Social movement studies have long centered social movement organizations (SMOs) as the primary vehicles of mobilization. Yet, today’s decentralized movements challenge SMO-centric frameworks such as resource mobilization theory (RMT). Building on the logic of connective action and insights from economic sociology, this paper proposes connective resource mobilization to renew RMT. It highlights the personalized, peer-based circulation of money in contemporary movements, characterized by political generational shifts, contingent engagement, and moralized meanings that evolve across borders and phases of contention. This study, including 176 in-depth interviews and 182 event observations in Hong Kong and Canada, examines how monetary resources flow and acquire meanings in transnational contexts. The findings reveal how people bypass formal organizations to support spontaneous actions and individual protestors, and how these practices evolved across cycles of contention. I argue that reconceptualizing money in movements is crucial for offering a novel lens to understand how movement continuity unfolds interconnectedly under domestic and diasporic conditions.

About the speaker:

Pamela Tsui is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her research spans gender and sexuality, collective behavior and social movements, transnational and diasporic studies, and economic sociology. Her work has appeared in Gender & Society, Sexualities, Law & Society Review, and Critical Asia Archives. She has received major paper awards and honors, including from the American Sociological Association and the Hong Kong Sociological Association. Her current project examines how Hong Kongers, both in the city and across the diaspora, reimagine money in response to the shifting political landscape of the early 2020s. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she completed her undergraduate degree in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and earned her MPhil in Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.

Departmental Seminar: Connective Resource Mobilization: Rethinking Movement Continuity Through Money in Transnational Activism

Date: 12 September 2025

Time: 2:30m - 3:30pm

Venue: CJT-9.29

Speaker: Ms. Pamela Tsui

Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=102724