This project sets out to comparatively analyse civil society’s resilience and resourcefulness in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Czechia and Sweden. It starts with examining the genealogies of the existing local/national/global crises, which include issues related to the economy, housing, the climate, food, the pandemic and gender equality, and focuses on analysing how people respond to these crises collectively. We ask: How does civic action emerge and develop over time in the face of multiple crises and exclusions? How do activists manage to (re)kindle and sustain civic engagement, how do they build multi-scalar solidarities under adverse conditions, and how does this transform their life-stories and affective responses? How alliances, cooperation and central relationships are built in contemporary civil societies, with whom and what role these relationships play? What can we learn about the emergence and development mechanisms of mobilisation and civic actions from comparisons of differential patterns and interconnected trajectories? To capture the structural conditions as well as collective dynamics and individual levels of activism, we propose the concept of “hubs of engagement” as an analytical tool, which allows us to bring these dimensions together. Our methodological framework is qualitative and comparative, drawing on the approach of critical participatory action research, triangulating archival research, interviews, observations, online material, and visual maps.