with actors specializing into either legal mobilization or protests. Integration of some movement actors into legal processes may not lead to a phasing out of protests in the growing mining resistance in Europe.