ABSTRACT
The global financial crisis of 2008 and the austerity measures that followed hit the Southern European countries particularly hard, resulting in the imposition of bailout programmes outlined by the Troika. In response, strong protest movements emerged from civil society, mobilizing people against austerity, external intervention in state finances and a decline in the quality of democracy.
In this chapter we undertake a sociological analysis, inspired by the critical discourse analysis approach, of the narratives presented by the main anti-austerity protest movements in Portugal, as well as the counter-narratives that emerged, underlying the discourses of parliamentary political actors and governmental spheres, between 2013 and 2018. This time frame will allow us to describe and analyse the narratives on austerity during and after the Troika’s intervention period in Portugal. It will also enable us to trace the processes of change occurring in the agents’ discourses, to discuss their meaning and to correlate them with ongoing socio-economic processes.
