Working on the social movement of unemployed person we are interested discussing on the mapping of decision making, claim-making and the circulation of political ideas through this (trans)national networks. The general definition of social movements is, that they are networks that point towards the transformation of social issues as f.e. child care, women’s rights, ecological themes and also labour relations. Social movements are networks of individuals or organizations. Most of the time social movements are studied through these individuals, mobilizing networks. In my opinion this approach ignores a lot of the political content of the movements. But we think that applying a network and transnational approach can be very fruitful for the research on social movements. We would like to propose three entangled perspectives on such social movements by taking up the discussions on scale:

At first, we like to investigate the interorganizational networks of local, regional, national and transnational movements and organizations. How did individual and collective actors tried to get in contact with other social reformers in other European states or even on a global level? Can detect divergent agendas of social reform that were not translatable into the other context? How did trans-border circulations of concepts change while being circulated? The concrete actions can also transfer into more circulation of ideas, knowledge or even action-forms. Secondly, we like to narrow our focus on „assembly“ spaces, that means places like conferences rooms where social refomers met and debated their issues. Are is

specific cities that were relevant fort he gathering of actors, or not? Which conditions determined the selection of cities and places of meeting? One can for instance can think of language, or the centrality or leader figures/organizations as main influences for the selecting of certain places. As an example the unemployment movement in Switzerland has always chosen a central city in the middle of the language border (french/german) to decide over national problems concerning unemployed persons. Thirdly, we would like to ask how social movements were entangled with political spaces by taking into account a wider notion of public focusing on media or political areas Where political decisions are taken? Which spaces are chosen for this in social movements? In which spaces does the protest take place? In my project this is very visible through massive street protests on EU-summits from the mid 1990s on, which was the starting point for a transnationalization of the movement. It can be concrete spaces, but also virtual ones. The aim is to think of movements not as singular events, but of long-time prepared actions, depending from many conditions and influences. The spatial dimension therefore is crucial.

 Alexander van Wickeren, Anina Zahn