Mark

Bergfeld

Student ID: bs13455
PGT 130693891
Queen Mary University of London School
of Business and Management
19.08.2014
Leaderless Leaders? Southern
European Activism in London
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2


Abstract

Contemporary social movements in Europe such as the occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens, the
indignados protests in the Spanish State and the Que Se Lixe a Troika movement in Portugal, have
been labelled leaderless (Penny 2010, Mason 2011, Castells 2012, Juris 2013, Graeber 2013). It is
in this context that newly arrived Southern European migrants in London have adopted this label for
their activism. The author does not accept the label as an adequate explanation of the complex
relationship between protest organisers, movement- activists and the social movements they
participate in. Through the use of participant observation and in-depth interviews, he seeks to analyse
(1) how do Southern European activists make sense of leadership and leaderlessness; (2) what
socio-economic and political factors contribute to the rejection of leadership amongst Southern
European migrant activists; and (3) what function do these activists perform in the wider migrant
community, and within social and labour movements in Britain. The author finds that there are
different overlapping typologies of leaderships both relational and skill-based - in contemporary
social movement organisations of newly arrived migrants in London. While these activists may reject
the label of leader they perform functions akin to that of a leader within the wider migrant
community and trade unions. However complex and contradictory the findings, this dissertation
project make a unique contribution to the study of leadership in contemporary social movements and
trade unions.

Keywords: Migration, Social Movements, Trade Unions, Leadership, Leaderlessness,
Eurozone Crisis











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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 4
Preface .................................................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction: Crisis, Migration and Leaderless Movements ............................................................... 9
Research Aims and Objectives .......................................................................................................... 12
Literature Review: Theorizing Leadership in Social Movements .......................................................... 15
Leadership in Trade Unions .............................................................................................................. 15
Dialogical Leadership: its not what you say but when you say it .................................................... 17
Leaderlessness reconsidered ............................................................................................................ 19
Collective and Informal Leaderships in Social Movement Organisations (SMOs) ............................ 21
Research Strategy: Asking we walk ................................................................................................... 23
Towards Solidarity and Activist Research ......................................................................................... 24
Participatory Observation and Online Ethnography ......................................................................... 26
In-depth Interviews ........................................................................................................................... 27
Ethics ................................................................................................................................................. 30
Typologies of (Anti-)Leadership ............................................................................................................ 33
Primitive Rebels ................................................................................................................................ 33
A class fraction in the making? ......................................................................................................... 36
The Power of the Admin ................................................................................................................... 39
Collective Intelligence ....................................................................................................................... 42
Liquid Leadership .............................................................................................................................. 44
The Roots of Leaderlessness ................................................................................................................. 47
Crisis of Authority ............................................................................................................................. 47
Acting out of Affect ........................................................................................................................... 50
No gods, no masters, no leaders? ..................................................................................................... 53
The Leadership Function of Southern European Activists .................................................................... 56
in the trade unions? ...................................................................................................................... 56
in their communities? ................................................................................................................... 61
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 65
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 69
Appendix 1: Glossary of Organisations ................................................................................................. 74
Appendix 2: Biographical Sketches ....................................................................................................... 77


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Acknowledgements

This dissertation project is dedicated to my parents Heather and Mike who
have showered me with their love and unconditional support for the last 27
years. There are no words that could express my gratitude. I would also like to
thank my dissertation supervisor Professor Geraldine Healy for her support,
her honesty and encouraging words in our meetings. She rekindled my interest
in trade unions in the first place, for which I am grateful. All the interviewees
and participants in this research project deserve special thanks from myself
and everyone else out there. Your activism, organizing efforts and lives have
inspired me. I hope that this project will show the mark you have left on me.
Without you this project would not have been possible. Albert, Liliana Zuna
and Mariela Maitane also deserve a special mention for making their photos
and artwork available as well as sourcing photos across various platforms and
social media sites for this project. The following other people deserve a
special thanks: Anne Alexander, Colin Barker, Kenneth Bergfeld, Anindya
Bhattacharyya, Nathan Bolton, Robin Burrett, Paolo Gerbaudo, Sukhdev
Johal, Dominic Kavakeb, Giuliano Maielli, Elizabeth Mantzari, Jonathan
Maunder at ZedBooks, Sandra Moog, Laura Saunders, Dan Swain, Daniel
Trilling, Win Windisch, and Luigi Wolf. All of you have encouraged me,
stuck with me, and provided me with food for thought to last some people a
lifetime. Thank you.
Mark Bergfeld, Kln 19/08/2014





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Preface

On Sunday 11 May 2014 I was invited to speak at a meeting on European
citizenship organised by Migrantes Unidos a group of newly arrived
Portuguese migrants in London at Passing Clouds in Haggerston, London. It
was the final meeting in a series of three. The first two had been titled Our
voice and Citizens of the UK?. A week ahead of the European Union (EU)
elections, the meeting brought together Portuguese, Spanish and Greek
migrants who had previously demonstrated outside their embassies, at the EU
Commission building in London and wherever their foreign and financial
ministers had addressed crowds.
More than two years had passed since this same groups of migrants had
mobilized together as PIIGS Uncut on the Trades Union Congress (TUC)
organised mass demonstration on 20 October 2012. Nearly three years had
passed since they participated in the Occupy London encampment outside St
Pauls Cathedral. Now they were huddled into a room to discuss the rise of
UKIPs anti-immigration policies; their rights as EU citizens in the UK; the
euro; the prospects of the UK leaving the EU; and how Germanys export
economy continues to exacerbate trade imbalances within the eurozone.
As I spoke about the limits of European citizenship I recognized many faces in
the room: Claudia, Victor, Katerina, Marco, Rodrigo and Rafael, who knew I
was working on related questions and had invited me in the first place. For the
last three years our paths had crossed at various activist gatherings, meetings
and assemblies. These included events held outside the Spanish embassy,
organised by the activist group the Coalition of Resistance, by the UK student
6

movement and by Occupy London. Yet it was only on that Sunday evening
that I realized these activists, who had previously rejected organization,
leaderships and political parties, had moved on from their initial positions and
opinions as I had encountered them during the height of the British anti-
austerity movement in 2011.
Claudia and Victor, two of the most prominent activists within the early days
of the Spanish 15M movement in London, were now campaigning for the
European Greens in London. Rafael, a Portuguese activist, had taken part in
industrial action with his University and College Union (UCU) branch in
recent months. The same was true for Katerina, a Greek anti-capitalist activist,
who now even held a position on her local UCU committee. In the meantime
their original organisation London Contra A Troika had transformed into
Migrantes Unidos, with Marco organising a number of debates and a strategic
reorientation. None of this had been planned when Rafael set up a Facebook
group back in September 2012 and invited friends to join him and Diana for a
demonstration outside the Portuguese embassy in Belgrave Square. Other
activists who had helped organise assemblies, such as Esther, Pancho and
Petros, had moved on to France, Germany or in Petross case back to Greece.
As the debate on an unusually warm and sunny Sunday evening dragged on, a
bald man by far the oldest participant in the meeting by far intervened to
exclaim:
I dont care whether you are a British citizen, European citizen,
Portuguese or Spanish citizen. I dont care about left-wing parties, right-
wing parties I only care about the workers. We are all workers and we
need to stand together.

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No one clapped. Peoples faces were blank. His message did not resonate with
anyone in the room. His working class internationalism was a relic of the past,
like the ancient black and white television set decorating the room. These were
los indignados, les enrags, precrios inflexveis a generation for whom the
language of workers, trade unions, social democratic and Communist parties
was as foreign as their new country of residence if not even more so. When I
spoke to Spanish activist Claudia after the meeting she polemicized against the
man: I dont care about what he said. For fks sake, I am not a worker I
care about humans.
People like Claudia had been involved in countless mobilizations,
demonstrations and actions against war, climate change and other political
causes. Her goals of social and gender justice were mostly likely congruent
with those of the bald man (whose name I did not find out). To an outsider,
she would have been considered part of the left. But when she spoke she used
the language of universal citizenship, real democracy, horizontalism, social
movements and precarity notions associated with the global movements of
2011 rather than the rank-and-file revolts of the 1970s.
In the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, Claudia and her fellow Southern
European migrant activists were thrown into the forefront of the fight against
austerity. The preceding 30 years of neoliberal offensive had eradicated many
of the social ties and traditions that working class resistance had come to
depend on. Tired of the apparent inefficacy of one-day strikes and votes for
social democratic parties, they had come to reject elections, institutions and
traditional working class leaderships, and strive for autonomy from them.
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Like the generations of activists and radicals who preceded them, they had to
renegotiate their positions in the course of countless mobilizations and
numerous meetings. The learning processes continue as I write this. I believe
they have a long road to travel but their ruthless criticism of the old and
relentless search for new truths will shape the future of working class politics
and social movements in years to come. In writing my dissertation project on
these activists and their journey, I hope to make a modest contribution to this
common development and to the working class protest movements of today.












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Introduction: Crisis, Migration and Leaderless Movements

By the time this dissertation project is read and marked six years will have
passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It is fair to state that neither
trade unions nor traditional parties of the left have been able to defend their
members and supporters interests against ensuing austerity measures and
declines in living standards (Seymour, 2014). For all the talk of recovery, the
average person in Britain is worse off in terms of GDP per head than six years
ago (Wearden & Fletcher, 2014). Countries such as Portugal, Italy, Ireland,
Greece, Spain the so-called PIIGS have little hope of escaping a vicious
cycle of recession and unemployment. According to the International Labour
Organisations Global Employment Trends 2014, it is the young in particular
who have suffered the consequences of economic decline and instability (ILO,
2014). The fact that youth unemployment rates exceed 55 per cent in Greece
and Spain should ring alarm bells for trade unions, parties of the left and
policy makers alike.
Yet all the only solution that politicians such as German chancellor Angela
Merkel or Portuguese prime minister Passos Coelho have come up with are
calls for Southern European youths to migrate (Wise, 2012; Evans, 2013). The
past dream of European mobility with Erasmus programmes and cheap
Ryanair flights has become a nightmare of forced economic migration for tens
of thousands of Southern European young people. The OECD calls this new
wave of intra-European immigration an adjustment mechanism (OECD
2014). Despite the on-going racialization of Eastern European migrants from
Romania and Bulgaria and the scaremongering about British Muslims in the
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wake of the 9/11 attacks, Southern Europeans migrants have not been subject
to the same kind of oppressive or nationalistic discourses by British media or
politicians. However, British prime minister David Cameron stated that if
Greece was to leave the euro or its economy collapsed, Britain would need to
consider immigration restrictions (Watt, 2012).
Although many Southern European young people decided to migrate since the
economic crisis, a vast number of their peers have taken part in protest
movements against austerity, neoliberalism and for democracy in their
respective home countries. In Spain, mostly young protesters labelled los
indignados occupied 200 town and city squares in May 2011. In
neighbouring Portugal, the Que Se Lixe a Troika (Screw the Troika)
movement saw more than 1.5 million people take to the streets on 15
September 2012 and 2 March 2013. These were the largest demonstrations in
Portugal since the fall of the Salazar dictatorship in 1974 (Principe, 2013). In
Greece, the killing of the 15-year old student Alexis Grigoropoulos in
December 2008 ignited a wave of social movements with an insurrectionary
character led predominantly by the young (Sotiris, 2013). Often these
movements were labelled leaderless in character and form (Penny, 2010;
Mason, 2011; Castells, 2012; Juris, 2013; Graeber, 2013).
Meanwhile, Southern European migrants in cities such as Berlin, London and
Brussels have been organising demonstrations, direct actions, debates and
events to correspond with events back home or to demonstrate against visits of
by their foreign and finance ministers. In this dissertation project I focus on
Southern European activists, their groups and actions, due to the scope and
time available to me. However, I do not shy away from addressing immediate
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links or insights where they appear these in this piece of research. Thus I
examine the recently launched 15M worker action group in Berlin which helps
migrants with workplace issues (Doncel, 2014). This group was set up by
Pancho, who had spent one year in London and whom I interviewed for this
research project.
***
In the wake of 15 May 2011, Spanish immigrants in London organised
assemblies and camped outside of the Spanish embassy in Belgrave Square.
The newly arrived Greek migrant community was quick to hold assemblies in
Trafalgar Square while their peers occupied Syntagma square in Athens in
June 2011. Since then, Greek activists in London have organised evenings in
solidarity with the worker-occupied ERT television and radio station,
demonstrations against the murder of anti-fascist Pavlos Fyssas and many
more demonstrations outside the Greek embassy in Holland Park. Among
others, they helped organised a debate on the future of the euro after the
radical left coalition Syrizas electoral breakthrough in June 2012
1
. Younger
Portuguese migrants followed suit and called a demonstration under the
banner London Contra a Troika when their peers mobilised back at home.
In the course of the last three years, Southern European migrant activism in
London has adapted to new circumstances and frequently risen to new
challenges, just like the movements they continue to refer to
2
. The initial
novelty of this type of leaderless, decentralized and Internet-empowered

