Social Movements in Crisis Contexts

Social movements in crisis contexts emerge as collective responses to acute disruptions—whether economic downturns, political upheavals, environmental disasters or public‐health emergencies. These movements exhibit adaptive repertoires of contention that draw on both traditional tactics, such as mass demonstrations and strikes, and novel strategies enabled by digital platforms. Crisis environments can accelerate innovation in mobilisation, reshape temporal dynamics and open new political opportunity structures, prompting activists to reconfigure frames and alliances. Comparative studies reveal that movements in southern Europe developed distinct patterns of protest during austerity, while in Greece health-service activists pioneered direct social actions as a means of meeting urgent needs. Gendered analyses further show that state policies and welfare regimes influence women’s and men’s differential engagement. Across regions, the interplay of evolving temporal vectors, shifting organisational forms and emergent coalitions underlines the capacity of crisis‐driven movements to generate both immediate relief and longer‐term social change, with global implications for governance, solidarity networks and policy reform.

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Social Movements in Crisis Contexts publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in social movements in crisis contexts across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Repertoire of contention: The set of protest tactics and strategies employed by movements to achieve political or social change.

Temporal vector: A conceptual tool for analysing how movement ideas and practices evolve and diffuse over time and space.

Gender regime: The configuration of state policies, social norms and institutional practices that shape gendered resources and opportunities for mobilisation.

Direct social actions (DSAs): Collective interventions organised by activists to provide services or resources directly to communities, often in the absence of state support.

References

1. Temporality in social movement theory: vectors and events in the neoliberal timescape. Social Movement Studies (2018).
2. Do gender regimes matter? Gender differences in involvement in anti-austerity protests - a comparison of Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Social Movement Studies (2019).
3. Contentious precarious generation in anti-austerity movements in Spain and Italy. OBETS Revista de Ciencias Sociales (2015).
4. From Tactical Differentiation to Tactical Convergence. Trajectories of Healthcare Direct Social Actions and Their Impact in the Greek Healthcare Arena: 1983-2015. SocietàMutamentoPolitica (2024).