Who are the protesters? An ethnographic exploration of the participants in Umbrella Revolution

This research aims to understand the Umbrella Revolution through the eyes of different nationals taking part in the protest. Relying on in-depth interviews and participant-observations, this study offers the perspectives of a Hongkonger, a Chinese, and a Central-European present in the protest sit-ins. Although during the Umbrella Revolution the participants were generically referred to as ‘protesters’, they were not a homogeneous mass of people. At times overlapping, their experiences highlight different motivations for participating in the protest and different resolutions of the conflict. Taking into account both face to face conversations carried out during the protest and also mediated conversations carried on social media, this account offers an in-depth look not at the protest itself, but at its constitutive force through the eyes of various participants. The driving force of participation for the interviewed participants was their desire for a democratic system in Hong Kong. However, the conversations highlighted the different understandings of this concept and the affordable goals to achieve it. While the Hongkonger aimed for freedom of speech in order to maintain Hong Kong’s characteristics, his mainland Chinese counterpart strived for democracy in Hong Kong hoping that it would spread to mainland China in the near future. On the other hand, the European resident in Hong Kong felt it had a moral duty to support the freedom of speech in Hong Kong after her people earned the same rights through mass protests 25 years ago. The paper tackles concepts such as deterritorialization, public participation, and national identity, drawing from multi-disciplinary theoretical approaches. Apart from this, the author highlights the usefulness of understanding the constitutive individual forces behind a large-scale social movement. Instead of focusing on the group or on its leaders, the research tries to account for the generative forces and perceptions employed by the participants to generate the mass protest.