1
The meeting was recorded and can be found on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDhfNCBOu20
(accessed 2 August 2014)
2
For a full list of organisations, their size and activities please refer to Appendix 1
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activism has worn off. Periods of high leve mobilization have been
interspersed with periods of reflection, everyday resistance, debates and
strategizing. Notions once held dearly are being questioned, practices once the
norm no longer prevail, and principles are uprooted. The activists involved in
these groups, networks and organisations provide particular insights into
contemporary activism and forms of collective action precisely because of
their relatively marginal role within Britains labour and social movements. It
is thus of particular interest what socio-economic and political factors
facilitate the rejection of leadership prevalent among these activists; what
function their activism performs within the wider migrant community, and
within labour and social movements in their new country of residence; and
how they seek to negotiate the question of leadership and leaderlessness in a
new environment.
Research Aims and Objectives

Drawing on the literature of leadership in social movements and trade unions,
this dissertation project addresses the following research questions:
How do Southern European activists make sense of leadership and
leaderlessness?
What socio-economic and political factors contribute to the rejection of
leadership amongst Southern European migrant activists?
What function do these activists perform in the wider migrant community, and
within social and labour movements in Britain?
***
In addressing these questions I have made use of ethnographic methods, such
as participant observation, online ethnography and in-depth interviews. I draw
particularly upon the notion of activist research (Hale, 2006) or solidarity
research (Haiven & Khasnabish, 2014) which views activism as a form of
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knowledge co-production. This form of research facilitates the
democratization of the relationship between researcher and research-subjects;
and the co-participation of the research-subjects insofar as it allows for the
creative process of collective theorization and knowledge production carried
out from inside social movements (Juris 2013:24). This project avoids any
kind of analytic closure, and thus hopes to transcend the leadership/leaderless
dichotomy which has come to prevail the study of leadership in social
movements.
The first section of this dissertation seeks to understand whether new digital
media technologies actually facilitate leaderlessness, or whether they in fact
create new types of leadership within activist organisations. On the basis of
interviews and online ethnography, I argue that we are witnessing a new form
of leadership the power of the admin (Gerbaudo, 2013) within social
movement organisation. This is based on who controls Facebook groups, who
has the biographical availability to write emails and who displays media-
savviness. Furthermore, I draw on activists own conceptual frameworks of
collective intelligence and liquid leadership to show that so-called
leaderless activists in fact reject particular kinds of leadership. These activist
theorisations require social movement researchers and trade union scholars to
rethink how we conceive activists own sense-making while social
movement researchers theorizations go unnoticed by the activists themselves
(Cox & Nilsen, 2007).
The second section of this dissertation takes a step back and focuses on the
socio-economic trends and factors which facilitate a rejection of leadership
and have heralded an era of leaderlessness. I argue that we are witnessing
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what Gramsci labelled a crisis of authority (Gramsci, 1971). Social
democratic parties and trade unions are in as much of a crisis as bourgeois
parties. According to my interviews and participation observation with
Southern European migrants, young workers experience the crisis of authority
as precarious migrants, and as a marginalized and individualised class fraction
in the making. The result is an open political space which they seek to fill with
with an anarchist-influenced and affective politics which is anti-hegemonic. It
stops short of replacing the narrow economistic and bureaucratic social-
democratic leadership, but needs to be recognized as a growing phenomenon
in its own right.
In the third section I concentrate on the function these activists perform, and
the wider implications of their activism in accessing leadership within trade
unions and their respective migrant communities. The research participants
and interviewees generally decline to acknowledge that they perform
leadership roles within their groups, networks and organisations. But they
nonetheless function as so-called leaders within their wider migrant
community by organising events, and responding to current events in their
home countries. Moreover, they assume leadership within trade unions despite
their lack of resourcefulness, strategic capacity (Ganz, 2000) and strategic
leverage, or Handlungsfhigkeit, as Nachtwey and Wolf put it (Nachtwey &
Wolf , 2013). Although means that they cannot act as a hegemonic force
(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) for wider layers, their function as brokers (Diani,
2003) between these growing migrant communities, local trade unions and
social movements is remarkable given the timescales in question and their
generally marginalized position.
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Literature Review: Theorizing Leadership in Social Movements
Leadership in Trade Unions

In recent years there has been growing interest in leadership and trade unions
(Ganz, 2010; Sadler, 2012; Kirton & Healy, 2012; Gall & Fiorito, 2012;
Nachtwey & Wolf, 2013). Here researchers seek to illuminate the links
between union commitment, membership participation and leadership.
Sadler examines the direct and indirect effects of high and low-level local
union leaders on various forms of member participation. She identifies
multiple leadership roles which foster union participation. For her, leadership
in trade unions relies on transformational leadership, interactional justice,
interpersonal skills and participatory leadership (2012:781). This chimes with
John Kellys notion that transformational leadership activate[s] particular
social identities and that subordinates then behave in terms of their group
identity (Kelly 1998:35). Here leadership is conceived as one-way
transmission of commands and entails strict hierarchy, as the use of the word
subordinates makes clear. Inadvertently this strand of literature can help us
to understand the types of leadership that activists examined here reject.
Gall & Fiorito argue that the above conception of leadership falls short since it
does not include a notion of activism (2012:716) or members self-activity.
As the research subjects in this dissertation project do not hold official
positions within their groups and networks, the notion of activism allows us
to search for other sources of legitimation. While this insight renders Gall &
Fioritos approach more dynamic, there is a qualitative difference between
analysing leadership in workplaces (where people work together and negotiate
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their position vis--vis their management) and leadership for activists who
seek to render issues in their home country visible at the symbolic level, and
often do not even seek to effect an immediate policy change.
Based on decades of organising experience in the trade union movement with
the United Farmworkers, Marshall Ganz argues that leadership is
motivational, relational, strategic and that action skills and the capacity
to develop these skills in othersplay key roles (Ganz, 2000:521). It
constitutes a craft, or a knowledge-based practice, which can be accessed by
individuals. Leadership allows groups of people to unlock strategic
potentialities. For Ganz, strategy, the command of resources (both internal and
external to the organisation) and leadership are interrelated and flow from one
another. Ganzs proposed model does however run into trouble with groups
and networks who do not articulate a strategy, such as the activists in question.
Does that necessarily mean that they lack leaders? How can we explain the
fact that some activists function as leaders while others do not?
Kirton & Healy offer a tentative answer through their complex accounts of
female trade unionists in Barbados, Britain and the United States (2012a,
2012b). They outline the problems faced by women who emerge as trade
union leaders at workplace, branch, local, regional and national level in white
and male dominated contexts (2012; 2012b:981). They advance the idea that
leadership cannot be accessed automatically, or by everyone.
The result is that women union leaders are often atypical older,
childfree and sometimes partner free [S]ome women with heavy
family and domestic responsibilities do participate and seek leadership
positions in unions because for them union work is not a burden, but a
route to an interesting, purposeful and satisfying life Leadership roles
often come at a huge personal cost to women and men, but the issues for
women are particularly potent. (Kirton & Healy 2012: 734)
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Kirton & Healys research has a lot to offer when researching Southern
European migrant activists. Other studies confirm that interpersonal factors
such as the privilege of presence (Fox Piven in Khatib et al, 2012) and
biographical availability (Ganz, 2000:523) having time and no family
are important factors in considering the ability or inability to access
leadership. But how does that change when all research subjects are of a
similar age group (young, mostly without family)? Does their biographical
availability permit a different kind of sociality/sociability? To what extent are
there different ways of performing leadership and taking up roles? The notion
of biographical availability will allow us to understand which factors (socio-
economic, political, personal) inhibit people from assuming leadership, despite
having the practice-based knowledge required.
Dialogical Leadership: its not what you say but when you say it

The concept of dialogics (Bakhtin, 1986; Volosinov, 1986; Vygotsky, 1976)
constitutes a theoretical framework and tool of analysis to understand how
leadership constitutes itself as a knowledge-based practice. The dialogians
have sought understand the unity of speech-language-activity in the process of
protest movements. They stress that speech and language is not only a one-
way transmission but also an appropriation of the material world (Vygotsky,
1976). These critical psychological theories from within the Marxist tradition
see speech-language as mediating tool between the individual-self and the
socio-collective experience of unequal social relations under capitalism
(Brook, 2013:333).
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In congruence with the writings on leadership inside of trade unions, authors
such as Colin Barker and Chik Collins regard leadership in social movement
as a relational practice (Barker, 2001; Collins, 2000). They do not differentiate
between leader and follower, or speaker and listener. Instead they set the
listener and speaker on a level playing field. These theories can be read in a
new light given recent social movement practices such as the human
microphone at Occupy Wall Street which forced people to break down their
sentences into chunks which could then be collectively repeated by the crowd.
Barker provides useful starting point into transcending the leadership-
leaderlessness distinction by endowing both speaker and listener with agency.
The listener is as significant a participant as the speaker, indeed is
preparing to switch places and formulate a counter-word, even if no
more than a grunt of assent or dissent. Listeners become speakers, and
speakers listeners, in a transforming process of social dialogue. On both
sides, we find agency and creativity. (Barker, 2001)

More mainstream sociological accounts have grappled with the form of speech
and listening as activity. Pierre Bourdieu emphasises the right moment
(kairos) of when one speaks over the content of what is said. To know what is
acceptable/unacceptable and what can be absorbed by the listener at any given
moment is a knowledge-based practice, yet at a different analytic level than
that which Ganz proposes. Bourdieu calls the relationship between language
and situation the linguistic habitus, i.e. the system of dispositions to say the
fitting word. (Bourdieu, 1990:48). The speaker expects a reaction from the
listener and tailors the message accordingly. Both Bourdieus and Barkers
insights raise pertinent methodological issues insofar that every movement-
participant is potentially a so-called leader.
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Leaderlessness reconsidered

As mentioned in the introduction, the label of leaderlessness has been
increasingly applied to new social movements (Penny, 2010; Mason, 2010;
Juris, 2013). However the above debates do not necessarily reflect that, with
the exception of Boehm et als study of (anti-)leadership in anarchistic SMOs
(2013). This is partially due to the ideological assumptions on behalf of those
who research social movements, and is further complicated by a lack of
consensus on methodology (Sadler, 2012; Gall & Fiorito, 2012).
I would argue that the label leaderless does not suffice to explain the
complex relationship between protest organisers, movement activists and the
social movements they participate in. Actions and events do not rise out of
nowhere they involve co-ordination and coalition building, paying attention
to pre-existing social ties, mobilising structures and social networks. The
political theorist and Occupy supporter Jodi Dean has even argued that the
notion of leaderlessness has inhibited social movements in their further
development (Dean, 2012:54), while Barker traces the dominant anti-
leadership discourse back to the ideologies of spontaneity which came out
of the New Left in the 1960s (Barker, 2001).
David Graeber and Paul Mason, however, argue that Occupy Wall Street and
other social movements of late have been leaderless because of their use of
so-called networked technologies which have rendered centralised leadership
structures obsolete (Graeber, 2013; Mason, 2011). Occupy Wall Street, the
indignados and other movements involve decisions taken by consensus at a
general assembly, or through devolved working groups.
20

