“Brandos costumes?” Protesto e mobilização em Portugal sob a austeridade, 2010-2013

Anti-austerity mobilizations in Southern Europe since 2010 have been widely debated in recent times. Commentators have emphasized the emergence of new political subjects such as the ‘precariat’ organized into loose, IT-connected movements. To what extent do these portrayals reflect the underlying dynamics of this protest cycle, and how do these movements interact with traditional political actors? Using Portugal as a case study, this article maps the cycle of anti-austerity contention between 2010 and 2013 to reveal a more complex picture, where traditional actors, including labor unions and left-wing political parties, emerge as key actors, facilitating and sustaining the discontinuous mobilization of new forms of activism, while seeking to gain access to new constituencies through them.