When COVID-19 swept across the globe, it disrupted routines, relationships and our sense of time and space.

Drawing on rare longitudinal research with residents in 22 countries across Europe and Latin America, this book traces how people lived through, interpreted, and reshaped the crisis in real time. From everyday care practices to citizen-state relations and grassroots self-organization, it reveals the complexities and inequalities of global crises, showing that they are not abstract events but negotiated in kitchens, workplaces, and communities.

The book offers a grounded, bottom-up rethinking of what crisis means - and what more just futures might require.