Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

Abstract

Increased interest in the spatial dimension of protests and activism has led to both the material spatial condition of protest activities and their spatial effect entering academic debate. With Social Movements being a dominant paradigm for activism which focuses on strategic localization and scalar tactics, an emphasis has been put on political activities in proximity to either centralized power or to actor communities and networks. On the fringes of Social Movements, however, smaller types of direct action have been emerging in places outside of conventional, landed spaces. Chinese and Japanese nationalists symbolically contesting national authority over islands in the Pacific, Environmentalists blockading oil platforms in the North Sea, refugee rights groups preventing air-based deportations and nationalists attempting to prevent human rights groups from saving drowning migrants have in common that the site of their activities are beyond the traditional power base of the state on solid ground and make use of specific sets of laws and regulations. This paper argues that transterranean spaces encompass an interplay of state and non-state actors heavily impacted by their location. As these spaces exist beyond the mainland, they share a lack of presence of both state and society. Both state agencies and activists have to adapt their strategies during successive contentions. I conceptualize this relationship as contentious configurations shaping these interactions: Vertical Activist-State, horizontal activist-activist and interconnected state-state contentious configurations. They serve as heuristic tool to analyze protest dynamics in transterranean spaces by highlighting both state power and actor’s engagement with it. With technological advancements and increased access to transterranean, such contentions are likely to increase.

Transterranean protests beyond the state’s location and authority

Research on social movements and protest networks has increasingly left the borders of the nation state behind. That is mirrored by social movements themselves frequently doing so, e.g., through pro-migrant activism or environmental activism transcending state borders as well as areas of immediate state control on land. Research on transnational movements (Gallo-Cruz, 2019; Smith et al., 1998, 2017; Tilly and Brooks, 2005), translocality and translocal geographies (Brickell and Datta, 2011; Freitag and von Oppen, 2010; Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013; McFarlane, 2009), digital spaces as sites of protests (AlSayyad and Guvenc, 2015; Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Melgaço and Monaghan, 2018), and on protests challenging borders and boundaries of the nation state (Ataç et al., 2018; Rigby and Schlembach, 2013; Monforte, 2016) raises doubts over juxtapositions of the nation state and activists. Similarly, another line of research has called into question the unified nation state as an actor (Migdal, 1988; Migdal and Schlichte, 2016), instead opting to analyse multiple societal and statal actors forming alliances and conducting contentions within political arenas (Goldstone, 2015; Jasper, 2015a, 2015b). These actors, which can challenge power, are embedded into assemblages of power structures (Allen and Cochrane, 2010; Ong and Collier, 2005; Savage, 2019). Another research tradition has looked at spatial dimensions and locations of protest as key features shaping trajectories of protest movements (Nicholls et al., 2013; Sewell, 2001; Stillerman, 2003). They share a fluid understanding of social configurations not only rooted in state-society juxtapositions, but also in spatial conditions. Yet these research traditions, despite centring the periphery of the nation state and questioning its boundaries, rarely leave its containment conceptually.

In this paper, I argue that existing approaches conceptually exclude significant social movement phenomena. The periphery of the state is often conceptualized through its resistance to an expanding state (Scott, 2009). Here, state power takes a distinct shape as informal practices of governance competing with and complementing state institutions are prevalent (Polese, 2016; Polese et al., 2019). Yet, taking seriously arguments that spatial conditions shape social movements and protest activity entails moving beyond conceptualizing these dynamics through variations of state authority alone. As movements of people, goods, ideas and symbols span spatial distances across state boundaries, their interactions and connections are defined by transgressions of boundaries rather than dynamics within them (Freitag and von Oppen, 2010: 5–6). Building on such deterritorialization of social dynamics is the call for an understanding of translocality in spaces, places and scales beyond the national (Brickel and Datta, 2011: p. 4). Yet this emphasis on the “local” reproduces an overemphasis of terranean spaces relative to maritime and airborne spaces, transferring qualities associated with the former to the latter.

In addressing this, I suggest transterranean spaces as a research framework for studying spatial contestations, allowing for contentious configurations beyond terranean spaces to be analyzed on their own. Transterranean spaces are spaces beyond land and immediate coastlines. This is significant not only due to the presence of and control by the state but also due to the varying forms of social production of state compared to terranean spaces. Due to lack of continuous settlement, transterranean spaces are characterized by a high degree of fluidity and liminality, which might still be shaped by social forms of spacemaking and influenced by imaginaries and social practices, but lack permanent transformations of both the built environment and social norms regarding the interaction with them. This distinction is rooted in an understanding of space as inhibiting both social and physical characteristics, with social actors influencing both dimensions (Sydiq, 2020). Where these interactions may result in social production of space (Lefebvre, 1991), a much lesser human impact on transterranean spaces renders theory building rooted in terranean spaces lacking when applied beyond them. This changes how practices of resistance and contention are conceptualized within these spaces, as they require strategic adaptions both from protesters and state actors.