However a closer look at Twitter users discloses that it is a medium based on
the function of following people. Active Twitter users usually have more
followers than people they follow. In other words, they become leaders or
experts through the number of followers they command. Rather than
obliterating leadership within social and political activism, leadership is
simply outsourced to those who are media-savvy, have journalist contacts on
Twitter, or can express themselves well in 140 characters (Gerbaudo, 2013).
As the movements of 2011 have waned a number of tensions and battles broke
out over the accountability of the admins of Occupy Wall Streets Facebook
pages and Twitter accounts (Levine, 2014). For example, different factions of
the former Occupy Wall Street protests continue to control different Facebook
and Twitter accounts (Gray, 2014). This has led to different demonstrations
and actions being called on different days (Susman, 2011), and even to
antisemitic posts being issued from one of the accounts (Pontz, 2012; Ynet,
2012). Moreover these Facebook pages have at times issued conflicting
statements on behalf of Occupy Wall Street. Even worse, individuals have
used the OWS Twitter account to promote themselves, start fights with other
activists or go ahead to start a Kickstarter campaign for their own private
militias on their personal Twitter accounts (rf. Levine, 2014). This has diluted
the political efficacy of Facebook pages that millions subscribe to. They
elevated Facebook and Twitter administrators into new and unaccountable
leadership positions. In light of these developments, the digital dimension
requires further analysis when studying the formation of leadership in social
movements.
21

Collective and Informal Leaderships in Social Movement
Organisations (SMOs)

During the Occupy Wall Street protests the anthropologist David Graeber
wrote that the first decision ensured that there would be no formal leadership
structure that could be co-opted or coerced (Graeber, 2011). None of the
organisations and activists in this study have a formal leadership structure, but
that does not mean that leadership is not performed or related functions are not
assumed by individuals. Instead leadership functions on different levels, and at
different levels of analysis. Someone has to execute tasks to facilitate
successful collective collaboration. How this function is met or which tasks
are to be executed can be organised in different ways.
Even those aligned with contemporary forms of leaderless activism and
social movements have started to theorise leadership in different ways. The
Occupy Research Collective has coined the term leaderful (Occupy
Research in Khatib et al, 2012) while activist-academic Dana Williams asserts
leadership in a positive way: There are no leaders (or, more radically,
everyone is a leader). (Williams 2012:19). By conceiving leadership as
vested in collectives and flowing from sets of collective practices and
knowledges from below, they contribute to a growing field dealing with forms
of distributed leadership in organisations (Drath et al, 2008; Spillane, 2004).
These theoretical concepts however require further study. It remains to be seen
whether activists make sense of leadership in this way.
More problematic is the fact that distributed leadership is still confined to top-
down processes. Nevertheless it opens up possibilities to think about
22

leadership as a transient phenomenon in contemporary social movements, as
something that can be accessed and then passed on. If we conceive of
leadership as transient or fleeting, or perhaps even a function which can be
taken up by multiple people at different times even within the same
campaign, mobilisation or meeting we can start to make sense of how
Williams and the Occupy Research Collective arrive at the conclusion of
leaderful movements. In allusion to the transient nature of leadership,
Robinson writes:
Leadership is exercised in moments when ideas expressed in talk or
action are recognized by others as capable of progressing tasks or
problems which are important to them [Robinson 2001:93]. (Boehm et
al, 2013, emphasis added)

This also allows us to conceive of leadership in a broader sense than through
the prism of elected positions to trade union posts or formalised committee
structures inside SMOs. It helps us understand leadership by paying particular
attention to the ability of leadership to flow out of the collective collaboration
of individuals.

23

Research Strategy: Asking we walk

Just as the activists I have engaged with, followed, shared stories with and
interviewed throughout this period, I have embarked on a journey which can
be summed up by the Zapatista maxim of asking we walk. I first
encountered the assemblies outside the Spanish embassy in May 2011. At the
time, I held an executive position within the National Union of Students
(NUS). I invited Spanish migrant activists to speak at student meetings at the
London School of Economics, Kings College London and other institutions.
In the years that followed, I travelled to Portugal as an independent journalist
to cover the social movements and European-wide general strike in the
autumn of 2012. This brought me into contact with Portuguese migrant
activists from London Contra a Troika which would become Migrantes
Unidos as the Troika, at least officially, pulled out of Portugal. Finally, three
days into having returned to academia to study at Queen Mary School of
Business and Management, the Greek anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas was
murdered by members of the fascist party Golden Dawn on 18 September
2013. This sparked the largest protests in Greece since the mid-2011. On the
following Saturday, I attended the solidarity vigil among thousands outside the
Greek embassy in Londons Holland Park.
Developing a robust research method has been an intrinsic part of this research
project from the very beginning. I employed a number of ethnographic
methods, such as participant observation, in-depth interviews and online
ethnography. The strategy here is two-fold. On the one hand, I use invocation
to raise awareness of the issues of these newly arrived Southern European
24

migrants. On the other hand, I draw on the most recent research by Haiven &
Khasnabish (2014) who propose a strategy of convocation which ultimately
amounts to a process of critical self-reflection, of locating oneself and ones
struggles within multiple intersections of power, and of change and
transformation. (2014:17). This means introducing new lines of questioning,
opening up a space of debate and discussion as well as collaborating creatively
and theoretically alongside the research subjects (or better, participants).
These two strategies need not stand in contradistinction to one another but can
rather complement each other. This dual strategy I believe overcomes the
challenge of occupying different roles throughout this research project.
Towards Solidarity and Activist Research

A number of research methods such as surveys (Nachtwey & Decieux, 2013;
Daphi, Rucht et al. 2014), discourse analysis (rf. Howarth, Norval &
Stavrakakis, 2000) and focus groups (Freire 1970/1993; Touraine 1981;
Melucci 1996, Munday 2006) were considered for the purposes of this
dissertation project but deemed inappropriate to answer the research questions
as none of them could account for activists learning processes and
movements strategic developments, and understand the economic and socio-
political roots of leaderlessness.
Social movement researchers often choose to analyse so-called successful
movements which show tangible results such as the efficacy of its demands,
policy changes or the formation of new institutions/organisations. But the
activists I have focused on have been chosen because of the challenges they
encounter and the ways they seek to renegotiate ideas or make sense of
25

activism in a foreign setting. The use of ethnographic methods allowed me to
immerse myself into a setting and participate alongside them in their situated
activity. Understanding the continuities and differences between cycles of
mobilization required this type of politically engaged form of ethnographic
research which not only generates knowledge that we hope can be useful for
those with whom we study but also potentially constitutes a form of activism
itself. (Juris, 2013:9).
Recent publications such as Jeffrey S Juriss Insurgent Encounters:
Transnational Activism, Ethnography and the Political (2013) and Paul Brook
& Ralph Darlingtons article Partisan, Scholarly and Active: For an Organic
Public Sociology of Work and the Case of Critical Labour Studies (2013) act
as methodological starting points for my research. Both draw on and widen the
scope of Participatory Action Research (PAR). According to both, social
movement research ought to democratise the relationship between the research
object and subject, the researcher and the researched. In doing so, it
understands social movements as knowledge-producers and researchers as co-
producers of that knowledge. Furthermore, social movement research ought to
produce research from within the movement for that movement. Juris writes
that the only way to truly grasp the concrete logic of activist networking is to
become an active practitioner (Juris, 2013:26). In the process of praxis, the
researcher allows him or herself to be transformed by the findings in as much
as participants transform themselves in the process of contention.


26

Participatory Observation and Online Ethnography

There are different levels of participation when adopting an ethnographic
approach. In this dissertation project, I did not choose to conduct covert
participation as it would violate the principle of informed consent. It would
have also inhibited me from the openly enquiring and asking questions. I was
a participant as observer. I was thus able to empathize and walk in activists
shoes rather than just sit on the sidelines.
My status as a Greek-German migrant in the UK created the sense of a
common experience between me and the research participants that I doubt
would have been achieved if I were a British citizen.
In the case of this project there were the following periods of participatory
observation. Given my extensive diary writing and note taking over the years I
was able to draw upon:
engagement with 15M assemblies outside of the Spanish embassy in May
2011. This included video interviews for YouTube channels, and building links
with Spanish activists by inviting them to address activists from the UK
student movement.
individual participation at the occasional demonstrations outside of the Greek
embassy.
participation in Occupy London Stock Exchange and the events of the
University Tent City.
participation as a committee member and speaker in the Coalition of
Resistance Europe Against Austerity Conference in which Spanish and
Greek activists from London participated.
news reporting on the London Contra a Troika demonstration outside the
Portuguese embassy, Belgrave Square.
speaking at the Migrantes Unidos meeting European citizens? at Passing
Clouds, Haggerston on 11 May 2014.

The phases of participatory research have been complemented with an online
ethnography as proposed by Slater & Miller (2000) and Hine (2002). This
27

allowed me to follow the group and individual activists at all times, even when
not geographically present. The online ethnography involved following the
organisations webpage, blogs, keeping track of press statements, Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube accounts, being part of email discussions as well as
following the way the organisation was presented in the media. I even was
granted admin rights to the Solidarity with the Greek Resistance Facebook
page. This particularly helped my attempts to grapple with who the key
activists were in different arenas.
Searching through Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, hashtags and websites
narrowed the number of possible interviewees. There were three groups of
people. First, there were those who held admin rights or were power users
on Facebook, such as Marco and Katerina. Second, there were those who
appeared on YouTube videos and similar media, such as Claudia and Victor.
Third, there were those who appeared in the media through theorizing their
activities, such as Rafael, who wrote a blog post for the trade union magazine
Labour Briefing.
In-depth Interviews

In-depth interviews constituted the central part of my research. They were an
effective and practical way of obtaining data on the meaning behind peoples
individual and collective actions inside of social movements (Ritchie & Lewis,
2003:138). Interviews require the activist to grapple with his/her different
affinities and affiliations, and to try and figure out how they think about the
world at large and the way they related to new settings. The method allowed
respondents the time and scope to talk about their opinions and values.
28

Interviewees did not simply reveal knowledge about themselves, but also
about the world they live in, how they operate inside their particular media
environment, and how they negotiated leaderlessness and leadership. The
data generated in interviews was primarily based on listening to people and
learning from them (Morgan, 1998: 9). It fitted well with my overall research
strategy, given the paucity of information available on this group of activists
and their activities.
According to Clough & Nutbrown (2007) the effectiveness of interviews
depends on the on the communication skills of the interviewer. Given my
previous research in training in the Doctoral Teaching Centre at Goldsmiths
College, University of London, and my previous research experience at the
University of Essex, I saw myself as well-equipped to undertake these
interviews. The interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes each.
There were challenges in interviewing everyone I had selected from online
ethnography. There was no problem getting in touch with activists over
Facebook or email. But many of those who had been active in one or the other
group, network or circle no longer lived in London. Thus I convened
interviews via Skype with Petros, who now was back in Athens, and Pancho,
who had moved to Berlin. For social scientists, online interviews are a new
interview genre (Ardevol & Gomez-Cruz, 2012) as they are multi-modal
(video, sound, chat functions, hyperlink function, can be recorded) and in no
way inferior to offline interviews. This provided a unique insight into
Panchos new group, the 15M Worker Action Group in Berlin, which was also
featured in Berliner Zeitung, Der Spiegel and Spains El Pais around that time.
29

