Marginalised groups, such as migrants and migrant solidarity movements, are bearing the brunt of growing restrictions on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, whether in physical spaces, online or through hybrid forms of gathering. As digital technologies increasingly reshape how protests are organised, monitored and restricted, this pressure is intensifying, making it harder for those already marginalised to safely and effectively exercise this right.
Their protests often take the form of civil disobedience: non-violent, public acts that may breach the law to raise awareness of global crises, challenge injustice and demand accountability.
Among these groups, migrants and those acting in solidarity with them are disproportionately affected.
Their engagement in protests against acts like detention, deportation, and border violence exposes them to heightened risks of immigration control, digital surveillance and political hostility, especially when these protests involve acts of civil disobedience, online or offline. However, there is limited research on how legal frameworks, enforcement practices and social repression interact when migrants and migrant-rights defenders undertake these protests. This paper examines how existing international legal frameworks on freedom of peaceful assembly apply to migrant and solidarity protests across both physical and digitally networked spaces.
The paper looks at 9 comparative case studies of digitally networked protests undertaken by migrants and solidarity movements in France, Germany, Greece, and the United States. These countries were selected because each has experienced sustained migration-related political contestation over the past decade, accompanied by recurrent protests led by or centred on migrants. Including three EU Member States alongside the U.S. allows for comparison both within a shared regional human-rights framework and across distinct constitutional and legal systems at the international level.
Through a comparative legal and sociological analysis, the paper pays particular attention to civil disobedience. It argues that:
- The core features of civil disobedience can be meaningfully translated into digital environments. Online actions, such as virtual sit-ins or coordinated disruptions, may be technically unlawful. Still, when they remain non-violent and expressive, they perform a similar democratic function to their offline counterparts.
- Peaceful civil disobedience - whether carried out in the streets or in digital environments - remains protected under international human rights law. Even where actions are technically unlawful, their non-violent and expressive nature requires that any restrictions or sanctions meet strict standards of legality, necessity, and proportionality.
With this paper, written by ECNL Fellow Lila Schwab, we hope to contribute to ongoing efforts by civil society, legal practitioners and international institutions to strengthen safeguards for the exercise of the right of peaceful assembly in both physical and digitally mediated spaces and to combat systemic injustices faced by racialised and marginalised communities, as part of the broader effort to protect and expand their space for action.