Social Movements that Care: Empathy, Solidarity, and Empowerment in the Fight Against Evictions

The Platform of Those Affected by Mortgages (the PAH, by its Spanish acronym) has left an important mark in the history of Spanish social movements. It gave a voice to the more than 700,000 families that have been evicted since the PAH was created in 2009; it has blocked thousands of evictions through civil resistance and prevented many more through negotiations with banks; it has organized the biggest official petition in the history of Spain, gathering 1.5 million signatures, and won changes in 5 regional housing laws. This book explains the behavior and interactions of beneficiary and non-beneficiary constituents through the framework of the Politics of Care. Inspired by Trontos theorization of the process of caring, the author develops a model of mobilization of social movements started by non-beneficiary constituents, arguing that, in addition to their housing and financial problems, those affected by mortgages faced other emotional, identity, and participatory needs that prevented them from acting in solidarity with each other.