In this paper, I argue that protest taking place outside of terranean spatial conditions exhibit distinct transterranean characteristics. While they share characteristics with protests in terranean peripheries due to the lack of state authority present, they deviate in how this absence of the state manifests and in how activists can challenge it through their own presence. These transterranean protests occur in the peripheries of state power, both physically and relationally. They are defined by occurring beyond the land and immediate coastal lines, i.e., areas of relative state control and social infrastructure, and instead exploring political openings and configurations at its fringes. Where protesters in terranean peripheries might experiment politically due to the presence of local communities in the absence of state institutions (Harders, 2015), transterranean protests are characterized by the lack of such communities and networks. Protests occurring beyond land-based activism are thus difficult to conceptualize with existing approaches. Indeed, research on both maritime and airborne activism emphasizes specificities of their material and social conditions at the cost of their similarities. This intervention is thus aimed at highlighting the shortcomings of applying insights from land-based protests to transterranian protests, as well as similarities in strategies used in transterranian protests. This allows insights into dynamics differing from traditional conceptualizations of contentious configurations in the peripheries of state control.

In deviating from the terranean nation state as the main site of protest, multiple alternatives emerge. Airspace, as a major internationally ordered site, is bound by international norms and laws as much as national ones. The sea is not only shaped by these international laws and national ones, it is also contested between nation states, with protesters acting as one party among many in conflicts such as territorial disputes in the Pacific. And yet competing conceptualizations of what constitutes contested sites such as the “Pacific” versus the “South China Sea” remain subject to contestations themselves. One such connection which is under conceptualized due to regional denominations is the Mediterranean as a space of political realities and a region of its own, rather than a border between two regions. And indeed, Mediterranean politics have been largely left to the EU and NATO (e.g., Holmes, 1996) or shaped by postcolonial dependencies (e.g., Howorth, 1996). These approaches have mostly employed the Mediterranean as a geographical denominator, replacing one group of nation states (EU states) with another group of nation states (states with access to Mediterranean). Yet, as the case of migration politics shows, there exists a realm of politics independent of nation states and their boundaries, which produces its own realities and contentious configurations.

Power and its contestation have often been associated with the nation state. Yet such an approach is not only limiting, but also questioned by empirical findings of multiple state actors (Migdal and Schlichte, 2016), competing, even contentious state actors (Verhoeven and Bröer, 2015) or elites (Radnitz, 2012), and multiple sites of contestations within states (Jasper, 2015a). Newer research thus critiques uniformity of state institutions and state powers and finds some ways of circumventing the nation state: By looking at international, local and transregional dynamics. Politics, then, are not defined by their institutional access, but rather by situative “frictions” between actors (Tsing, 2005) and assemblages of global policies and actors (Ong and Collier, 2005). Another approach to dealing with multitudes of conflict arenas within the state (Jasper, 2015a) has been looking at spatial dynamics of contestation (Mitchell, 2003; Nicholls et al., 2013). Here, public space as well as semi-private spaces and private areas become sites for protest activity and organization, allowing for dynamic interactions between multiple state and non-state actors. Spatial theories assume that space can impact the kinds of protests which emerge and how they play out, and are increasingly being used in protest research (Soudias and Sydiq, 2020). Yet these approaches, insofar they accommodate trans- or supranational sites of power struggles, still presuppose nation states and their boundaries. They operate within them.

In this paper, I suggest conceptualizing sites and spaces beyond these boundaries. Following Peters’ argument on sound-space-society connections, the intersection of maritime and airborne spaces allows for activism impossible in a terranean context (Peters, 2018). Similarly, NGOs such as Sea-Watch utilize both maritime and airborne activism in monitoring migration routes. Both vessels, ships, and planes, are configured by the kinds of material conditions she assigns to the sea: They lack solidity, taking time to get used to (Peters, 2012: p. 1246), while constraining crews physically and forcing them to interact differently than how they would at land, e.g., in order to avoid disturbances and to engage with the technologies imbued in the vessels. Transterranean spaces are often characterized as “outside” spaces deemed unsuitable for territorial control and hence utilized for mobility (Steinberg, 2009) rather than governable spaces. This in turn invites activists to exploit fragmented state power (Davis, 2015) and to produce their own modes of governance (Davis, 2017a). Since state authority has been mostly focussed on institutions and borders at land, transterranean spaces should produce other kinds of social and political realities. The Mediterranean for example is a space where national, supranational and transnational authorities and power dynamics overlap: Border areas are tested, and cannot be maintained by a border as much as by constantly moving vessels. This in turn opens up new avenues of challenges to these authorities by societal actors. Contestations can take place both in the air and on the sea, by NGOs working on refugee rights, and on the ground, through migrants and their support networks, as well as smugglers. Harbours become key junctures of access and vital points for all involved actors.

