Contention

This special issue explores the complex and multifaceted relationship between crime and protest. Crime may in some circumstances be considered a legitimate form of resistance against oppressive authorities. It may also be seen as an unacceptable form of violence or a symptom of social disorganization. Similarly, while protest is a tool for promoting social justice, it may be criminalized and treated as a threat to public order. The articles in this issue draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to examine various aspects of the relationship between crime and protest. They explore strategies used by governments to suppress dissent, the relationship between moderate and radical protest actions, and the ways in which marginalized groups challenge the designations of illegality by immigration regimes. The articles demonstrate how crime and protest are deeply intertwined, and they provide new insights into the complexities of social activism and the challenges faced by those who engage in it.

In this article, I focus on how activism and art disrupt the necessity of queer migrants having to perform the role of the “good,” law-abiding migrant who desires inclusion into the nation. More specifically, I analyze how performing crime and illegality challenges the necessity of queer migrants who claim asylum adhering to stereotypes of vulnerability so as to be seen as deserving of legal status. First, I examine the #Rockumenta activism by LGBTQIA+ Refugees Welcome to understand how queer migrants engage with criminality to avoid being silenced. Next, I explore the photography series I Am Illegal by an anonymous artist to understand how queer migrants challenge the designation of illegality by immigration regimes. Instead of trying to prove anything to the viewer about queer migrants, I suggest both activist and artistic interventions shift the focus toward the inherent violence of immigration regimes.

This article examines the strategies used by a democratic state to suppress dissent by criminalizing social protest activities. We compile and tabulate new legislation in Australia affecting protest rights from 2010 to 2020. Using data collected from the Facebook pages of 728 environmental groups and climate-related arrests reported in media articles, we then examine connections between climate change protest and protest criminalization in Australia between 2010 and 2019. Australian governments are shown to have criminalized climate protest via large-scale arrests by introducing laws curtailing protest freedoms and expanding police and corporate discretionary power in the application of those laws. State, corporate, and media actors are shown to engage in the rhetorical criminalization of climate protest, portraying protesters as threats to economic and political interests and to national security. However, the ongoing growth of climate change activism indicates that these criminalization strategies seeking to prevent climate protest may have been largely ineffective.

We examine how anti-Trump democrats (N = 460), prior to the 2020 election, managed their options to protest, focusing on when moderate collective action predicts more radical intentions to protest. We investigate the relationship of moderate action involvement and effectiveness with radical action intentions and the effects of various other variables such as intergroup emotions, group identification, and political vs. participative efficacy. Although moderate action involvement is correlated with radical intentions, the effectiveness of moderate action is negatively related to radical intentions. Analogously, while political efficacy positively predicts radical action, participative efficacy negatively predicts radical action, both with increasing moderate action experience. Social-identity-based collective action models explain this radical use of political violence as protest (e.g., ESIM) and the counteracting effect of efficacy forms (SIDE, NTL).

This article discusses some theoretical issues relating to recent trends in global policing. It puts forward the argument that the growth in the scale of anti-police and anti-government protests since 2019 is an intensification of the repercussions of the global crisis of political economy since the 2008 crash and subsequent austerity measures. The focus is developments in the United States and the United Kingdom, where states and their agents of social control have hitherto relied upon a relatively stable hegemony in terms of public tolerance of the government monopoly of violence as exercised on the streets. However, the police–public consensus is fragile and governing institutions are finding it increasingly difficult to accept it. The repressive security measures employed by state agents only partly explain the current fragility in public trust in the police. We must also consider the institutional inability to recognize the degree of reform required to reassure citizens that their public safety is guaranteed. I explore how criminalization processes are feeding back upon public authorities, creating double binds from which they are struggling to extricate themselves.