Katerina raised one of the challenges herself when she said: Even with this
interview it would be completely different if it were happening in Greek.
This is true. Yet the fact that all interviewees have university degrees (or even
work in a university setting) and speak and write in English very well made
this less of a problem than if I were to interview racialized, marginalised or
less well educated migrants. I did, however, pay particular attention to the
length of the interviewees, setting them in places of their choosing and seeking
to make the situation as accessible as possible.
I strategically abstained from using computer programmes such as NVivo or
others to code the interviews given the small sample size of interviews.
Further criticisms of NVivo include that it can lead to the fragmentation of
knowledge, and create its own analytical categories which are based on
mechanics rather than on grounded knowledge (Bazeley 2006: 7) Instead
coding them manually by drawing on themes that emerged in all interviews
and then dividing them into sub-themes. The first four themes I identified in
the interviews were: work, leadership, activism and the Internet. I then went
about and created sub-themes which took my literature review into account
and were primarily based on what the actors themselves described. This
method allowed me to counter the fragmentation of knowledge which so often
occurs. I was also accompanied by a Spanish artist-activist at some interviews
who would sketch the conversation, and thus facilitate my coding method, and
even determine categories and sub-categories to analyse the data.
Based on my dual strategy of invocation and convocation I chose to feature
activists own words as much as possible. If labour has been deprived of a
voice under neoliberalism, this is even more the case with marginalized groups
30

such as migrants, women, people of colour, workers and other subaltern
groups. The participating activists here experience marginalization far too
often, even within activist circles. Too frequently social movement research
seeks to describe the demands and activity of these groups without letting
these marginalized groups actually tell their own story or find their own voice.
Interviews cannot necessarily overcome this problem, but treating the
interviews as co-production of knowledge (as opposed to mere generated data)
can facilitate a shift in the way we think about their role and the functions they
play. Most recently, Dario Azzellini and Marina Sitrin have shown that it is
possible to use activists words as theorizations in their own right rather than
as rejections or confirmations of theories developed in academia (2014). In so
doing, they write for social movements rather than simply about them. This
project follows in that vein.
Ethics

I have worked on the basis of informed consent which seeks to balance
participants interests with so-called policy objectives, moral considerations
and interests of third parties. In doing so, I have drawn on Durham
Universitys Community-based participatory research a guide to ethical
principles and practice (2012) and the British Sociological Associations
Statement of Ethical Practice. My participation in the ESRC Doctoral Training
Centre in Qualitative Research has provided me with a solid foundation in
understanding different ethical approaches and associated questions.
I completed the universitys Fast Track Ethics Questionnaire which
subsequently was approved. Throughout the project I have sought to foster
31

mutual respect, democratic participation, personal integrity and the
establishment of protocols between the researcher and the community in
question. One of these protocols was to guarantee that research participants
could be anonymised. Indeed, one participant sought anonymity. As a
consequence, I have anonymised all interviewee participants for the sake of
consistency. Another protocol was not to disclose their workplace so as to
avoid sanctions by employers. Lastly, I made all participants aware of the fact
that they could withdraw their consent at any given time throughout the
project.
None of the participants partake in any illegal political activities, or endorse
tactics which could be deemed harmful to individuals, groups of people or
private property. This facilitates a reciprocity and equality between the
researcher and the participants. The sustained contact between the two parties
facilitated ethics which are in many respects superior to those associated with
researchers solely seeking academic capital in form of publications and
papers. This is underlined by the researchers commitment to social change
and opposition to all forms of oppression.
The use of online research methods such as online interviews raised new
questions which had to be answered in the course of the situated activity. For
example, I had not previously agreed with interviewees whether we would use
a webcam during Skype calls. I therefore asked which option they would like
without indicating any preference on my part. One person decided to use the
webcam, the other did not for technical reasons. Thus the dissertation project
provided opportunities for a re-engagement with ethical questions over
ethnographic methods.
32

As a researcher I am committed to positive social change and view research as
a tool against all forms of oppression. This created the basis for good practice.
Interviewees felt confident enough to ask to see transcribed interviews and
notes taken, for example. The majority entrusted me with the interview
material in good faith.

33

Typologies of (Anti-)Leadership

In this section I argue that the current literature on leadership within trade
unions and social movements does not suffice to understand the complex way
in which leadership formation among Southern European migrant activists
take place. I contend that due to their position as a class fraction in the
making, we find three overlapping typologies of leadership in such informal
organisational structures in their groups and networks. This leadership is
internet-empowered, collective and liquid.
Primitive Rebels

Some of the Southern European activists such as Rodrigo, Katerina and Petros
first came here as students and remained in Britain as the economic situation
in their home countries worsened. According to Guy Standing, the
phenomenon of student mobility is under-theorised despite the fact that
numbers have increased by 50 per cent between 2001 and 2008 (Standing,
2011:92). However others, such as Anita, Marco, Victor, Claudia, Rafael, and
Pancho came to the UK to work (some of which included periods of study and
research). Katerina observes a shift toward the latter in the migration pattern
of young Greeks coming to London:
The demographics have changed in the last year. Most people were
either students or stayed here to work after their masters. That is the
majority of people who came to the Greek embassy and meetings. Very
few people will be here for many years or you could call them an older
generation. Half of the people, or most of the people, have already left
and returned to Greece. If we update the list of people it is impossible. In
the last six months or year I can see the difference in demographics. You
can see the students who stayed to work. But now you can see working
people coming over, not people who have studied: waiters, chefs that
kind of proletariat [laughs] coming. In terms of the Solidarity with the
Greek Resistance we dont see that change though.
34


Unlike in the 1960s and 1970s when migrants came into vibrant industrial
trade union structures in Northern Europe, new migrants enter service sector
jobs such as delivering pizzas (Pancho), or work in cinemas or bike repair
shops (Victor). Even when they work in software companies like Marco, trade
union structures barely exist. Universities are the exception. Southern
European migrants such as Katerina and Rafael accordingly are trade union
members. Nonetheless, these workplaces have become bastions of precarious
work and casualization of labour, and members interests have not been
defended. In this sense, these activists are not part of the traditional working
class with bonds reaching back for generations. As can be seen from the
literature, and from my observations and interviews, this has far-reaching
implications for their practices. It offers a possible explanation for their
rejection of leadership, their difficulties in accessing leadership, and the way
the two relate to one another.
In his book Primitive Rebels, Eric Hobsbawm describes the character of such
movements [as] often undetermined (1959:2). These activists do not squarely
fit into the category of the socialist or labour movements. Hobsbawm contends
that these primitive rebels are often first generation immigrants from
varying heterogeneous class positions. According to him, they are:
pre-political people who have not yet found, or only begun to find, a
specific language in which to express their aspirations about the world
(Hobsbawm, 1959:2)

This partially explains why the Migrantes Unidos organised a meeting on
European citizenship, UK citizens and one called Our voice. They are
35

seeking to find their place. It also starts to put Claudias aversion toward the
older worker, as mentioned in the preface, into context. The activists neither
fit into existing networks of Greek, Spanish or Portuguese professionals nor do
they fit into the local trade union movement. As a matter of fact, they do not
even fit into the picture of the migrant which has come to dominate
mainstream discourses. Unlike Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, these
Southern European migrants are not racialized. Nor are they undocumented, as
are the vast majority of migrants are worldwide. Instead they have legal, civil,
political and social rights as EU citizens. During one of the interviews, Anita
recalled discussions on this issue:
At the beginning we didnt even call ourselves migrants. We were into
other things. We looked at the world in terms of European citizens.
There are connotations with being a migrant, maybe people could join
the movement, maybe people wouldnt cause the issue of migration is
huge.

Citizenship is based on exclusions and continuously produces new forms of
exclusions and inclusions in order for the ruling class to maintain leadership
and hegemony. It is therefore questionable whether citizenship can be a
positive reference point for their activities. In the same sense, the notion of
leadership is based on exclusions which activists seek to avoid at all costs.
Thus leaderlessness is a way to signify openness or an undogmatic stance to a
wide variety of ideas, rejection of ruling class values, and the pursuit of an
emancipatory project beyond the old language of central committees,
communism and socialism. In so doing, these migrants, like others before
them, successfully turned their marginalisation, exclusion and exploitation into
a terrain of resistance (Munck et al, 2012) which the widespread
phenomenon of precarity had apparently undermined.
36

A class fraction in the making?

Arguably we are dealing with a new social category of highly educated
migrants who, thanks to the economic crisis, have become a modern
circulant (Standing, 2011:92) or habitually mobile (Candeias, 2014). The
individual activist biographies highlight this in more depth. While some would
like us to believe that these people are part of the precariat (Standing, 2011)
or a new class emerging (Mason, 2011) I would argue that they are part of a
growing social strata a class fraction in the making given the continued
predominance of contractual work and non-migration of workers in Northern
Europe.
For example, Petros and Pancho have lived between three different countries
in the last three years. Their habitual mobility stands in contradiction to their
biographical availability and renders it impossible for them to acquire the
relational and dialogical skills to access and perform leadership in the
traditional sense. But due the continuous growth of this class fraction in the
making, its political importance in the context of the eurozone crisis, and its
role in the accumulation regime, they are able to access leadership in newly
arrived migrant groups. They might not necessarily build up resourcefulness
or strategic capacity, but their tactical aptitude (in calling demonstrations,
organise meetings etc.) offers them a possibility to lead.
Both Ganz (2010) and Nachtwey & Wolf (2013) write about the necessity of
strategy in the process of leadership formation. Yet none of these activists
have a clearly formulated strategy, let alone strategic leverage as a member of
this class fraction in the making. This became particularly obvious in the
37

wake of the European elections, when all of my interviewees had problems
voting. They issued a press release on the topic, which led to a story in the
Portuguese press and one in the Independent in Britain. Yet their lack of
strategy meant that their campaign #votedenied merely remained at the
symbolic level.
Rafael is well aware of the problem that there is a lack of strategy which
inhibits them from changing policy, or in fact anything at all.
These demonstrations create a bit of a sense of false perspective though
but in the end people think we didnt do anything there. We were
supposed to demonstrate but we didnt change anything by being
there In the back of peoples heads there was this idea of visibility in
our country of origin. That was what people were aspiring for. It has to
do with the fact that you emigrate, you disappear a bit. Its a way of
restoring things.

Being part of this class fraction in the making is first and foremost an
individualising experience as the majority of individuals lack the strategic
capacity and biographical availability to access leadership, while social bonds
and ties have been mostly eradicated in the workplaces and neighbourhoods
they enter. In all my interviews and discussions, individualisation and
marginalisation played a prominent role. Katerina attributed her experience of
marginalisation and individualisation to different political traditions and
cultures. Anita claimed it was language which complicated things for her,
citing participation in Occupy assemblies as an example. In turn, this
individualisation facilitates a rejection of elected and established leaderships.
The following examples highlight the wider problem at hand. Claudia says:
We are far more individualistic The social context is so radically
different from 30 to 40 years ago, not only in the forms that people
organise themselves, but also that people have become more
38

individualistic. People have become consumers. Were not citizens,
were consumers Usually people are more concerned with their own
careers and professions, their personal development and not so much
with justice. They havent left Spain in exile. They are not exiles from
the Civil War. They are people who have left because they want to
progress according to the terms of capitalism, so I dont think they are
potential recruits for the movement.
Rafael says in a similar vein:
The way you live, the way you work. You always feel like you are a step
behind. You dont have the same voice. That has been a barrier. But
theres also personal reasons. I have been very precarious doing small
jobs and trying to survive, trying to get my way into doing what I want
to do, being a researcher. Partly, its a bit like selfish individualism I
suppose But you dont have a proper collective when you are
precarious. You dont feel like you belong to a body in which you can
take part And in our universities our problems our precariousness,
lack of solidarity. If you have to fight like this, everyone is fighting
against each other, very individualized. We have all these impositions of
value measurements which negate our critical work.