I, therefore, focus on conceptualizing how these sites impact the types of contestations which can occur. This is tied to recent research on spatial politics, sociological studies of the state, and anthropological studies of resistance, which open avenues of political dynamics to situative, relational and fluid phenomena. My main question centres on the impact of these types of sites, as opposed to those shaped by nation states. Yet it can be further fragmented into two sub-questions: How do actors close to state institutions attempt to establish, and maintain, authority, despite their lack of institutional capacity within these spaces and them not being adapted to shifting geographical boundaries? And how do actors juxtaposed to the state attempt to subvert, undermine or openly challenge them within spaces characterized by unclear authorities and lack of features generally associated with social movement strength, such as embeddedness in the environment and supportive social communities?

I argue that leaving the established social relations and fixed demarcations between actors on the land opens up new configurations in transterranean types of activism. Fluidity of legal boundaries creates a degree of flexibility in norm- and rulemaking, which allows both types of actors to strategically expand their repertoires: State-actors breaking, or bending, laws can rely on less oversight than on the ground (where both media and institutional supervision is much tighter), while societal actors can evade coercive institutions (due to ambiguous legal authorities and limited state capacity). This flexibility however also limits their understanding of their counterparts' strategic choices, as they cannot hope to anticipate their actions and adapt strategies accordingly. As a result, both parties may end up with a high degree of volatility and ingenuity with regards to the actual outplay of such contestations.

Space and place in protests

Issues of space and place have gained an increasing interest in protest studies (Nicholls et al., 2013; Soudias and Sydiq, 2020). In this section, I will outline three currents in the literature which conceptualize where protests occur and how this affects the way they play out. Authors have argued that transnational activism, arenas, and subunits within states, as well as spatial conditions impact the tactics used and emerging political configurations.

A first major push away from the nation state as the main container of protest and political coalitions came from scholars working on activism which quite literally transcended the borders of the nation state (Ayres, 2001; Bédoyan et al., 2004; McCarthy, 1997; Simpson, 1998; Smith, 2001). This could be done in two ways – by issues which had salience beyond the nation state, and through activists which operated across borders. The former is intrinsically tied to political issues, with environmentalism and migration in particular affecting not only nation states, but whole areas independent of state-boundaries and thus creating an issue saliency across the border. The border itself plays a major role as it not only demarcates the boundaries between states, but becomes a site of “violence of the sovereign power” (Brambilla and Jones, 2019: p. 290) and, in the form of borderscapes, a site of struggle of its own (Brambilla and Jones, 2019).

Issue saliency ware was further expanded through international and regional organizations like the UN and the EU gaining influence over political processes and thus shaping the types of activism which can emerge (Joachim and Locher, 2009). The EU in particular developed a degree of rule-making power which created regional saliency even for issues traditionally operating within state boundaries, such as labour laws – as another level of politics above the national government, it could be addressed by activists in order to influence policy through “contention in a Europeanising Polity” (Imig and Tarrow, 2000). This transnational issue saliency is mirrored by transnational activism, which exists both in cooperative movements towards the same goal (e.g., in environmentalism and migration) and as solidarity movements supporting issues with national saliency from abroad. The latter in particular is an important resource for activists in polities with limited pluralism and political opportunities, such as democratization movements in authoritarian countries (Abdelrahman, 2011; Moss, 2016, 2018; Simpson, 2012). Examples of such loose coalitions include regional ideas such as the “Milk Tea Alliance” (Dedman and Lai, 2021) as well as more organized support through human rights organizations.

As Tarrow points out, transnational activism is nothing new, widely existing throughout the 20^th century and even before. He distinguishes the diffusion of movements across borders, such as the reformation and antislavery movement, and international mobilization towards a common goal, such as socialism (Tarrow, 2005). Due to processes of globalization and internationalization, it became more feasible – e.g., through facilitating easier travel and communication – as well as more politically viable – by creating international political opportunities. In Tarrow’s distinction, globalization is what provides incentives through the former, while internationalization offers a framework and set of focal points and structure of opportunities through the latter (Tarrow, 2005). Questions of how transnational activists can exercise different kinds of power and what their limits and consequences are (Olesen, 2010) influence this reading of international opportunity structures for transnational activists. These institutions, however, suffer from democratic deficits which della Porta and Tarrow point out. They argue that transnational activism works through diffusion of ideas and methods, internalization of external political issues, as well as externalization of activism through supranational actions (della Porta and Tarrow, 2005). Activists can make use of such deficits in institutions by paying attention to dynamics between national and international interactions and thus dynamic opportunity structures (Sikkink, 2005), as well as by scale shifting of issues (Tarrow and McAdam, 2005). Furthermore, activists can redefine their issues to seek maximum support, e.g. by framing labour issues as human rights issues which can be more effectively mobilized for through transnational campaigns (Seidman, 2007). Notably, even though social institutions play a major role in rendering consumer pressure more effective, the state still plays a role as politicians and policy makers are sought out and legal action threatened (Seidman, 2007: p. 7) – thus, transnational activism still relies on support from national institutions and state actors.

