Introduction: Social Change, Political Discontent, and Urban Movements in Southern European Cities

Abstract

Since the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008, social inequality in the European countries of the Mediterranean has grown significantly. In Italy, Greece, and Spain, the differences in the general distribution of income have increased, as well as the population living below the poverty line and the distance between the most affluent and the most vulnerable social groups. The ratio between the percentage of income perceived by the most favored quintile of the population and the most disadvantaged, for example, has passed between 2007 and 2016 from 5.6 to 6.0 in Greece, from 5.2 to 5.9 in Italy, and from 5.2 to 6.5 in Spain. These are notable increases, especially in the Spanish case, much higher than the average of the OECD countries (OECD 2019). Thus, with the notable exception of Portugal, the Mediterranean countries are today among the most unequal in the European Union.