Conservative and liberal family social movements in Malta : what motivates their activists?

Abstract

The main ambition of this dissertation is to uncover what motivated activists to join local family social movements in Malta. This research was carried out using face-to-face interviews with 9 different local activists and an interpretive approach. The recruitment of this study was based on Volunteer and Snowball sampling. In this regard, the study is based on 3 main research questions, characterizing the main themes emerging from this research. These are 1) What motivates activists to join and keep active in a family social movement in Malta? 2) Do their social experiences and networks motivate their decision? and 3) How do Liberal and Conservative local family activists differ from each other? As a result of their responses, the leading conclusion which emerged from this research is that amongst other motivations; their social experiences, social inequality, religiosity and entrustment were crucial motivators for them to join local family social movements and to keep active. Moreover, this research highlights some essential differences between Liberal and Conservative activists regarding their motivation to become activists. In addition, this research also underlines some commonalities between these two, such as being motivated through their social networks and their social experiences.