What Waiting Does to Social Movements: Time and Micro-Mobilization in the Struggle for Housing Rights in Spain

People threatened with the possibility of eviction face an institutional and bureaucratic process which time they do not control, and which is experienced as a wait with an uncertain outcome. This article analyzes what activists in the housing rights movement in Spain do to counter the potentially paralyzing effects of this imposed wait. On the basis of participant observation as well as semi-structured interviews conducted in Barcelona between 2013 and 2022, we analyze the articulation between the institutional temporality, in which the mobilization against evictions takes place, and the militant temporality specific to this mobilization. We contend that the micro-mobilization work carried out at the intersection of these two temporalities contributes to the development of the capacity of people experiencing residential insecurity to act on their own situation. By studying what activists do during moments of waiting, we expand the analytical categories through which we can account for collective action.