ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the contrast between, and the movement from, the powerlessness of individualized victims' of neoliberal policies and the existence of a European network based on collective solidarity. It examines how the mobilizations were also the product and producers of strong emotions amongst the participants who experienced the mobilizations as powerful moments of collective solidarity and of personal and collective transformation. The chapter also focuses on how resource poor movements can overcome these limitations on collective action by constituting such resources by the discursive framing of conflictual issues and of the struggle itself which also involves the reconstruction of collective identities. The mobilizations enabled the unemployed to emerge from their privatized, invisible existence through highly symbolic and direct forms of action which made them visible in the public sphere and allowed them to intervene in the political debate over unemployment. The struggle for visibility and self-representation was also waged through employing artistic and theatrical modes of expression.
