Protesting for justice and democracy: Italian Indignados?

Abstract

This article analyses anti-austerity protest in Italy as a sort of ‘functional equivalent’ of the Indignados movements in other countries. While the typical forms of action of these movements, the acampada, were not very widespread in Italy in 2011, there were mobilisations for social justice and participatory democracy which indeed resonated with the frames that developed in Spain, Greece and the United States. Research based on surveys at three protest events indicates in fact that, in Italy too, protest concerning social issues is linked with extremely low and declining levels of trust in institutions, but also with calls for more political intervention to address social inequalities. After briefly presenting the methodology used in the surveys, the authors empirically substantiate this statement by looking at the political positions as well as the framing processes of the protestors interviewed. While similar capitalist evolution and cross-national diffusion explain the similarities, some peculiar features of the Italian movement are linked with the specific political opportunities present in the Italian case.