Introduction: The Transformation of the Political Landscapes
Populism and right-wing nationalism (the radical right) are contested, multi-dimensional, and contextual phenomena (Mudde 2005). One of the crucial elements of the populist discourse is the rejection of diversity, immigration, Islam, and LGBT rights (MĂźller 2016). Not only grass roots supporters have been activated; in the last two decades, numerous political leaders, in Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern Europe, have expressed openly exclusionist, xenophobic, racist positions. In the 2000sâ2010s, a few party leaders and/or members of parliament have even been convicted for âotheringâ. More recently, however, one part of the right-wing populist discourse and self-portraying has increasingly emphasized itself as a combatant of Western values and norms like freedom of opinion (the cartoon crisis in Denmark and Charlie Hebdo in France), gender equality, secularism, and sexual freedom. The political landscapes and legacies in the European Union are very different. Many populist, right-wing actors want a regime change; other actors protect Western democracies and welfare states, even minoritiesâ human and fundamental rights.
These contradictory trends exist even in well-established democracies. Even the Nordic countries, which have long been praised for respect for human rights, equality and inclusiveness, have opened access to numerous âanti-phenomenaâ. âCriticalâ discourses on the cornerstones of the regime have taken the floor and placed the mainstream parties on defense. Anders Widfeldt (2015), who has analyzed the rise of right-wing populist parties and their gradual integration in representative politics and governments in Scandinavia, points out that today the ideal called the Nordic model can even have a negative ring. Populist right-wingers are attacking the principle of all-inclusiveness, which not so long ago was re-examined in order to valorize new migration- and refugee-related forms of inequalities. These new forms of inequalities have inspired a constructive re-analysis of the regime (Kvist et al. 2012). The concept of âwelfare nationalismâ associated with social democracy (Brochmann and Hagelund 2012) has been replaced by concepts such as âwelfare national chauvinismâ (Siim and Meret 2016: 131) or even âwelfare exclusionismâ (Keskinen 2016), which indicates a turn toward limiting welfare to people with citizenship. Political hate expressions such as âwelfare shoppersâ, âanchor childrenâ, and so on in social media and in formal parliamentary arenas as well target the most vulnerable groups who are refugees from war and are persecuted as old and new minorities and internal âdeviantsâ. At the same time, these parties polish their image by supporting Western liberal values such as gender equality and tolerance of sexual minorities, especially if this âliberalismâ can be used to criticize Muslim newcomers (Siim and Meret 2016; Saarinen et al. 2018).
Similar analyses of the emergence of populist right-wing or far-right party family can also be found outside the Nordic countries. The literature on Eastern European post-socialist countries in transition from authoritarian one-party socialism toward multi-party liberal democracy has long neglected the negative aspects of the political transformation and focused mainly on EU membership. Over the last two decades, this picture has changed dramatically, and nationalist, populist, and Euro-skeptic forces have been characterized as expressions of nativism, that is, exclusionary versions of nationalism (Widfelt 2015: 33â61; Kriszan and Siim forthcoming). Paradoxically, simultaneously with accessing the EU and confronting suspicion and exclusion, Eastern European EU citizens have themselves, to cite Andrea Pirro (2015: 2â8), developed âorganized intoleranceâ toward the âoutsidersâ in their own countries. Inclusion and exclusion have therefore been curiously intertwined. It has been argued that populist radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe are more anti-democratic and militant than their Western European counterparts (Pirro 2015: 5; Mudde 2005; Minkenberg 2002). An additional special feature, which is not found to the same extent in Northern Europe, is hostility against internal, that is, the historic others, like Turks and Muslims in Bulgaria, and Roma who are more numerous in many East European countries than anywhere in the West (Mudde 2005).
In Continental and Southern European countries with a legacy of Nazism and fascism such as Austria, Germany, and Italy, the political developments and characteristics of right-wing populism are somewhat different (cf. Lazaridis et al. 2016; Lazaridis and Campani 2016). In Austria, the far right has moved from the margin to mainstream and entered the government (FPĂ) (Sauer and Ajanovic 2016). In Italy and Germany, the far right has long been marginalized. The Alternative fĂźr Deutschland is thus a very recent phenomenon. The Republican France is in many respects a special case, since right-wing populism has proved to be relatively strong in the presidential elections but has not directly managed to influence mainstream politics (Benveniste and Pingaud 2016).
It is worth noticing that in Western Europe, in particular, green and left party families (Pirro 2015: 33) have been on the move and engaged in forming solidarity movements, counter-publics, and counterforces to populist and right-wing actors. In addition, new forms of civic activism and solidarity have emerged âfrom belowâ, initiated by diverse groups in civil society associations, often at the local level and sometimes bridging the local, national, and transnational arenas. This complex phenomenon, which is the focus of this book, has arguably not received the attention it deserves in normative, theoretical, and empirical studies of democracy and citizenship.