Such transnational activism can be distinguished into an “old” type where NGO-centred, centrally organized, single issue campaigns were run across borders and a “new” one where loose activist networks, through self-organized communication technologies, address multiple issues and multiple goals while incorporating multiple identities (Bennett, 2005). It is this “new” type of transnational activism which is especially relevant to Transterranean activism – not only are the political structures complex and characterized by competing spheres of authority between states as well as between states and international organizations, they are also subject to fluid alliances and poorly suited for centrally organized campaigns.

Another literature critically examining the nation state as container for political action focussed on the role of sub-state actors and conceptualized the state-container in more fluid terms. Examples include sociological state theories, as well as the players and arenas approach to social conflicts. A key insight has been that states are not as much characterized by unified power as they are shaped through complex social relations and negotiations among actors within and outside the state (Migdal, 1988; Migdal and Schlichte, 2016). This is why, examining claim-making processes of social actors, Tilly speaks of political contexts within which governments may restrict interactions (Tilly, 2008). These political contexts are more than the state structure, they represent shifting alliances and configurations (or political opportunity structures, in Tilly’s words), and shape political processes as “configurations of power” (Johansson and Vinthagen, 2014).

In a similar argument, Jaspers Players and Arenas approach finds that static state institutions opposed by activists is a dichotomy which does not work below the macro-level, thus suggesting a focus on “sub-players” (Jasper, 2015a: p. 11). For Jaspers, there are multiple, overlapping, structured arenas with formal and informal rules which are constantly shifting and re-evaluated (Jasper, 2015b). Proponents of this approach argue in favour of dynamic strategic decision-making within arenas rather than antagonistic claim-making vis-à-vis the state (Duyvendak and Fillieule, 2015). This includes state actors, who may be involved in forms of “contentious governance” (Verhoeven and Bröer, 2015: p. 95). Since political communities are increasingly conceptualized as complex systems, state actors can rarely be considered the only institutions involved in rules-making, even in authoritarian contexts (Pham and Kaleja, 2021), with even repression working as dynamic, multidirectional processes (Postill et al., 2020). Rather than the state as a container of politics, these literatures conceptualize multiple arenas within which political actors operate and emphasize the fluidity of such political contexts and configurations. Such an arena can be within a state, but it may well exist on a transnational or international level, and transform over time.

Finally, a third literature has pointed out the importance of where political action takes place. This involves both the physical place and social space of political interactions and has been conceptualized in social sciences in a so-called spatial turn (Blank and Rosen-Zvi, 2010; Warf and Arias, 2008). Space in this understanding goes beyond its physical manifestations and includes social and discursive representations, which are shaped by social forces and power relations (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; Soja, 1989). This influences the emergence of protests and political alliances, as their conditions – social relationships which foster shared outrage, solidarity and hope – are spatial (Nicholls et al., 2013). Influencing spatial conditions can thus influence social and political relations. This does not only occur as a hegemonic, or even repressive (Sydiq, 2020), process but also as a contested, resistant process of creating “liberated” spaces (della Porta et al., 2013).

Spaces are then not only shaping social processes and conflicts but embedded in and shaped by them. Social movements can thus influence or create spaces. They are furthermore affected by multiple spatialities (e.g. place, scale, networks, mobility), but which ones emerge as relevant is context specific (Nicholls et al., 2013: pp. 7–8). They depend, for example, on power configurations and opportunities, as activists search for favourable conditions for mobilization while governments try to contain this (Nicholls et al., 2013; Schwedler, 2020; Sydiq, 2020). Since activists can use multiple stages and arenas both within (Jasper, 2015a) and beyond (Sikkink, 2005; Tarrow and McAdam, 2005) the nation state to find such conditions, the nation state as a container for political action can be called into question. This is what Agnew did when he argued against the “territorial trap”: The idea that states are fixed units of sovereign space, domestic social and political processes are distinct and separate from foreign processes, and states are the main containers of societies. In his reading of conventional IR, for example, “State and society are thus related within the boundaries, but anything outside relates only to other states” (Agnew, 1994: p. 53). He calls this into question by arguing that territory itself does not necessarily render itself to this mutual exclusion of modern states. Instead, he suggests that societies can exist across states and that domestic/foreign politics are best characterized as shifting interactions across levels rather than fixed dichotomies (Agnew, 1994). Territory, rather than a fixed property of the state, can be conceptualized as a “political technology”, as a “distinctive mode of social/spatial organisation, one which is historically and geographically limited and dependent” (Elden, 2010: p. 16). This literature, overall, calls into question seemingly natural geographical conditions, emphasizing the political and contentious aspects of spatial conditions.

