What is the point of anti-austerity activism? Exploring the motivating and sustaining emotional forces of political participation

The continued resistance to austerity in the UK almost a decade after its
imposition raises questions about what motivates and sustains anti-austerity
activism. Drawing on 30 interviews with local activists, this article argues that
anti-austerity activism is sustained by a combination of emotions and
normative ideals. It is about more than opposing austerity and appealing to
social protections of the past; it is about imagining an alternative future and
situating this within conversations about what it means to be human, as well
as enacting these moral values in the present. Activism is conceived of as care
not only for austerity and those it impacts but also within activist
communities, with the social dimension of activism and the relationships it
creates becoming a central sustaining force for continued political
participation. This article explores how emotion sustains political
participation during periods of disillusionment and the everyday ways that
activists resist and subvert the pervasive force of neoliberal capitalism and its
discourses. Overall, it asserts the importance of paying close attention to the
lived and felt dimension of political participation to better understand the
nuanced ways that anti-austerity activism is sustained over long periods of
time.