At first glance their lack of biographical availability would render it
impossible to organise members of this class fraction in the making. But we
should reject such an economically reductionist reading. It is not the case that
their indeterminate transitional position within the regime of accumulation
simply determines their situated activity as leaderless. The activists in
question do assume responsibility within their own organisations such as
Migrantes Unidos, Solidarity with the Greek Resistance, 15M Londres, PIIGS
Uncut and others. Some actors such as Rafael and Katerina even participate
and lead in their local University and College branches (UCU), despite
Rafaels utterance that migrants are not part of the union. Others are active
within coalitions such as the Coalition of Resistance or the Peoples
Assembly, which are both funded by Unite the Union and have strong links to
the National Union of Teachers (NUT).
39

The socio-economic position of Southern European activists as precarious
migrants and a class fraction in the making only offers a partial explanation as
to why they would reject formal leadership, and seek out symbols, meanings
and language which are distinct from the traditional institutions of the working
class such as trade unions and social democratic parties. What explains this
rejection of leadership? In order to offer an explanation, let us turn our
attention to the way their class position relates to wider trends on the macro-
level.
The Power of the Admin

The use of so-called networked technologies apparently renders centralised
leadership structures obsolete (Graeber, 2013; Mason, 2011). But based on my
research, social media and digital technologies have not rendered leadership
obsolete as network theorists such as Castells would have us believe (2012:5).
Instead we find new types of leadership, devoid of authority but based on the
interaction of relational practices and a skill-set of commanding digital
technologies and the media.
Southern European migrant activists might reject the kind of top-down
leadership prevalent in trade unions (Gall & Fiorito, 2012; Sadler, 2012) but
they nonetheless perform leadership functions through their activism and their
own initiatives. Since the advent of social media platforms such as Twitter and
Facebook, taking initiative has become far easier for activists. In some
ways, taking initiatives such as setting up an online event or demonstration
over Facebook requires a combination of the knowledge-based skills and
relational practices outlined in the previous section. While the framework of
40

dialogical leadership (Barker, 2001) is based on the skill of active
listening and responding adequately, this new type of digitally mediated
leadership requires us to rethink what constitutes a relational practice.
In one of our discussions Rafael, a Portuguese activist, recounted how he set
up a Facebook group for the first demonstration on 15 September 2014.
I received an email or Facebook message from Diana because there was
going to be a big demonstration on 15 September 2012. I created a
Facebook page and we started distributing. We had more than 100
people turn up at the embassy.

Facebook required him to choose a name for the event. As the demonstrations
in Portugal were labelled Que Se Lixe a Troika (Screw the Troika), Rafael
chose London Contra a Troika. They only mobilized through Facebook for
first demonstration. Rodrigo commented that it was a form of mobilization
that draws people in that otherwise would be scattered. In effect, this
endowed Rafael with what communications scholar Paolo Gerbaudo has
referred to as the power of the Admin (Gerbaudo, 2013). Here, Facebook
administrators or those Twitter users with many followers command new
types of power within social movements and organisations.
Katerina from Solidarity with the Greek Resistance has admin powers over
their Facebook page and was able to issue the call for the demonstration
following the murder of the Greek anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. Her
previous activism had equipped her with the tools to call a mobilization and
the necessary skills to command them. But this did not mean that starting a
Facebook event grants one the same kind of authority that a trade union
representative, for example, has. A similar type of leadership can be observed
41

within the Portuguese Migrantes Unidos group. Marco is one of the power
users on their discussion group, email lists. According to Rodrigo, Marco
has been keeping it alive by organising Doodle polls for scheduling events
and updating the Facebook presence of the group. However, Marcos media-
savviness extends beyond the online realm. In the run-up to the event at
Passing Clouds, Marco managed to get jingles advertising the debate into
Portuguese community radio.
Rafael provides an explanation of this phenomenon:
Of course, there are leaders who emerge. Diana and I are very visible
because we started this through setting up social networks.

In the eyes of the activists, being visible or commanding a Facebook group or
email list is different from being a leader. It is mediated and symbolic. In
many ways, their arguments chime with Juriss account of how the use of
different online media creates horizontal relationships between activists.
Dispersed activists from diverse ideological background can use the newest
digital technologies such as email lists and alternative networks of
communication and create a cultural logic of networking and decentralized
organisational forms (2008:15) with no centre or command structure.
However my online ethnography disclosed that it was those activists who were
biographically available, in jobs that permitted them to use the internet or
possessing the above outlined skills, that could take initiatives or dominate
discussions on email lists. Activists also developed forms of democracy on
Facebook and email lists through the use of Doodle polls and other
mechanisms. All of this speaks of a high degree of organisation and
inclusiveness, at levels which I had not experienced in my time as an activist.
42

Collective Intelligence

This inclusiveness allowed the Spanish activists, for example, to tap into their
real source of power which Victor labelled the collective intelligence. This
collective intelligence emerged as the guiding principle among Spanish
activists camping outside the embassy in Belgrave Square. It was facilitated by
the organisational structures which activists had put in place. Unlike the
managerial paradigm of distributed leadership mentioned in the section
above, the notion of collective intelligence asserts leadership through
collective collaboration and synthesis. While it comes close to the notion of
leaderful (Occupy Research 2012), it is more than the inversion of
leaderless and more honest, since it bases itself on collective learning
processes and the co-production of knowledge. Victor describes the way in
which individual self-transformation and collective learning processes
interrelated:
I learnt a lot of things though, I learnt about myself, the people, I assume
that this was part of the process: my personal process and the collective
process. The thing I really discovered in 15M, this was really one of the
big achievements of the process. It was what we call the development of
collective intelligence Collective intelligence came out of Puerta de
Sol in Madrid. When you are in an assembly, you have this kind of
discussion process and you are trying to win votes. But many times you
wanted to talk in 15M you were put to the back, so by the time you
wanted to talk you had forgotten what to say, or completely changed
your mind. Maybe you add something. We were creating different
things, wielding something together with other people. Someone says
lets go into this direction and you say yes And you may. It
wasnt something pre-set. It was something that we were discovering. In
my case, this process was absolutely amazing.
Anita reiterated a similar experience on a separate occasion:
Nobody is leading the trail of thinking. The decisions are first thought
through the group. Everyone can share their opinion. You dont have to
compete for the right answer or the outcome it is something which is
built together. There is not a hierarchy. You consider step by step that
there is a collective process of thinking and you share that responsibility
43

as a group. You witness the whole process as a group. You dont wait
for a person to take a decision. You are there together from the
beginning to the end.

The structures of working groups and commissions, which activists adopted
from the 15M movement in Spain, facilitated this collective intelligence.
Depending on what a movement participant was interested in they could join
or even start their own thematic working group. Anita, for example, was a
member of the arts and communications commission. It is not known exactly
how many working groups and commissions there were, but activists believe
there were around 20. The activists within them acted as a collective
intelligence on the given subject matter. This was facilitated by new
technologies which allowed multiple authors to work on documents and
statements at the same time. But it was also a product of the transient nature of
the group as Anita recalls:
Many people left the city they came and went. What remained were
the core groups and commissions that helped new people to arrive to
integrate in these commissions.
In many ways, the structures even safeguarded against the emergence of
individual leaders within the 15M movement in London. Moderatores and
facilidatores volunteered on a rotational basis. The former would facilitate
the discussion while the latter would read participants body language and
check the flow of communication within the assembly. This meant that
individuals could not dominate by rhetoric. Claudia describes this:
There are always informal leaderships. This is inevitable but I dont
think its because of the lack of formal structures. Its human nature.
Some people have more outgoing personalities, or manipulative
personalities, or clear agendas, even in an unconscious way. But
collectively we always managed to, if not neutralise, tackle those
attempts to concentrate power in one way or another.
44


Thinking about leadership in times of leaderlessness in terms of collective
intelligence represents a way to transcend the leadership/leaderlessness
dichotomy present in many of the discussions on this topic. In many ways, it is
a superior framework to the notion of leaderfulness, given that it is attached
to practices and skills, and represents an immediate solution to some of the
issues activists encountered with people coming and going, and emergent
leaders within the movement. Although as Claudia points out, it does not solve
all issues with individuals who do assume roles within groups.
The following example from the Portuguese group London Contra A Troika
(now Migrantes Unidos) provides a good overview how individuals assume
leadership functions within organisations that not only reject formal
committee structures but the very idea of leaders.
Liquid Leadership

We want democracy and not a leader to follow. People are really afraid
of giving someone power. If you have elected leaders you have
representation and that is not welcome. But you do have leaders in the
sense that are acting. But it is fluid or jelly leadership you have a
liquid leadership of the people who are willing and able to.

Marcos description above of leadership within Migrantes Unidos illuminates
how a group which rejects leaders can nevertheless make sense of how
leadership operates in a practical way. Leadership emerges inside this group
on the basis of an ad hoc rotation system between different activists,
depending on who has time (biographical availability) and who is motivated.
The notion of liquid leadership appears to have its roots in the open source
community and digital rights activism, which Marco previously belonged to.
45

While a google search does not yield any significant results along those lines,
it is necessary to state that the Pirate Party calls its form of democratic
decision-making liquid democracy.
Liquid leadership highlights to what extent different people assumed
leadership functions at different times, yet continued play key roles throughout
the whole wave of mobilization, contemplation and organisation. The model
of liquid leadership functioned well given the groups continued reference to
the Que Se Lixe a Troika movement in Portugal, and its continued openness to
other activists. Yet despite this liquid model, clashes arose within the group
during their co-operation with PIIGS Uncut in the run-up to the TUC
demonstration on 20 October 2012. The problem with this type of liquid
leadership is the issue of scale. But not only. The Pirate Partys liquid
democracy - a mix of representative and direct democracy favours those
those who spend the most time in this process and have the most expertise
quickly come to dominate it, as intra-organisational quarrels have highlighted
(Bergfeld, 2012; Bieber, 2012).
While it provides small groups which reject leadership a way to solve the issue
practically, leaderships remain generally frowned upon. However, social
movement researchers and trade union scholars could learn a lot from thinking
about intra-organisational forms of leadership in these terms. While rotation
systems are nothing new to labour and social movements, the way of
conceptualising them offers a way of understanding leadership as a set of tasks
which are necessary to progress ones cause. This is confirmed by Katerina
who described a similar process within the network We Are All Greeks (since
renamed Solidarity with the Greek Resistance). The fact that leadership was
46

liquid within the group helped less experienced activists and movement
participants to access leadership.
You can see in the process that people who were not active in the past
got empowered and took leadership themselves, took opportunities and
became leaders within that core group of people. How long it lasted is
another thing to discuss. But I can identify two, three, four people with
no concrete political background, ideology and with time they got into
and undertook things to do, speaking freely and feeling more
comfortable.

Again, Katerina speaks about a small number of people. Yet in discussions
with activists there was a riddle when you compared how they spoke about
their intra-organisational dynamics with the way they spoke about leadership
at large. The notion of liquid leadership also highlights the way that these
activists create their own theorisations independent from academic discourse,
and thus engaged in the process of theory co-production. The following
chapter turns its attention as to why the forms of trade union and other forms
of leadership are rejected.

