This paper studies the everyday work that sustains feminist activism in Turkey under conditions of economic precarity and political unpredictability. Based on interviews with feminist activists conducted under the auspices of the FIERCE (Feminist Movements Revitalizing Democracy in Europe) project funded by an EC Horizon grant, it broadly seeks to understand the risks members face on an everyday basis and the strategies they develop to sustain the movement despite them. We first explore these multilayered processes at the individual level as activists try to fend off economic uncertainties and political threats. We then discuss them at the collective level as the same economic and political conditions have very real implications for the movement’s ability to recruit people and sustain participation and activism. We finally introduce the multiple strategies activists develop to mitigate the unfavorable circumstances they confront, ranging from practices of care and joy to sustain solidarity inside the movement over to those that invent new mobilizational and organizational tactics to sustain the public presence of feminism. Building on these narratives, we argue for the need to centralize experiences of precarity and risk in understanding how social movements survive and thrive even under the most inopportune circumstances.
