Neo-imperialism in solidarity organisations’ public discourses: collective action frames, resources and audiences

While neo-imperialism is becoming increasingly discussed within academia and by public intellectuals, this paper hypothesises that, due to resource needs of social movement organisations, neo-imperialism is not a major diagnostic frame used by international solidarity organisations in the Global North. We tested this hypothesis by examining diagnostic collective action frames used online by 30 organisations across three solidarity movement issues: climate justice, refugee solidarity and debt relief. While the frame was infrequently used across the organisations, results reveal that those organisations that did utilise the frame with some regularity had constituencies that have suffered from historical forms of imperialism. A qualitative analysis was used to locate the contexts in which the frame was used and the prominence these uses had within the organisations’ public broadcasting.