PROTEST-AIRT is a multi-actor and inter-scalar research project aiming at understanding the growing global and European mobilization against the negative impacts of the global air transport industry. Before the pandemic, air transport was expected to growth at a rate of about 4% per year, including both more frequent flyers in developed nations and new markets in the Global South. This future demand was paired with new infrastructural projects, namely new airports and airport expansions. Recently, several social movements have been campaigning in Europe to create awareness about the series of 'side effects' associated to this powerful industry, from aircraft noise to CO2 and non-CO2 emissions that contribute to global warming. Airports have become both the site and target of diverse forms of dissent. As sites of dissent, airports have been the place where activists congregate and exert their democratic rights through claim-making, oftentimes engaging in 'radical' and performative protest acts. As targets of dissent, the narratives about airports and airlines as spaces/companies of interconnection and development have been challenged by these dissenting collectives and individuals, proposing alternative readings of airports and airlines as spaces of destruction, exclusion and overconsumption. The PROTEST-AIRT project focuses on selected cases of European environmental and climate activism that target the global air transport industry, including collectives such as Schiphol Watch in the Netherlands, Am Boden Bleiben in Germany, Extinction Rebellion in United Kingdom, Zeroport in Spain and the umbrella organization Stay Grounded, which connects action groups from all over the world. The scientific goals of the PROTEST-AIRT project will be based on the analysis of media texts, in-depth interviews, visual documentation of acts of dissent through participant observation, analysis of social media data (in specific of X/Twitter as political platform) and secondary literature produced by airports, airlines and social movements alike. The project will study the ongoing debate apropos potential solutions for the aviation industry and their limits.
The two main objectives of the project are:
• To understand the role of airports as spaces of dissent and targets of dissent (including airlines), while considering the economic and social relevance that global air transport has for the neighbouring cities/Nation-states.
• To understand how the externalities/benefits of global air transport are discussed in the local, regional (European) and global public sphere, by following the narratives/discourses related to the emergence of social movements critical of the aviation industry.
The cases in study are airport conflicts in Bristol (United Kingdom), Barcelona (Spain), Berlin (Germany) and Amsterdam (the Netherlands).
