Friday, March 14, 2014
Hampton (Omni Shoreham)
This paper investigates social movement mobilization and the Eurocrisis in the crisis states of the EU periphery or the ‘PIGS’ – Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Using Ireland as an in-depth case study it develops a framework by which further research into why the nature of mobilization in these states has varied so much, despite the common stimuli of financial and unemployment crises and the control of government policy by the outside agents of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. The paper takes focuses specifically on the political opportunity structures of each state to account for the variated form of protest in each state. Its starting point is that Imig and Tarrow’s (2000) assertion that Europe-wide mobilization would occur as European integration deepened has not been borne out due to the lack of a shared political opportunity structure for the singular experience of opposition to ‘austerity’ policies in the four case studies to be expressed uniformly. From the initial evidence of the Irish case it concludes that while there is no coordinated pan-European mobilization there is clear recognition of the shared experience of ‘austerity’ across the four states and increased cognisance of the need for alternative policies to be articulated at the EU level. From this perspective the wider argument of the paper is that mobilization and protest in the ‘PIGS’ can be understood not only as opposition to specific EU policies but more fundamentally as an important signifier of the emergence of a European demos.