From this, we can derive three key ideas for transterranean protests. First of all, their location matters. While there are spaces of low state authority on land, and spaces of high state authority at sea and in the air, spaces on land are more strictly regulated by states and characterized by higher degrees of its presence. By placing themselves outside these areas of relative state authority, protesters in transterranean contexts are subjecting themselves to more fluid, contested power structures. Steinberg’s observation that oceans act “as external spaces of mobility, antithetical to the norm of the territorial state” (Steinberg, 2009: p. 467) holds true for air as well. Indeed, both can be connected in being outside the reach of legal practices (Peters, 2018) as well as being subjected to regulation practices targeting both simultaneously, e.g., through broadcasting acts (Peters, 2013). This liquidity, dynamic mobility and continual reformation (Steinberg, 2013) allow for interventions from actors both close to the state and rooted in society. Despite the pacific, for example, being fragmented by colonial powers, this fragmentation is challenged by social movements seeking affinity and solidarity (Davis, 2015), e.g., through anti-military resistance in Okinawa, Guam and Hawai’i (Davis, 2015: p. 3).

Such transterranean locations may be governed by one, two competing, multiple regional, or internationally connected nation states. Secondly, their specific alliances and strategies will vary – depending on the most viable path through international political organizations, they may seek to mobilize within states or on the international level and pressure varying stakeholders within states. They may even go beyond resistance and use occupation of spaces in order to produce their own governance over places (Davis, 2017b). Third, since social relations shape their alliances and the spatial conditions of these relations are shifting, we can also expect the alliances to be highly fluid and shifting. The specific disconnectedness from land, where most human life is rooted, should produce new forms of social mobilizations dealing with this disconnect and transforming or mitigating its effects.

It is this disconnect which characterizes transterranean spaces for protests: Where social spaces are shaped through social relations within and among communities, these are far less prominent in transterranean spaces. Terrain, encompassing almost all types of human settlement, comes with material conditions of social spaces as well as a built environment manipulated by humans. Particularly, the local is defined by its rootedness in such communities and their impact on protest movements (Staggenborg, 1998). It is this rootedness from which other concepts characterizing boundary-transcending protests draw: Translocal social movements, for example, can be understood through the exchange of ideas, knowledge, practices and resources across sites of space-based social movements (McFarlane, 2009) connecting otherwise geographically distant activist communities through a shared sense of oppression (Davis, 2017b), while Transnational social movements coalesce from regionally or nationally rooted movements operating across borders (Abdelrahman, 2011: p. 409). Transterranean spaces are instead characterized by their distance from such communities and the need to connect to them through communication and networks, while forming social relationships on vessels, i.e., built environments shaped by technologies and knowledge technologies.

Characteristics of transterranean protests at sea and in the air

Having characterized theoretical approaches to the locations of protests, I will next examine specific approaches to protest activities at sea and in the air. While theoretical literature has mostly derived from land-based activism, due to most protest activity occurring that way, there exists some (although mostly empirical) research on protests outside of it. In this section, I will bring these authors from varying fields and regional specializations together to identify attributes specific to transterranean protests. Drawing from existing research on activism at sea and in the air, I argue that they produce unique forms of protest activities and mobilization.

The emergence of the nation state was made possible through technological innovations which allowed central states to gain power over their peripheral, remote locations in unprecedented ways, and sped up throughout the 20^th century. This “changed the strategic balance of power between self-governing peoples and nation-states, so diminished the friction of terrain” (Scott, 2009: p. xii). While Scott characterizes this world of resistant peripheries as quickly disappearing through the projection of state power and acts of internal colonialism (Scott, 2009), this mostly applies to areas where populations, however sparse they may be, exist. Both at sea and in the air, state control over areas remains tedious at best. This is evident in coastal areas, which are best understood through both human and physical conditions (Psuty et al., 2004) due to the interconnection of physical and social conditions. Recently, such near-shore areas have increasingly come into territorial jurisdictions. Legal loopholes such as that exploited by Radio Caroline, a pirate radio anchored in the high seas around the UK in order to avoid the BBC monopoly and copyright laws, are increasingly closed by changes in international and national law (Peters, 2012: p. 1245). Yet legal authority remains fluid due to the lack of state presence at sea, rendering ships flagged to nation states as floating sites of sovereign legal authority (Benton, 2003). Legal control between these islands of law (Peters, 2018) remains contested. In practice the high seas remain under functional sovereignty falling short of full jurisdiction (Lambach, 2021). This territorialization of the oceans (Lambach, 2021) is promoted by corporations and states, yet opposed by activists in specific locales seeking to limit economical exploration (Shewry, 2017).

Expansion of authority is met with resistance, especially if populations connected to the area exist. This can be based on a general connection to the sea (Alaimo, 2014), or concrete historical and cultural ties such as those of indigenous communities (Norman, 2017). It is particularly the expansion of state power which provokes activism. Norman describes how, post-9/11, already existing “defensible lines” of the government became even more pronounced:

“When the Homeland Security boat approached, Tyson was in the same place that he—and his ancestors before him—had always crabbed. But in a post 9/11 era, this sacred space became wrapped up in wider geopolitics of fear. It became a place of heightened interest for those in charge of securing the nations peripheries and “at risk targets,” such as the oil refinery that was built at Cherry Point (on Lummi traditional territory). This heightened security meant that the traditional waters that his community had occupied for thousands of years now became—unexpectedly— “illegal” to access. This very peaceful moment quickly turned to one of violent affront as Tyson was told to leave in no uncertain terms or face violent action. Tyson explained to the officers that he was a member of the Lummi Nation, and that he had both inherent and acquired treaty rights to fish in his ancestral land. However, in the months and years following the 9/11 tragedy, the heightened sense of “security” and “defense” made the defensible lines even more pronounced and the areas that characterized “security risks” became intertwined with national interests (Norman, 2017: p. 545, p. 545).”

