Drawing on participatory action research conducted in Italy and Spain among feminist spaces, this book examines the production of safer spaces and the underlying infrastructure of affect and emotions that shape, enable, and support collective action. Amid the prevailing backlash observed in various European countries, a new wave of feminist movements has emerged since 2015, emphasizing the significance of establishing secure physical spaces within urban settings to counteract the rising levels of inequality, gender-based violence, and economic crises.

By challenging a binary understanding of safe spaces, this book presents a dynamic conceptualization of safety within feminist movements, employing an analysis of affect and emotion in collective action. This intricate emotional labor not only challenges traditional gender norms and the social structures that perpetuate them but also poses a critique of the prevailing economic model. Based on four years of ethnographic fieldwork (2017–2021), the argument of the book stems from participants’ involvement in the research process, incorporating constructivist grounded theory methods throughout data collection, concept development, and results dissemination. The book argues that the work on affect and emotions within feminist spaces has transformative effects, by increasing the potential for collective action.

As such, it will appeal to scholars of political science and sociology with interests in social movements, gender, and democracy.

Giada Bonu Rosenkranz is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Horizon project “FIERCE. Feminist movements revitilizing democracy in Europe,” at the Scuola Normale Superiore. After participating in the Master’s Program in Gender Studies and Politics at Roma Tre, she received her Ph.D. in political science and sociology from the Scuola Normale Superiore and is part of the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). Her research focuses on the relationship between feminist movements and democracy with a focus on participatory methodologies. She is part of the editorial board of the journal on feminist studies, DWF – donnawomanfemme.