Between inequality and injustice: dignity as a motive for mobilization during the crisis

Open Access

Abstract

Structural adjustment policies in Europe underscore the lack of sovereignty and responsibility of nation-states towards the well-being of their citizens. As a result, in popular mobilizations arguments of inequality and injustice, expressed in a demand for dignity, are intertwined. The article explores this shift away from older arguments of exploitation and domination. Using ethnographic material from an industrial town in Galicia (Spain), I analyse two apparently different types of mobilization that have emerged after the 2008 crisis, trying to understand what grievances and objectives pull people together. One is the local expression of new social movements; the other is the remaining expression of working-class organization. Each of these models reinterprets a particular historical tradition of struggle while developing a new interpretation of the social objectives and subjectivities of the future. My hypothesis is that a 'moral economy' framework has superseded a 'political economy' framework in the motivation for struggle.