Social movement research - and the varying responses of popular movements to the crisis in different European countries - shows that an economic explanation of anti-austerity protests is not enough. Movements have to be actively constructed by their participants, in a process which is at once a question of political strategy, choice and opportunity and shaped by national cultural context, the dynamics of movement cultures and the local cultures in which they are grounded. The papers in this panel use ethnographic and other qualitative approaches to explore this process, looking at the choices movements make in terms of continuity and innovation, the inclusion or otherwise of feminist elements and the problem of translating movement frameworks from one country to another, as well as the alternative economies and ways of life in which movement participants are rooted. European anti-austerity movements thus appear not as an automatic response to financial crisis but as a substantial and contested achievement on the part of their participants.