Sketching the Surveillant Assemblage: Surveillance Experiences and Imaginaries Among Climate and Environmental Justice Activists in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal
A qualitative study of how climate and environmental justice activists in Montréal experience, imagine, and resist digital and physical surveillance across their everyday advocacy practices
As climate and environmental justice movements turn to more direct and transgressive forms of action, states have intensified repressive responses — including surveillance — raising serious concerns for civic participation and human rights. Surveillance of social movements is multi-actor, technically hybrid, and temporally pervasive, yet its impact on grassroots climate activism remains understudied beyond the moment of protest. This research asks: how do climate and environmental justice activists in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal experience, understand, and react to (digital) surveillance as part of their advocacy practices?
Drawing on surveillance studies, science and technology studies (STS), and social movement studies, the research mobilizes the concept of the surveillant assemblage (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000) to capture the decentralized, fluid, and multi-actor nature of activist surveillance — encompassing police, corporate platforms, peer networks, and urban infrastructure. It also foregrounds surveillance imaginaries as a key mediating factor shaping how activists interpret and respond to being watched.
The analysis is based on 15 semi-structured interviews conducted with climate and environmental justice activists in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal during spring and summer 2025. Interviews are documented through detailed note-taking to protect participant confidentiality and mitigate self-censorship. Data are analyzed through thematic analysis and visualized using ANT Analysis Diagrams, which trace networks of human and non-human actors involved in activist surveillance across three space-time frames: protest moments, everyday life, and social media.
Findings reveal complex temporal dynamics — real-time, ongoing, a posteriori, and anticipatory — that extend surveillance far beyond visible moments of contention. Activists navigate a wide spectrum of emotional responses, including fear, anger, distrust, hyper-alertness, and cautious legitimacy. Uncertainty about surveillance mechanisms drives anticipatory countermeasures and shapes a contextual chilling effect, manifesting as self-censorship, insurgent practice displacement, and heightened security protocols that raise the cost of activism. The tension between the movement’s need for visibility and the risks of digital exposure emerges as a central and unresolved dynamic.
Keywords: surveillant assemblage; surveillance imaginaries; social movements; climate justice; environmental activism; chilling effect; digital surveillance; ANT; Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.
