Abstract: Contemporary anti-austerity movements are challenging some of the most deeply held and widely shared assumptions about the role of the market and the State. In this article, I analyze mobilization around an issue that lies at the origin of the global financial crisis and has generated one of its largest social costs: housing. I centre on the Spanish grassroots citizen platform, the Platform for those Affected by Mortgages, and their controversial escrache campaign, to explore the nexus between crisis and its human cost, the creativity and agency of the collective response it can generate, and the response of the State. I argue that social movements actively resisting austerity measures transcend the concrete issues around which they mobilize, and are contesting hegemonic definitions of crisis and of democracy.
