ABSTRACT
A new economic and political landscape of contention has surfaced across local, national, and transnational spaces in the 21st century in reaction to the impact of hard economic times on national populations (Diani and Kousis 2014). Lucid examples include the movements of real democracy, Occupy, and the Indignados participating in urban spaces both as national and transnational contentious publics (see chapter 5 in this volume; Fuster 2014: 237–242). This contention is especially visible in the southern part of the Eurozone and in particular Greece. In order to maintain global economic flows, enormous pressure was placed by international lenders and the Troika — the European Commission (EC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Central Bank (ECB) — on southern European governments to implement harsh austerity measures and related neoliberal reforms (see chapter 2 in this volume; Diani and Kousis 2014). Given the sweeping and dramatic impact these measures had on national populations, the legislative decisions included in the Troika’s Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) and the ensuing austerity policies led to intensive waves of multi-scalar mobilizations across an array of old and new spaces on Eurozone’s periphery, and especially Greece.
