Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how different urban social movements responded to the effects of pandemia in Valencia (Spain). They were former actions for previous goals, but pandemia also forced them to introduce new practices. They did diffeently according to the kind of movement and the neighbourhood context.

Paper long abstract:

COVID-19 pandemia underlines social structural trends. Gentrification and urban precarization are heads and tails of some of these trends in urban contexts. By one side, tourism became one of the main means for gentrification. Central areas of Spanish cities are a privileged locus of the process. By other side, urban precarization is reflected on insecurities and social exclusion. Low-income subjects are object of social policies, social research, and social activists. In Spanish cities, peripheral areas are the most important urban sites of this process.

Urban social movements have been trying to face both gentrification and precarization effects during years. Pandemia gived them an occasion to deepen in their work and to reinforce their goals. Contacts were limited and dependence situations were produced. Maintain informal economy activities was difficult in precarity situation and the bureaucratization process was multiplied all around. Pandemia produced two effects on the uses of urban public spaces. First, sharpened social control and, second, bars and restaurants occupied more areas. Urban social movements looked for forms of commonality to face these effects and introduced some changes in their ways of organization. The main goal of this contribution is to show those plural responses to COVID-19 and changes of organization for different urban social movements in Valencia (Spain). The empirical basis of this reflection will be a study funded by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans that implied the study of different websites and social network accounts of social urban movements and four interviews to leaders of different kind of organisations.