47

The Roots of Leaderlessness

This chapter analyses the socio-economic and political roots of
leaderlessness. In so doing, it seeks to understand why these Southern
European activists, in particular, reject leadership and seek to establish
alternative practices and models within their own organisations.
Crisis of Authority

What they call leadership is in fact some kind of dictatorship. People are
used to giving their opinions at home, in school, on Facebook etc. But
the idea that you have elections every four years and vote a
representative every four years is a thing of the past. It shows that their
democracy isnt working. (Victor, his emphasis)

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the ensuing financial
meltdown and economic crisis have had an immediate impact on the
legitimacy of governing parties across Europe. Since 2008, some 17 national
governments in the EU have collapsed or been voted out of power, 12 of them
members of the eurozone. Their political legitimacy waned as they could no
longer promise high growth rates, low inflation, low unemployment and rising
standards of living for the majority of the population. The Portuguese
politician Francisco Louca branded this a regime crisis (Louca, 2013), while
others speak of a political crisis (Lapavitsas, 2012). However both notions
fail to account for the socio-economic, political and cultural dimension of the
on-going crisis.
The Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci spoke rather of a crisis of
authority (Gramsci, 1971:210). This crisis of authority manifests itself first
and foremost in a crisis of bourgeois leadership, and a rejection of that
48

leadership as outlined by Victor above. The hegemonic class can no longer
legitimate itself in the same manner and needs to move to other methods of
rule (such as authoritarianism) or seeks to relegitimise itself in new ways. The
fact that all governing parties whether social democrat or conservative
have sought to balance budgets by cutting public service provision and
infrastructure has exacerbated this crisis of authority. Instead of articulating a
vision which can provide leadership for society as a whole, the dominant class
appears to be in the grips of the financial elites.
Gramsci writes:
If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer leading but
only dominant, exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely
that the great masses have become detached from their traditional
ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously,
etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the
new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid
symptoms appear. (Gramsci 1971:275-276)


The slogans Que se vayan todos! (They all have to go!) and Democracia
real ya! (Real democracy now!) which echoed from the mass
demonstrations, encampments and assemblies across the Spanish state in May
2011 have come to exemplify how the popular classes have reacted to the
crisis of authority in more recent years. Not only do they reject the hegemonic
classs austerity agenda, they also reject their former representative organs
such as social democratic parties and trade unions. Gramsci pointed out that
the crisis of authority lies precisely in the particular men who constitute,
represent, and lead [the working classes], are no longer recognised by their
class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. (Gramsci 1971:210). As a
consequence, the PSOE lost more than two million working class votes in
Spain. But even in countries less effected by the crisis, social democratic
49

parties have suffered. In Britain, the Labour Partys estimated membership
figures are down to nearly 190,000 (McGuinness, 2012) and the German SPD
suffered a significant split which led to the creation of the Left Party Die
Linke now the third strongest party in German parliament, with seats in the
majority of federal states. This is paralleled by the steady decline in trade
union membership, the erosion of bargaining rights across Europe and the UK
(McCartin, 2011; Hencke & Evans, 2010; Visser, 2006). The following quotes
from Southern European activists in London highlight the aversion to trade
unions as institutions of worker representation:
I would not join a trade union. I dont believe in trade unions. I respect
their work, especially the one they did up to 30 years ago but I dont
think they are adequate. (Claudia)
The trade unions are similar to the political parties. There is little
difference. They arent doing anything worthwhile for workers.
Obviously, I would prefer to have bad trade unions than no trade unions.
(Victor)

Hence the social theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that people
across Europe no longer accept the principle of representation (Hardt &
Negri, 2012). Previously incorporated sectors of the popular classes now find
themselves economically excluded by sluggish economic growth, recurring
financial crises and a permanent state of austerity, while failing to be
represented by social democratic parties and trade unions. The consequence is
pure and simple rejection and an emergence of a new kind of politics in the
making.


50


Acting out of Affect

The crisis of authority and its ensuing disappointment with traditional working
class institutions facilitates a great variety of morbid symptoms as the
Gramsci put it, or a new type of affective politics. This type of politics is a
symptom of the failings of social democracy and trade unionism. As yet, it is
not capable of asserting an alternative set of organisational practices and
vision of leadership. It remains tied to practices, feelings and actions at an
instinctive level.
EP Thompson highlighted the importance of acting out of affect in his analysis
if the English bread riots in the 1700s. He writes that an outrage to these
moral assumptions, quite as much as actual deprivation; was the usual
occasion for direct action. In turn the rioters turned to instincts more
elementary than politics (1971:77) which cannot be described as political
in any advanced sense, nevertheless it cannot be described as unpolitical
either, since it supposed definite, and passionately held, notions of the
common weal (1971:79). By no means are the Southern European activists
acting out of sheer deprivation. But faced with a crisis of authority and no
voice to articulate their needs, they rely on their instincts.
I would never consider joining a British trade union because I am disappointed I have
received help from them. In that moment, I started to look at trade unions in a different
way but all in all I have been disappointed. (Anita)
Petros criticized the dominance of affective politics within the various
Southern European migrant initiatives and platforms. He lamented that these
51

movements were purely based on sentiments a less politicized environment
clearly not of the left. This dominance of affect and instincts among Southern
European migrants bears dangers. Affective politics could be manipulated by
the right. I myself witnessed a number of Portuguese and Greek flags flown
and nationalist chanting at respective demonstrations in the earlier days in
2011 and 2012. Katerina, one of the Greek activists, recounts:
At the very first demonstrations people were coming with Greek flags
being very patriotic and very chauvinistic arguments and chants. We
discussed with them. These werent people from the left, they were
people worried about the situation in Greece. They were all very
interested in getting involved.

And Rodrigo tells a similar story from the first Portuguese protests at the
embassy:
There was a lack of an agenda, a political agenda. At the beginning,
there was a lot of ambiguity politically. You had people turning up,
coming up with a lot of nationalist chants There were moments in the
first but also in the second demonstration where a lot of the most left-
oriented people were left feeling awkward because of the chants were
almost right wing in tone.

As a consequence of continuous right wing presence on the demonstrations
outside the Greek embassy in Holland Park, the activists from Solidarity with
the Greek Resistance invited Turkish immigrants and left wing activists from
the Day-Mer organisation to address the crowd. That initiative was successful
in undercutting the affective nationalism. Yet even among the most politically
minded activists, affect continues to play a large role. This is partially
explicable insofar that leading activists such as Marco and Anita did not
consider themselves activists in their home countries of Portugal and Spain.
52

Yet also those who had previously been active frequently defined their
activism through affect throughout the interviews
We were inspired by people on the streets. It happened because we felt
touched and we just wanted to go. (Anita)
I was going to demonstrations in Madrid but I wasnt a radical person. I
lived in my comfortable zone. Until 2003 I believed yeah
democracy everything is working. The moment that changed was in
2003 with the Iraq war. That was the turning point when I felt
disappointed with the social democrats. I wasnt happy and my green
activism started becoming much more political, I became much more
aware of other things. The paradise after World War II was no longer
reality. (Victor)
You hear the news that something important is happening in Greece and
then you want to demonstrate. You just want to do something about it.
(Katerina)

Affective politics then remains undefined in content, open to manipulation,
and ultimately a symptom of the crisis of authority. It closes itself off from
developing strategy, the process of leadership formation and any focus on
changing policy. Arguably it also closes itself off from the possibility of
changing social and power relations (Hardt & Negri, 2012:37). This new type
of politics mean that Victors activism in Greenpeace and a Marxist
description of his class consciousness no longer contradict one another but
can live happily side by side. It means that there is no perceived problem with
Claudias engagement with European Greens of London and her insistence on
not want[ing] to be in collectives with a clear mandate or clear purpose.
However, Rafael presciently observes the downside to this new politics based
on affect:
Some people want to be completely pure, and detached from any
affiliation from anything, which in the end is the negation of activism.
The collective expectation of staying pure, fluid, leaderless, uncorrupted
is in some ways pointless [laughs].

53

This type of rejection means that activism first and foremost centres in on
oneself. Self-transformation be the change you want to see in the world
is the prime objective of this type of engagement. At one point, Victor stressed
the importance of Stephane Hessels pamphlet Enragez-vous! However, a
closer look reveals that this has a lot to do with anarchisms influence on
contemporary social movements.
No gods, no masters, no leaders?

While Colin Barker traces the anti-leadership discourses back to the
ideologies of spontaneity and the New Left in the 1960s (Barker, 2001),
todays anti-leadership discourses are firmly rooted in a new anarchist
tradition which has emerged since the advent of the global justice movement.
At the height of the alter-globalization movement in 2002, David Graeber
wrote a piece for the New Left Review titled The new anarchists. In the
piece Graeber distinguished between Anarchists with a capital A and
anarchists with a lower case a. While the former clung on to a small group
mentality and an obsolete notion of revolutionary purity, the latter, Graeber
argued, had become the backbone of the new anti-capitalist movements which
were born out of protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle
1999. He argued that by 2001 a new, open-ended pragmatic anarchism was
emerging as the spiritual centre of the revolutionary left" (Graeber, 2012:425).
Claudia confirms this:
For us Spanish, there is a strong anarchist tradition even for those of us
who dont call or label themselves anarchist. People are quite used to
self-organisation. For a Spaniard organising a group of Spanish migrants
in the context of Britain, there is always a contrast, a different way of
organising, because there are more hierarchies here than in activism in
Spain.

54

Arguably even those who did not agree with anarchist ideology per se, such as
the majority of the Southern European activists in question, had adopted
anarchisms horizontal, decentralised, leaderless and direct action-oriented
forms of political activism. This was not, however, the type of activism put
forward by anarchist groups such as CrimethInc, or even the Black Bloc.
Instead, the roots of this small a anarchism was to be found in the
movements of the Global South, such as the uprising of the indigenous
peoples of Chiapas, Mexico, under the banner of the EZLN, and the piqueteros
movement in Argentina which appeared in the wake of the economic collapse
in 2001. Closer to home, the German and Italian autonomist and spontaneist
movements that flourished between the late 1960s and 1980s are hailed as
another of the new anarchisms influences. Graeber explains the principles
behind this development:
This is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to
organisation. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not
lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It
is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down
structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on
principles of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy.
Ultimately, it aspires to be much more than that, because ultimately it
aspires to reinvent daily life as whole. (Graeber, 2002:70).

Based on Graeber's assertion that those new forms of organization are its
ideology (decentralised, horizontal, leaderless, and so on) I argue that these
Southern European activists do not define themselves by their ideological
coherence or ideals which aim towards a pre-defined objective. Instead they
define themselves through their organizational practices, which aim to create a
culture of encounter which has been largely eradicated from everyday life
under neoliberalism. This culture of encounter is marked by a strong rejection
of any kind of leadership. As Victor puts it:
55

The 15M movement is a horizontal movement with no specific
leadership, and no special projection to have a leadership inside of the
movement.

Throughout all the discussions leaderlessness was often treated as an ideal,
something that activists were striving toward rather than an actually existing
state. This meant that without the notion of activism or collective self-activity
one could not understand how leadership functions, or the way that these
activists can possibly be viewed as new (collective) leadership within their
wider migrant communities, or even in some cases in their local trade union
branches and social movement organisations.

56

The Leadership Function of Southern European Activists

Southern European activists might reject the traditional leadership of trade
unions and social democratic parties. However, by rejecting these models of
leadership, they constitute a new form of leadership both within the trade
unions and their local migrant communities. Problems continue to prevail, but
learning processes among activists show that this class fraction in the
making is forced to perform a leadership function due to on-going crisis of
authority.
in the trade unions?

