Collective mobilization, democratic transformation and resistance against the crisis and austerity in Southern Europe: The experience of Portugal and Spain

Abstract

Driven by the crisis since 2011, inescapable transfor-mations have occurred in social movements and forms of collective action in the world. The so-called “Arab Spring” and the “Spring of the Movements” show the global character of these transformations, their mas-sive use of exponential and massive use of digital media and expressions, as never had been used in history, allow us to advance in the conceptualization of a new theoretical subject within Social Movements studies. Social movements in Spain and Portugal are paradigmatic of this new proposal, which challenge the dominant conceptions about social movements of the last decades, from the emergence of these new political actors and their new forms of mobilization and activism which have contribute to the redefinition of the linkages between the State and Civil Society and, consequently, in the classical understandings about political participation and democracy.