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The penalization of protest under neoliberalism: managing resistance through punishment

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Abstract

The repression of anti-austerity protests in Spain from 2011 to 2014 constitutes an example of how neoliberal developments are facilitated by the penal system as it limits political resistances to the imposition of precarious working conditions and social cuts. The limits imposed on contentious politics are both material (consisting of banning acts that are prominent in social movement’s repertoire of contention, fining demonstrators, etc.) and symbolic (consisting of transforming the meaning of legitimate politics by imposing new legal and political definitions). This case study is used to illustrate the interconnection between labor markets, social policies and the repression of social protest, and to elaborate on Wacquant’s approach to the relationship between punishment and other social institutions. It is at such times of political and economic crisis when institutional interconnections seem particularly exposed, arguably enabling more profound analyses.

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Notes

  1. It is interesting to note, for example, that some of the Catalan political leaders who are now prosecuted on charges such as sedition and rebellion due to their participation in separatist activities, were involved in the design and implementation of austerity-based neoliberal policies as members of the party which governed Catalunya from 2010 to 2015.

  2. For demographic characteristics of demonstrators in Spain see Jiménez Sánchez [1].

  3. Signing up at a gym in a Chicago ghetto appears in his works [28] as a strategy of individual resistance for escaping the high levels of interpersonal violence and of police penalization, as a way of being ‘out of the streets’ and to protect oneself from the structural violence of the US ghetto ([29]: 72).

  4. For an insightful approach to this group, see Jaime-Jiménez [44] and Palacios Cerezales [45].

  5. See Blay [50] for recent evolution in Spanish police control of protests.

  6. On the habitual neglect of fines in studies on punishment, see O’Malley [52].

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Acknowledgements

This paper benefited from funding from research projects DER2015-64403-P, DER2014-59743-P, and HAR2016-75098-R, from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

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  1. School of Law, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Ignacio González-Sánchez

  2. School of Legal and Social Sciences, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain

    Manuel Maroto-Calatayud

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Correspondence to Ignacio González-Sánchez.

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González-Sánchez, I., Maroto-Calatayud, M. The penalization of protest under neoliberalism: managing resistance through punishment. Crime Law Soc Change 70, 443–460 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-018-9776-9

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