Other cases of states increasing their claim on territory outside its continental territory include laws against refugee help at sea (Fekete, 2009), thus ordering the sea legally even in a space often considered a maritime void reserved for authorities (Stierl, 2016), and seabed mining, which is challenged by activists expressing close connections with the ocean, including deep waters and lands (Shewry, 2017). Aviation, meanwhile, has been largely governed through the Tokyo Convention, which regulates under which conditions registration, airspace and landing location decide which countries legislation applies. While such international regulations treat the plane as a means of transportation, aviation can be a contentious political topic: With the advent of acts such as deportation (Walters, 2016), which can be resisted by activists on board (BBC, 2019), jurisdiction becomes a political issue of who can enforce and govern in these spaces.

Indeed, some, like Sea Shepherd, would argue that they are enforcing international law where states fail to heed it (Moffa, 2012). Moffa considers Greenpeace as an example of protest activism, which is law-promoting or law-prescribing by aiming to shift public policy and opinion, and Sea Shepherd as interventionist, which is borderline or blatantly illegal and confronts authorities directly, both invoking and applying force to implement existing laws and policies: “NGOs taking direct, abrasive action in defense of people’s rights could resemble rebellion rather than activism. Such situations could even result in armed conflict, given that the United Nations Charter takes a firm line against ‘aggression’(Moffa, 2012)”. Similarly, NGOs such as Sea-Watch engaging in monitoring of the Mediterranean through privately organized flights seek to enforce existing rules on human rights. And activists attempting to stop deportations by planes exploit rules regarding the pilot’s authority over determining plane security before take-off (BBC, 2019). These point to a major caveat to transterranean activism: Without clear jurisdiction and sovereignty, there exists no clear audience for opinion-based activism.

Activists can however benefit from these uncertainties, too: By registering protest vessels in the Netherlands, Greenpeace activists’ liability to Russian authorities remained unclear and limited (Caddell, 2014). Due to their limited appeal to pre-defined audiences, activists are dependent on support networks on land. Migrants use information and communication technologies to create connections to transnational support groups (Noori, 2020). In this way, the advancement of technologies not only helps authorities to govern territories. Tools such as phones become key instruments for activists in challenging states (Noori, 2020; Stierl, 2016). As multiple places take the role of borders, such as ships, strategies of contention need to adapt, and solidarity activism occurs across space and time (Zamponi, 2018). In Noori’s argument, journeys, vehicles, and routes of migration become means and sites of contestation (via politics), while time-space of migration becomes a matter of concern in border struggles (tempo-politics) (Noori, 2020). Thus, local activism is embedded into geopolitical and global narratives, and linkages of local and coastal communities with nearby urban communities and nationwide news coverage can ultimately create pressure on state agencies (Norman, 2017). This linkage of local, particularly border and coastal, communities with national, transnational and global networks creates conflict situations which can furthermore transform local communities (Papataxiarchis, 2016).

Activists at sea and in the air are then dependent on adjacent local communities and transnational networks if they operate in an activist capacity. They do not operate in translocal assemblages, as their terranean counterparts might (McFarlane, 2009), due to the lack of a transterranean locality. They thus depend on legal protections, international support, and the exploitation of legal loopholes when operating in an interventionist capacity. This highlights a key problem for activists – due to the non-existing social infrastructures, such as populations at sea, there is little coverage and accountability for agencies operating in these spaces. Activists can aim to create such visibility, but they are facing states with a lot more capacity to sustain activities beyond the land and face little accountability without oversight. Examples can include Pushback operations by Frontex, which are difficult to monitor, calling into question the effectiveness of legal protections of human rights (Cortinovis, 2021).

Transterranean dynamics of protest: vertical, horizontal and interconnected

As discussed in chapter 2, dynamics of protests are shaped by the spatial and social conditions present. Having discussed the spatial conditions, I suggest contentious configurations as a heuristic tool to capture transterranean protest dynamics. They encompass activists position them vis-à-vis “configurations of power” (Johansson and Vinthagen, 2014). These configurations consist of relationships between state and protest actors and thus highlight state’s power and presence within these spaces as well as protest actor’s engagement with it. While they exist in terranean spaces too, social dynamics play out differently in transterranean spaces. Both protests at sea and protests in the air are shaped by spatial and social conditions specific to their transterranean location. As I will argue in this section, these shape the kinds of protest activities which can emerge and impact their success, as well as how they play out vis-à-vis state actors close to the state. Protests can be understood both with regards to their resistance to state power (Johansson and Vinthagen, 2014) and their capacity to shape state policy through participatory practices (Sydiq, 2022). They are thus embedded in contentious configurations between societal and statal actors. Contentious configurations thus encompass both the state’s attempts of exercising authority and protests challenging them, highlighting interactions within transterranean spaces. These configurations can be conceptualized along three dimensions: vertical, horizontal and interconnected contentious configurations.

