In Egypt’s post-uprising context, many ordinary people have mobilised against deteriorating public services. These rather socioeconomic microprotests denouncing often old, endemic problems such as water and power cuts, fuel shortages and environmental pollution, have largely gone unnoticed. Their relative containment at the local level did not significantly alarm the authorities, leaving popular discontent increasing. Yet, their scope often goes beyond the neighbourhood or the village where they erupt, reflecting a broader demand for state intervention to correct a negligence or reverse an injustice. I argue that the initial success of the 2011 uprising made many ordinary Egyptians, including in rural areas, gain confidence in their ability to mobilise for the resolution of long-standing problems. However, many Upper Egyptians who had participated in the 30 June demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood have now largely demobilised, despite the persistence of the same problems. Why and how do ordinary citizens devoid of previous activist experience, come, at certain times, to stage protests, block roads, close public administrations, or occupy public spaces, in order to reclaim what they consider as their right? Based on fieldwork undertaken after President Morsi’s fall in three Upper Egyptian villages, this paper provides a micro-level account of the dynamics of mobilisation and demobilisation against deteriorating public services. Beyond the social movement theory, which mainly studies urban and organised movements, it focuses on these microprotests isolated from other movements, characterised by a basic organisation and a strong local anchorage, which exceed Asef Bayat’s ‘nonmovements’ and are more audible than ‘quiet encroachments’. It also sheds light on how the 2011 and 2013 uprisings respectively affected mobilisation levels and processes in the remote Upper Egyptian provinces. I argue that local brokers using their own activist experience and connections, as well as a multitude of overlapping ordinary networks based on shared activities, spaces or identities, facilitated mobilisations between February 2011 and July 2013. The belief in legitimate demands also drove many ordinary people to go to the streets to reclaim their citizenship, and even their humanity. However, in addition to repression, these essentially networked movements constantly remain vulnerable to the demobilising strategies not only of external entities such as the media, but also of local actors attempting to co-opt them in a context persistently characterised by clientelism and patronage. I argue that these exposures explain the limits in scope and time of the microprotests against deteriorating public services.