Exploring How the Platform for People Affected By Mortgages Is Building a Civil Discourse

This paper presents the results of an analysis on the civil discourse build by a social movement called Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (in Spanish: PAH, Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca). This analysis is part of a PhD which aimsto understand how the PAH’s participants are transforming their conceptions on politics, law and common good –and also their identity as citizens– through interactions, discourse and participation and, how the civil society is being affected as a result.

Civil society is understood as a civil sphere where solidarity is central and represents a mutual support between members of the same culture to promote justice; this means to repair the social. In this respect, the civilian sphere has its own normative and institutional logic and it is different from other spheres –political, economical or religious– although they are mutually influenced. Beyond the institutional,a subjective dimension mediating symbolic codesappears. The binaries codes are located between pure and impure and theydistinguish motives, relationships and institutions between civil and uncivil categories. The positive ones are related to democracy, freedom and a civil society based on solidarity whereas the negatives take part of a repression discourse –thus they are uncivil.

In particular, the analysis presented here corresponds to a participant observation carried out during four weeks in ten activities of the movement. The results of the first approach of data analysis show that the discourses are alike among participants and not always coherent in terms of civilian categories. Despite that fact, their discourses allow the participants to define themselves as “we” in front of “others” to whom they attribute an uncivil discourse.