Vertical contentious configurations include the kinds of contestations commonly thought of in the realm of protest research. Non-State actors, such as environmentalists, challenge or confront state authorities. The asymmetry in their power relationship is shaped by the location, as the distance from traditional state institutions allows for the exploitation of loopholes by activists. Yet they are dependent on logistics and networks to mobilize resources, which benefits state actors with access to both. The sea being considered a force on its own (Peters, 2012) or even a deadly, void border zone (Stierl, 2016), is after all not without reason: It lacks the basic infrastructure and social communities we expect in most areas, rendering mobilization for activism within it difficult. There is no built environment to interact with other than the vessel, for example, highlighting the importance of social relations within vessels. Such relationships are in turn influenced by the material quality of their environment (Peters, 2012) and the close proximity of crews (Bond et al., 2020).

Ports play a crucial role in connecting and enabling any activity at sea, as Stenmanns illustrates: Control over ports, but especially larger logistics and technopolitical interventions, can create interconnectivity, but also be contested (Stenmanns, 2019). Stenmanns argument about ports in global margins illustrates an important feature for activities of both states and activists at sea, who are embedded into chains of logistics and dependent on such points of access. Such reliance on flows and networks provides vulnerabilities which activists can exploit as well: Black seafarer used their capacity to influence and disrupt them within to contest power (Featherstone, 2015). With most of the sea at any given moment devoid of human presence, and physically disconnected from modes of transportation and communication, it is indeed rather “empty”. This emptiness is interrupted by vessels, which traverse this void and build routes, connected through coastal infrastructure and communication technologies. Walters’ observation for aviation holds true for most such vessels – they are not mere instruments, but zones “of knowledges, tactics and politics” (Walters, 2016) which operate under different logics from life on the mainland. Knowledge of how to operate the vessel, orientation, expected behaviours by the natural environment as well as state authorities, are crucial to activism on vessels.

Horizontal contentious configurations are characterized by the relative absence of state actors. Where anti-migrant activists emulate the tactics of pro-migrant activists, or where Chinese and Japanese nationalists clash over territorial claims independent of their respective states, they employ these tactics mostly without state authorities being addressed. As they operate in areas of relative void from national politics, be it in the form of public attention or concrete institutional mechanisms to implement policy, these are confrontations over immediate results and direct action. Solidarity and identity of activists play a major role as they are shaped through direct action and experience is gained on board.

Vessels, for example, produce their own communities and spatial conditions. Rather than activists interacting with their social surroundings, they are bound together in a single confined space. This is why some observe a powerful connection being created through living on a flotilla or ship, and the feeling of a line between activists and the drill ship itself (Bond et al., 2020). Such an in-group is left with almost no social interaction outside of the vessel for the duration. Their main interaction is through the use of ICTs and communication with support networks on the mainland (Noori, 2020). Ports play a major role: As Featherstone points out, black internationalist seafarers were able to generate connections between differently placed groups through the use of spatial practices (Featherstone, 2015). Such circulation of struggles also occurred during interconnected strikes of Indian merchant seafarers across the British Empire in 1939 (Featherstone, 2021). Whether interventionist or activist strategies are more successful seems then mostly dependent on the balance between these communities on board and communities on the mainland: Stronger support networks allow for discursive, communicative strategies to be effective in influencing policy makers, while stronger on-board solidarity and experience allows for direct interventions to be more successful.

Both in horizontal and vertical contentious configurations, pressure on state agencies can be created through linkages of activities with transterranean activists, such as those described by Norman between local indigenous, coastal and nearby urban communities with national audiences (Norman, 2017). Transterranean activists can similarly aim to create audiences across communities. Yet they are faced with multiple difficulties. While coastal communities in close proximity face more urgency of issues, such as the Greek fishermen who “cannot have people, particularly children, dying on your liquid doorstep” (Papataxiarchis, 2016: p. 9), they can be disconnected from and disillusioned with performative activism and lack of support outside of the coast (Papataxiarchis, 2016). Creating public pressure from outside the social and political centre can be a huge challenge, sometimes successful when supporters can co-mobilize at land or new developments create opportunities (della Porta, 2018), but often seemingly futile when other news drown out activities.

