ABSTRACT
Anti-austerity protests have characterised, in different ways, several European countries in the last decade: the Spanish 15-M, the Greek ‘movement of the squares’, the waves of protest that characterised Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom, and more recently the French ‘Nuit Debout’ against the labour reform, among others. While these episodes of mobilisation are significantly different from each other in many aspects, they have in common a significant role of student and youth movements in their development. This contribution took different forms in different countries: in some cases, students mainly played a role of ‘initiators’ of a cycle of protest (as in the case of the 2008–2010 student mobilisations that characterised Greece, Italy and Spain), while in other cases the struggle against cuts to education was situated at the core of anti-austerity protest (as in the British case). Both the issue of education and the generational component of anti-austerity discourse have been significant in anti-austerity protest throughout Europe. This chapter aims at addressing this issue analysing the impact of the crisis on European student movements as a way to shed light on the more general dynamics of the relationship between anti-austerity movements and their antecedents and to highlight the importance of context and agency in shaping movement trajectories.
