How do ordinary citizens, protesters, and the media in different countries make sense of the current global economic crisis? To answer this question empirically, the panel compares citizens’ public responses, social resilience and media framings to the crisis drawing on case studies from Europe, North America, and the Middle East. The papers combine a range of theoretical traditions, and qualitative and quantitative approaches of media and discourse analysis, and ethnography. In focusing on right wing responses to the eurocrisis, Duyvendak and Mepschen’s study traces the gradual shift of populist discourses in the Netherlands from anti-Muslim rhetoric to anti-European protectionism and welfare chauvinism in the context of immigration. Van Stekelenburg, Klandermans and their team compare civic responses to EU austerity measures by the participants in 19 anti-austerity and social justice demonstrations in seven European countries. Lamont’s paper explores social resilience as practiced by workers in France, Sweden, the US, Brazil and Israel bound together across class, race, and nationality. Milman’s study compares media stigmatization of protesters in Israel and the US alongside racial, classed, and gendered boundaries to explore how cultural stereotypes constrain participation by affected groups. Doerr’s paper traces the ‘political translation’ deficit of EU politics in comparing how activists, unionists and politicians debate about the future of Europe in different European and national arenas of protest. The panel aims to explore empirically how public debate in times of crisis reshapes the boundaries of belonging and civic participation by bringing together different disciplines, nationalities, and generations of scholars.