Protests in Europe in Times of Crisis -The Case of Greece, Ireland and Portugal

Abstract

The year 2008 was marked by a financial crisis that started in the United States but quickly spread to the rest of the world. Subprime-related, this crisis was linked to property speculation, leveraged by the banking sector. This crisis quickly spread to Europe due to exposure of European economies to international markets. To avoid economic collapse the States decided to intervene in the banking sector, nationalizing some banks and injecting capital in others. Some European countries not to enter bankruptcy had to ask for external financial support between 2010-11, was the case of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The aid granted by the Troika (European Union, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund) to European countries referenced advocated a drastic austerity plan. Faced with such a scenario of crisis, austerity, unemployment and precariousness, Europeans came to the streets to demonstrate their discontent with the crisis but also with politicians and policies implemented to solve the economic problems. Throughout Europe there were large protests, especially in the countries that received international aid. From a corpus taken from newspapers and from a theoretical framework of social movements we intend to verify if there was a direct relationship between crisis and contestation in the three countries that had external aid and if this crisis returned the centrality to materials on European social movements.