Making the Counterforces Visible
One of the main challenges is to make the diverse counterforces in contemporary Europe, which are often locally based and situated in civil society, visible. The dynamic transformations of the political landscape, the deconstruction of welfare states, and the strengthening of exclusive nationalisms across Europe create new challenges to democratic counterforces and solidarity movements and to their strategies and practices to combat othering and exclusion. An additional challenge is the paradox that part of the democratic opposition to right-wing populism defending cultural diversity, migration, and sexual inclusion sometimes shares the right-wingâs criticisms of deficits in accountability of political and economic elites, the so-called the crisis of responsibility (Della Porta 2015: 6), and decreasing representativity and legitimacy of representative European politics. In brief, hate speech and hate acts flourish and increase around Europe, even in regimes that have previously been characterized as tolerant and inclusive (Widfeldt 2015: 37â42).
The authors in this volume theorize these political challenges and paradoxes by exploring the democratic counterforces, that is, pro-diversity and pro-equality movements, in Europe, historically and today, with focus on nine national contexts: Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, and the UK. The political transformations are approached in macro-level analyses within diverse political regimes characterized by liberal democracy: (a) transitions brought about by migration in the Nordic welfare states and Britain, (b) combats against fascist and Nazi xenophobic legacies in Continental and Southern Europe, and (c) on-going transition from post-socialist/communist rule toward representative democratic rule. Growing divisions between North and South and East and West are investigated as well. Attention must be paid to the relationships between civic actors, both at the grassroot level and in relations with the local and national state and the EU. Another key theme, mobilization of âvictimâ actors who are facing discrimination but are struggling for their equal rights as citizens and residents, is a phenomenon topic in regard to democracy and citizenship (Isin 2008; Isin 2009; Mendez-Shannon and Bailey 2016; Bhimji 2016).
The Theoretical and Methodological Frames and Key Concepts
This book is motivated by a desire to understand the new forms of populism and nationalism in contemporary Europe linked to globalization, European integration, migration, and multiculturality/multiculturalism. One of the theoretical ambitions is to move beyond the nation-state in order to overcome the âmethodological nationalismâ connected with key concept such as citizenship, democracy, the public sphere, and the welfare state (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2002; Fraser 2013). We focus on transnational civil society and âsocial movements in times of crisisâ (della Porta and Mattoni 2014) such as the global justice movement from the 1990s, the World Social Forums, the Occupy Wall Street movements from the 2000s, and the social movements that are emerging in the current times of austerity, at regional, national, and even local levels. They are all networked with each other and have, in brief, turned into âmovements of movementsâ (della Porta 2005; della Porta 2015).
The main aim is thus to critically reflect upon these expressions of transformative politics by re-exploring numerous key concepts in the social sciences, such as citizenship, democracy/public sphere, social movements, power/empowerment, and conflicts and cooperation around race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Values, frameworks, claims, as well as action modes are changing. Flexibilities, hierarchies, and novel forms of multiple belongings are today intertwined with upward shifts toward transnational waves of contention, regional and global anti-austerity, and pro-democracy protests for vulnerable social groups amidst economic and financial crisis and new protest repertoires, also around the European Union (della Porta and Mattoni 2014; della Porta 2015).
Paradoxically, more focus is needed on the local level. âUrban citizenshipâ (Nielsen 2008) is a very recent phenomenon; it is cultivated in great metropolises, in multicultural cities where the most vulnerable groups, old and new, may act together to combat poverty and homelessnessâpeople who are both ânon-residentsâ and âillegalsâ but in different ways and who have no voice and formal representation. The sub-local level is also interesting for explorations of participation: squatters and people building camps as spaces for survival and action bring up what William Walters (2008), provocatively, calls ânon-citizenshipâ. They destabilize formal statist regimes of power and citizenship and show that the tension between residency and need is indeed one of the most topical issues in the 2010s. Concerns of ethics-based politics are therefore relevant for all levels, from global to neighborhoods.
On the analytical level, one of the main issues refers to citizensâ activism and the struggles around citizenship rights and obligations in contemporary Europe. The fundamental questions, outlined by Hannah Arendt (1951, 1958), are concerned with all marginalized and vulnerable peopleâs âright to have rightsâ. The chapters in this volume address citizenship as a contested concept (contestatory citizenship; Krasteva 2016), which asks questions about inclusion/exclusion of actors in democracy. These contested issues are crucial in times when mobility and migration have become the road to work and welfare for an increasing number of people moving, circulating, or living in contemporary Europe. T. H. Marshallâs normative model of equal rights (1950) was limited to the nation-state, and scholars like Nira Yuval-Davis (2011) and Nancy Fraser (2005, 2013) have reformulated the classic notions of citizenship and democracy from transnational perspectives.
EU citizenship is a supranational model of citizenship, but the meaning and perspectives of EU citizenship are highly debatable. On the one hand, EU citizenship has given new rights to citizens of member states to move freely across borders an...