If these activists are part of a larger class fraction in the making, it is
important to understand how they make sense of the crisis of authority, and of
existing working class institutions and their participation within them or
rejection thereof. This will allow us to understand whether they function as
emergent leaders within the trade union movement, or if not, what inhibits
them from accessing leadership.
In recent years, industrial relations scholars have debated to what extent
organising campaigns among low paid migrants (Mustchin, Martinez &
Perrett, 2009; Frege & Kelly, 2003:9) have been successful in rebuilding trade
unions. Especially in the US, community organising and labour-community
organisations have been successful in integrating migrants into organising
efforts over low pay, poor working conditions, housing etc. These have been
geographically and sectorally limited as well as dependent upon strong ties
inside the community mostly provided by churches, home associations or
57

media outlets such as community radio stations. Worker centres have provided
migrants with a safe space outside of work in which they could organise both
formally and informally around a number of issues (Choudry & Thomas; Yu
2013). Churches played a similar function for the Haitian community in
Boston (Yu, 2013). In the German media there have been reports of how many
young Greeks' first stop has been the Greek Orthodox Church when arriving in
Germany. This strand of literature can only partially answer how trade unions
can make sense of the activism of Southern European migrants as a class
fraction in the making.
Other organising efforts on behalf of trade unions might facilitate a better
understanding of how trade unions have sought to come to grips with new
methods of contention and new forms of public, social and political
engagement, such as those displayed by Southern European migrant activists
in London. There are growing similarities between social movements and
trade unions in the way in which they seek to mobilise their members. This
cross-fertilisation between social movements and trade unions has been
examined by Sherman & Voss who propose a transfer of methods of
campaigning (Sherman & Voss, 2000). Moodys proposition for a social
movement unionism stands in the same vein (Moody, 1997). In the case study
of the relationship between civil society organizations and trade unions in the
UK, Heery et al observe that there is not one dominant pattern but rather a
complex web of relationships which encompass cooperation, conflict and
indifference (Heery et al, 2012). Thus it is all the more important to
understand and to work together with these groups to analyse the relationship
between social movements and trade unions. Social movement organisations
58

are sometimes seen as competitors to trade unions and often their interests are
seen as opposed to them. Heery et al write that the interests of CSOs and
trade unions are orthogonal, resulting in a relationship of indifference and
limited contact, a possibility that is rarely discussed (2012:146).
While Southern European activists do not outright reject trade unions, they are
hesitant to participate or engage with them. The line of argument does not,
however, follow a traditional left wing critique of corporatism vis--vis
service unionism or its sectoral emphasis. Instead activists address trade
unions inherent bureaucratism which leads them to be slow to act, as well
as criticising their economism. These two factors can help us understand the
rejection of trade union leadership, as well as giving an insight into why
participants seek to divert their activism and access leadership roles outside of
trade unions. Interestingly, those who are active in trade unions as well as their
new migrant organisations share the same criticisms of unions.
Katerina recounts some of the problems that she has encountered within her
own UCU branch:
In a structured environment like the UCU its very rigid, very stiff. You
cannot do much. But I will definitely use it as a means to mobilize
members and its massive appeal it has to people. I am going to use it
when it suits me as an activist but when it is not that active and right-
wing and conservative like now.

The discontent with the UCUs bureaucratism becomes more obvious when
asked about what trade unions could learn from her activism and
contemporary social movements.
UCU has very formalised procedures but it is rooted in the working class
for many years. I have a hard time. I didnt have much experience of
being in a trade union and now I am an official of the UCU and
59

especially in this country where UCU is very conservative from my
point of view, and its so bureaucratic and difficult to take advantage of
the momentum like in social movements. For something to happen it has
to be discussed on all these different levels, and you have to write all
these different levels. Its very bureaucratic and doesnt give you this
flexibility, and it is difficult to mobilize people and use the momentum.
There are issues but in the time that it could be done. People are upset
and want to do something and then it takes months and months to call a
strike and when we strike its useless and doesnt affect anything. People
are demoralised or discouraged. So I think I am not a very good
representative because I am not very patient.
I am trying to find issues that mobilize people, and that people are angry
about. Two or three weeks ago I organised a stall with the UCU. People
dont even do that at this university, trying to use my experience as an
activist to have a petition and collect signatures. Everyone was against it
here in UCU. People said no one is going give their telephone or email
to be contacted no one wants their name out there. But people were
happy to do so so I contacted the students union to discuss the issue of
pay with them. But no one has done this and no one will ever do cause
they do it differently here, dealing with trade union issues.

Rafael, who also is a member of the UCU, highlights some of the problems
with the so-called transfer of methods. Asked about whether he had brought
in any of the experiences made with London Contra a Troika into the union,
he replied not at all, adding it is a bit like two separate worlds even though
the worlds are quite connected given the precariousness. His account of the
recent pay dispute in the universities highlights further problems:
A one day strike is a completely pointless thing in my perspective. No
point in it at all. Theres no point in stopping classes for one day because
theres no production which is going to stop and we are not going to
assert our value in this general process of creation of value here by not
giving lectures But I suppose if we get people here and get them out
to stop this process by giving lectures outside, creating an alternative
university, that kind of thing that would make much more sense.
Katerina on the other hand, stated:
I do carry the little experience I have from being an activist in Greece
into the way I organize things in the UCU. I am now the chair of my
local campus branch. I could bring the experience of what is happening
in the universities but not really I mentioned [my activism with
Solidarity with the Greek Resistance] once but I mainly discuss about
university-related issues and national issues. I think you should make the
issue because the root of the problem after all is international but I am
more interested in doing something as a worker in this country and
60

contribute in this way which is also going to have an effect
internationally hopefully rather than be a projector of the Greek issue in
UCU.

Katerina and Rafaels experience reveal the difficulty of transplanting ones
experience in social movements and activism into the workplace. This begs
the question whether the skills required to access leadership in trade unions are
different, or whether the conception of leaderships (top down versus collective
or horizontal) are contradictory rather than complementary. Even when trade
unions mobilize, problems persist. Victor states that it is not necessarily the
methods of campaigning but rather the persistent economism of trade unions
which caused problems in the run up to the TUC demonstration on 20 October
2012.
British trade union far more interested in economics. There was the
assumption that democracy works, whereas for us it was directed against
the political system. We want to reinvent society. For them it was
economic problems. We have neoliberal agenda, tax evasion,
tuition fees.

Despite prevailing problems between social movement activists and trade
unions, these activists are quite possibly the trade unionists and backbone of
the labour movement of tomorrow. Pancho, who now lives in Berlin, has
shown that it is possible to reinvigorate the local trade union movement. After
he left London and headed for Berlin in the hope for a better job, he started the
15M SAG, a worker action group helping Spanish migrants with workplace
issues. So far they have recruited more than 40 people to the service union
Verdi. Their initiative has been welcomed in the German and Spanish press. It
necessitates a study in its own right.
61

The learning processes and leadership formation within this class fraction in
the making remain unfinished. While their affective politics, individualism
and habitual mobility seem to prolong this process of leadership formation,
they nonetheless are making strides forward as exemplified by Anitas
comment:
After a long conversation we understood that this was a different culture
with different political traditions and particularly the trade unions. And it
was interesting for us. We had to be flexible. In Spain, trade unions have
that reputation that is bad. But the movement here in UK has its own
particularities. It was a good opportunity to learn.

Some of these steps forward have been made within their own respective
migrant communities.
in their communities?

In this section I argue that these Southern European activists function as
brokers (Diani, 2003) between different social groups. The Greek activists
of Solidarity with the Greek Resistance, for example, function as brokers
between the migrant community and the local trade union movement. The
Migrantes Unidos collectively acts as a broker between an older generation of
migrants and the newly arrived migrants, though that has not been without
difficulties. The Spanish 15M activists saw themselves occupying a similar
space.
According to Claudia:
We were hoping that we would be that bridge between the migrant
communities and the local indigenous movements. Thats how we
envisioned ourselves but we didnt not succeed because we didnt
manage to mobilise those who dont want to be mobilised. I think what
we ended up doing instead bringing in the perspective of the migrant in
the UK movement, and call for an activism which is truly transnational
62

rather than just British workers in solidarity with Greek workers
which is a bit like bilateral aid.

In so doing, they established themselves as a reliable coalition partner for
different actions. The online ethnography revealed that 15M activists
supported the latest Peoples Assembly demonstrations on 21 June 2014 and
the day of action against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP), both of which have links to trade unions. However, at a time when
neoliberalism continues to erode remaining social links, bonds of solidarity
and the principle of community the function that the campaign Solidarity
with the Greek Resistance is playing might actually contribute to the
formation of a leadership capable of realigning coalitions between social
movement organisations, migrant communities and trade unions. This is a
particularly urgent task given the apolitical nature of existing Greek cultural
and community organisations in London. Katerina recounts:
No one is trying to use social events to organize something, or use them
as political. When it comes to bouzouki everyone forgets about politics.
I remember when an activist and trade unionist from Justice for Cleaners
said: Theres a cleaner strike at SOAS and we should all come down
with instruments and play and show solidarity. But everyone just got up
and left as they were drunk. These types of Greeks are a different kind.

The organisational network of newly arrived Greek migrants highlights the
role that Solidarity with the Greek Resistance has played in developing
campaigns, responding to events, building coalitions with other civil society
and social movement organisations. But you can also see that it is a politically
volatile situation in which different political parties of the left such as Syriza
and Antarsya seek to build London branches and solidify a membership. It
appears that this hampers Greek activists such as Katerina in their ability to
63

play a broker role between the migrant community and the local trade union
movement.

Migrantes Unidos, on the other hand, has sought to broker between together
two sections of the Portuguese migrant community. It seeks to bring together
those migrants which arrived in the wake of the crisis and ones who have been
here for up to a decade. According to Marco they are in touch with the older
community based in Vauxhall and Stockwell in South London:
But they are more organised around folklore, cultural and sporting
associations. There have been some political movements from the old
part of the Portuguese community. Some are conservative, others are
more associated with social democrats There isnt much political
engagement from older community. But the younger generation is more
politicized than the previous ways. That makes the contact between old
and new generation is not straightforward
Rodrigo confirms this:
A dilemma we had from the very beginning of the first demonstrations is
that two very distinct groups turned up, the classical older working class
64

immigrants and the younger urban generation. That was very interesting.
That was the split in the very first demonstration The older ones are
more energetic, more committed to do things, but they are not
comfortable in the context of political discussion. The younger ones are
far more at ease in these situations and dominate as they are more
educated, but subjectively they are less committed. They are
depoliticized in that sense despite being better equipped to deal with it.
The older ones are more inclined, less equipped.
This echoes the problem elaborated in the Preface and remains an issue for
these newly arrived Southern European activists. The question is whether
these activists can assume the role of the brokers between a new generation
and older generation which struggles to access leadership in changed
circumstances.



