The making of new commons in Southern Europe: Afterlives of the movement of the squares

The “movement of the squares” has produced a vast literature but most of the attention has focussed on the encampments period. This chapter looks at the movement’s evolvement following the end of the more visible mobilization. We argue that a crucial outcome of this cycle lies in the creation of a social infrastructure of alternative (re)productive projects. Elaborating them as “social outcomes” of social movements, through a comparative analysis of the movements in Athens and Barcelona, we show how the commoning practices of the square encampments gave rise to more endurable commons disseminated across cities’ social fabrics. We maintain that the post-square commons constitute political and politicizing actions for activists and users for their effects on everyday life, for their capacity to link their practices with broader, structural dynamics of injustice, inequality and exclusion, and for their selective engagement with counter-austerity politics.