Interconnected contentious configurations, meanwhile, are characterized by overlapping interests of states who seek either territorial control or concrete policies. On the international level, they represent direct confrontations between states. As confrontations occur in the peripheries, state actors will at times act semi-autonomously, be difficult to control (such as Frontex), or even cooperate with and employ non-state actors sympathetic to their interests. Since states are central actors in these configurations, diplomatic relations and international law shape their behaviour and how confrontations play out. Due to the larger scope of conflicts, logistics and resources impact conflicts more directly – having a supply line and strong mobile presence is affordable for states where they direct their full attention even if they cannot control all transterranean areas of interest at once through permanent presences.

This renders the role of protests relatively precarious: Faced with multiple strong states, their agency is reduced compared to the vast resources which states who actively direct their attention are capable of employing. They might even encourage cooperation between otherwise adversarial states, such as the U.S. and Cuba, producing an anti-hijacking agreement to prevent plane hijacking which had become common between 1968 and 1973 (Latner, 2015). Yet, they can exploit frictions among the multiple actors: Where states may not be swayed, enforcers of state authority might be. Anti-deportation activists utilize this when pressuring airlines (Nyers, 2003) or pilots (BBC, 2019; Litschko, 2019) to prevent deportations. And where a British Airways pilot decided to order protesting passengers off the plane in order to facilitate a deportation to Nigeria, it caused diplomatic protest by the Nigerian government – highlighting the interconnection of activists, pilot, airline, deported person, deporting government and government being deported to (Fekete, 2009).

Challenges for conventional theories of protest

Mobilization without accountability and visibility faces a huge challenge: Whom can it address and how to pressure those addressees? With multiple overlapping authorities – aviation under international and transnational law, sea in competitive areas of authority – transterranean activism is facing both these challenges. Yet, activists find ways to overcome this, as I have illustrated in chapter 3 and 4. Highlighting the transterranean spaces within which their protests take place allows a critical examination of the social and material conditions of protests while highlighting tactics which would not be feasible in entirely virtual or terranean spaces – that is, tactics aimed at exploiting legal fluidities in transterranean spaces, overlapping norms or solidarities within and across vessels and coastal communities.

Activists can, for example, exploit legal loopholes. By registering their vessel, the Arctic Sunrise, in the Netherlands, environmental activists were able to involve Dutch authorities in what would otherwise have been a Russian legal process against the attempted boarding of a Russian oil platform within a Russian exclusive economic zone (Caddell, 2014). Elin Ersson, the Swedish anti-deportation activist who refused to sit down before lift-off while livestreaming, invoked a regulation which allows pilots to not lift off while they feel the safety of their vessel is not ensured. Both Ersson and an Afghan asylum seeker scheduled for deportation were removed from the flight, with Ersson later fined 3000 krona for breaking Swedish aviation law (BBC, 2019). A similar law granting pilots authority over the security of the flight allowed 506 cases of interrupted deportations in Germany in 2018 according to a newspaper report (Litschko, 2019). Activists in these cases do not pressure public authorities, but the pilots and board crew, appealing to the public simultaneously.

Activists can also aim to benefit from overlapping norms, by enforcing international norms or emphasizing those beneficial to their cause. When Sea Shepherd argues that it is enforcing international law as a private enterprise (Moffa, 2012), it is not acting within a recognized legal framework, but invoking an international law aimed at public audiences and support networks. Fisheries observers similarly follow environmental goals and aim to implement environmental protection in areas beyond national legislation such as the high seas, even though they themselves face little legal protection against intimidation and violence on board (Ewell et al., 2020). These overlapping norms and laws thus open up some strategic opportunities for activists, where they can navigate these levels successfully (Sikkink, 2005), but they also render them vulnerable to abuse. States, furthermore, seek to reduce these spaces within which activists operate, for example by criminalizing sea rescues (Fekete, 2009).

Indigenous connections to lands, particularly in coastal areas, can enable networks of solidarity and fuel protests despite clashed with legal claims of states (Norman, 2017). Such interconnections exist across otherwise distant communities, e.g., through a shared sense of oppression in South Korea, Okinawa, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i and Guam (Davis, 2017b). Subaltern maritime networks played a major role in creating a sense of black internationalism – particularly through the role of vessels as meeting places (Featherstone, 2015). Activists can draw from these identities and networks of solidarity to maintain and connect with transnational support networks (Noori, 2020) and to scale their issues to nationwide news (Norman, 2017).

Crucially, these tactics used depend on the specific configurations at play. Horizontal contentious configurations rely on direct action, where vertical contentious configurations may take into account domestic and international pressure on state actors, and interconnected contentious configurations are linked to processes on the international diplomatic arena. Furthermore, as the exploration of transterranean areas continues, there is ultimately a race between states and activists. While the former aims to legally expand their sovereignty over these areas, expanding legislative and executive reach, the latter seek ways to technologically and socially expand into them and to monitor, counteract and evade state action. With technological advancements, such confrontations are likely to increase, as both can improve their access and presence beyond the mainland. Yet it remains unclear to what extent activists can ultimately compete with the resources of states once its reach and control becomes more complete.