65

Conclusion

The analysis and results presented in this dissertation highlight one particular
facet of the intersection of crisis, migration and social movements. It is a
starting point for further inquiry into this field which will remain of academic
importance as long as the crisis remains unresolved, and migration from
Southern Europe to Northern Europe is seen as the an adequate response to
youth unemployment. Different lines of inquiry are necessary to complete the
picture of this class fraction in the making. This could possibly entail studies
around the notion of mobility.
As can be seen the issues of leadership and leaderlessness provides a much
overlooked fault line from which a conceptual, analytical and practical
complexities and contradictions arise. This projects focus on this particular
fault line does not only reveal insights about this particular group of activists
at hand. It raises issues in relation to the study of leadership, social movements
and trade union renewal.
This study has fundamental implications for the study of leadership in trade
union and social movements in so far that it underlines that the notion of
activism is closely intertwined with the performance of leadership. Activists
take up tasks, learn skills, engage in relational practices, create symbols and
meanings, and interpret the world around them. Often they do all of these at
the same time, or at least within the same process of contention. In so doing,
they assume leadership, or perform a leadership function regardless of whether
they are part of a committee or formalised structure, regardless of whether
they call their movements leaderless or leaderfull. This raises the question
66

whether the current state of research which focuses on one factor rather than
the interplay of skills and practices is superseded, or too one-dimensional.
Among other examples in my dissertation project, the notion of the power of
the admin (Gerbaudo, 2013) and my interviews help us to rethink the process
of leadership formation at a time when Facebook and Twitter play such a large
role in activism. In this context, leadership is neither a technologically-
determinist skill nor simply a relational dialogical practice. It requires both
the command of technological skills and an understanding and engagement in
digitally-mediated relational practices. But even non-mediated forms of
leadership cannot be explained by one determining factor, as some would like
us to believe. At current, biographical availability is over-emphasized. The
activists in this study however show that motivation, ideals and political
values facilitate a different kind of leadership when leadership structures are
non-existent.
The overlapping typologies of leadership which I discover among Southern
European activists show that leadership is a process of formation and
negotiation and cannot be treated in the same way in which social movement
researchers seek to make sense of social movements and their policy
outcomes, for example. Yet, social movement research has not employed
research methodologies which are congruent with the study of leadership.
In my attempt to further develop activist research, the task is remains to refuse
any kind of analytical closure and rather concentrate on the importance of new
forms of knowledge and theory co-production. The collaborative effort which
I have displayed in this project is a small step in that direction. The focus and
67

attention to activists own sense making allows me to treat their ad-hoc
theorisations of collective intelligence and liquid leadership as equivalent
to theories and notions developed within the confines of academia. Without
having participated in the same activities, however, I would have not been able
to decipher the meanings, symbols and repertoires of their actions, let alone,
understand how academic discourses such as dialogical leadership do not
resonate among some activists.
One possible reason is that the issue of leadership in social movements and
trade unions has too frequently been divorced from its social-political trends
and economic roots which I describe in this project. These help to understand
activists situated activity and ideological predispositions not simply as a
novel form of idealism, but materially grounded.
Their experiences precarious migrants at a time of economic and social crisis
exacerbates the rejection of leadership. However, it would be dishonest to
claim that this rejection of leadership is a permanent feature of this new social
strata, or rather a transient one. As this group of people continues to grow,
either integrate or be marginalised new questions and fault lines will arise.
However for the purpose of our study it is fair to argue that existing trade
unions and social movement organisations such as the Coalition of Resistance,
for example, have to adapt their repertoires of contention to these new forms
of collectivity/individualism. As a consequence, they also need to think about
how to develop new forms of collective leadership these activists demand
from their civic, social and political engagement. Hereby, Gramscis crisis of
authority raises the question whether it is the current form and content of
leadership which is rejected rather than leadership all together.
68

Do leaderless movements have a future, or are they a transient phenomenon
of a particular political conjuncture? As long as leadership remains associated
with grey-haired white men in backrooms, and Marxist-Leninist central
committees, a new generation of activists will continue to reject the notion all
together. However this study clarifies that leaderless movements are more of
an ideal than the real existing or de facto practice of these movements. Their
leaderless character safeguards against the worst excesses found in trade
unions, political parties and other institutions. As a matter of fact, these
activists are reconfiguring the culture and politics of these organisations by
their rejection.
This dissertation project raises many more questions than it answers. It will
remain a collective effort to understand and analyse the intersection of crisis,
migration and social movements as long as:
We [Southern European migrants my insertion] serve English breakfast,
we take care of lovely blond toddlers, we clean hotels, we make wraps, we
learn English twice a week, we memorize phrasal verbs, we work far-away,
we live in overcrowded houses in North London. We say have a nice day
Sir and on the phone we lie to our mums telling them that everything is
alright. But none of these things seem to be enough for Nigel Farage the
UKIP leader and he feels uncomfortable sitting on a train hearing us
speak foreign languages. I am sure he is fluent in several languages. I am
sure he serves coffees at 8 oclock in the morning and cleans his own office!
Farage, Merkel, Rajoy and other political figures blame immigrants for the
crisis. But I would ask these leaders: Have us immigrants caused over six
million unemployed in the Spanish state? Did we impose these austerity
plans that are not working, that are making the working class poorer and
poorer. Why are we being robbed of a future?- a female Spanish migrant
activist of Podemos at a solidarity meeting



69

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74

Appendix 1: Glossary of Organisations

15-M London
Activists in the Spanish State called for a demonstration on 15 May 2011. This
mobilization would come to be known as the 15-M movement with
decentralized autonomous groups of Spanish migrants adopting the label
across Europe and North America. At the peak in May/June 2011 more than
500 people participate in assemblies. Today, there remain more than 20
working groups and commissions.
More: https://twitter.com/15mlondon

Coalition of Resistance
A coalition of social movement groups, trade unions and community
organisations that mobilized for the anti-austerity demonstrations by the Trade
Union Congress (TUC). They also build strong links with anti-austerity
movements in different European countries such as Greece, and organised
1200-strong Europe Against Austerity Conference in London. More:
http://coalitionofresistance.wordpress.com/

Greek Solidarity Campaign
A solidarity campaign with Greece initiated by the Coalition of Resistance. It
is led by British trade unionists and campaigners. It has close ties to SYRIZA.
More: http://greecesolidarity.org/

Juventud Sin Futuro
A group of anti-capitalist youth activists who were active within the 15-M
movement and known for their dominance within some of the encampments
following the first demonstration on May 15, 2011.

London Contra A Troika
A group of Portuguese artists, public figures and intellectuals called for a
demonstration under the banner Que Se Lixe A Troika (Screw the Troika)
on 15 September 2012. Initially conceived to hold a demonstration on the
same, London Contra A Troika organised a mobilization outside the
75

Portuguese embassy on the same day. They continued to mobilise young and
newly-arrived Portuguese migrants in London. More than 200 people
participated in the demonstrations in September 2012 and March 2013.

Marea Granate Londres
After the momentum of the 15-M movement receded, Spanish activists
decided to organise in different waves (mareas). Each wave organized
around the defence of one public service such as health or education. The
Marea Granate organised Spanish migrants in many parts of the world. It
gained national and international prominence when they organised the Nos
nos vamos! Nos echan (Were not leaving! Theyre kicking us out!)
demonstration on April 7, 2013. The group does not have a defined
membership but commands 6,523 Twitter followers (08/2014). More:
https://twitter.com/15mlondon

Migrantes Unidos
After the Troika of the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund
and European Commission officially left Portugal, the activists of London
Contra A Troika decided to rename themselves. Today they seek to organise
both newly-arrived and an older generation of Portuguese migrants as well as
migrants of other backgrounds. They have 348 members in their Facebook
group. More than 50 people attended the debate on European citizenship in
May 2014. More: https://www.facebook.com/groups/migrantsunited/

Peoples Assembly Against Austerity
A new organisation initiated by trade unions, the Coalition of Resistance and
other campaigners such as Owen Jones and Mark Steel. It has held its own
anti-austerity demonstrations. More: http://www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/

PIIGS
A derogatory word coined by the Financial Times and Barclays Capital to
define the debtor economies in the Eurozone


76

PIIGS Uncut
An initiative by 15-M London which brought together Spanish, Portuguese,
Greek and even Irish anti-austerity campaigners. They mobilized for the TUC
demonstration on October 20, 2012. It was loosely organised in which the
different groups maintained their autonomy. The campaign constituted a point
of consolidation as disperse actors came together and mobilised for larger
demonstration. More: https://www.facebook.com/groups/124402811042587/

Solidarity with the Greek Resistance
A group of anti-capitalist activists associated with the radical left coalition
SYRIZA and ANTARSYA yet politically independent. They organised
fundraising events for the occupied ERT news station, for example, and have
initiated demonstrations outside the Greek embassy in Holland Park, London.
Their Facebook group has more than 1,212 likes (08/2014).
More: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Solidarity-with-the-Greek-
Resistance/261583060586182?sk=info

TUC
Trade Union Congress. The apex organization of British trade unions with
more than 7 million affiliate members. More: www.tuc.org.uk

We are all Greeks (London)
A Facebook group which called for demonstrations in Trafalgar Square,
London. These demonstrations coincided with the square occupation of the
Indignant Citizens Movement in Greece in June 2011. Some of the
demonstrations attracted up to 500 people. The Facebook group still
commands 893 members (08/2014). More:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/174336339346493/





77

Appendix 2: Biographical Sketches

Petros (27) had been a member of the anti-capitalist student organisation
EAAK back at his university in Athens. He was also a member of Antarsya, a
left-wing electoral project focusing on Greeces exit from euro. In 2010, he
moved to the UK to further his studies in Economics at the University of
Manchester where he became involved in the UK student movement and
started a group to bring the Greek community together. It had little
affiliation to other organisations except for local activists. After graduating he
moved to London where he was jobless for more than six months before
working for as a researcher in a think-tank. After his six months contract
ended he was jobless for some time. He then moved to Bruxelles where he
worked in policy for another six months. After some more months of
unemployment, he headed back to Greece. He now serves in the military in
Thessaloniki, Greece.
Katerina (31) is a lecturer at a post-1992 university in London. She has been
working there, on the South Coast as well as in London. She has been on one-
year contracts, the austerity measures, the lack of funding at UK Universities
have made it difficult for her to finish her PhD and be as politically active at
the same time. As a member of ANTARSYA UK she was one of the the
initiators of the Solidarity with the Greek Resistance. Back in Greece she has
participated in a neighbourhood committee against the IMFs visit to
Thessaloniki, and stood as a candidate in local council elections.
Rafael is a researcher at the University of London. He describes himself as
precarious worker. Back in Portugal he had not been a member of any other
political organisation, trade union, NGO etc. He had been to demonstrations
in his role as the Vice-President of his local Students Union. He set up the
Facebook event London Contra A Troika. He went over to Portugal to meet
with others and build the link between the Portuguese groups and the London
group.
Victor (31) first came to London when he was sixteen years of age. He wanted
to improve his English. After he finished his studies in Madrid and the crisis
hit Spain, he came back to the UK again. When I first met Victor in 2011, he
was working in a cinema in Central London. He had many jobs in the
meantime. During our last encounter he was working as a teaching assistant in
a school during the week and in a bike shop on the weekends so to pay the
rent. Due to his work contract he spends his summers back in Spain. For many
years, he was an environmental campaigner with Greenpeace before becoming
a key activist in the 15-M movement.
78

Anita is a qualified art therapist. When we last spoke she had just quit working
for a patisserie in London, and was looking for a new job. Back in Spain she
previously had been involved with an AIDS/HIV charity. Here in London, she
plays a prominent role in the Spanish-English feminist campaign My belly is
mine and various commissions and working groups of 15-M in London.
Rodrigo had been a researcher without a contract for many years in Portugal
before coming to the UK to start a PhD student at the University of London.
Back in Portugal, he was a member of the left coalition Bloco de Esquerda.
Pancho (32) came to the UK in 2012 when his partner moved here. He
remained unemployed for most of the time, working odd jobs in graphic
design and translation despite being a qualified environmental engineer. As
the prospects for employment remained bleak throughout, he decided to move
on to Germany where he has been working in a pizza shop and other odd jobs.
Back in Spain, he had been a labour organizer with the Sindicat Andalucia
Trabajadores (SAT). While he had a hard time taking up activist roles in
London, he started to the 15-M Worker Action Group in Berlin where he now
lives. He has been profiled in El Pais, and Der Spiegel as part of the new
generation of Spanish migrants in Europe.
Marco (56) is back in London for the third time in his life now. After being
unemployed for nearly a year in Portugal, Marco, an IT-worker, decided to
move to London. At first he moved to London without his family trying to
arrange meet-ups at least once a month. Back in Portugal, he had been active
in open-source and digital rights groups but would not have considered
himself a political activist.
Claudia (33) has been in London for nearly ten years. She has worked in
various jobs. Her last job was in a NGO for womens rights. This autumn she
will be leaving though for Latin America. She was a prominent activist in the
15-London, Occupy London and now in the European Greens of London.