Ulrike M Vieten

Female narratives of ‘new’ citizens’ belonging(s) and identities in Europe: case studies from the Netherlands and Britain

Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individuals ‘longing just to be’, focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, who either immigrated to the respective countries or were born to immigrants, illustrate how the growing rigid integration and assimilative discourses in Europe contradict an individual anchoring in national and local communities. The narratives of women participating in these studies show multilayered angles of belonging presenting an alternative to the increasing strong argument for a fixed notion of positioning and national belonging. The female ‘new’ citizens in our study tell stories of individual choices, social mobility and a sense of multiple belonging in and across different communities.

‘Out in the blue of Europe’: modernist cosmopolitan identity and the deterritorialization of belonging

ABSTRACT Vieten attempts to intervene in the ongoing ideological attempt to present a particular (modernist) European culture as a founding myth for a European Union identity. Taking the recent debate on transnationalism as a point of departure, she uses some aspects of the life story of the Austrian British writer Hilde Spiel as a case study to discuss deterritorialized belonging, the impact of insecure citizenship and the meaning of a particular cosmopolitan subjectivity. The first part of the article will clarify the terms ‘citizenship’, ‘exile’, ‘diaspora’ and ‘belonging’, and how deterritorialization frames the reading of an individual cosmopolitan subjectivity. In the second part Spiels understanding of her cosmopolitan identity will be related to contemporary modernist European agendas. In the final part, while discussing some material taken from Spiels newspaper articles and autobiographical writings, her strategies for coping with shifting attachments to national cultures and the contradictions of diverse and confused national belonging will be illustrated.

Contemporary Far-Right Racist Populism in Europe

A spectre is haunting Europe. Not for the first time, right-wing racist movements are on the march across that continent, with parliamentary beachheads in a number of nations, as well, of course, as the possibly disintegrating European parliament. These troubling processes were under way when this special issue was planned in 2014, arising from a session, on right-wing racist populism, of the Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations (RC05) of the International Sociological Association at its congress in Yokohama. The session had been proposed in 2012, and already the signs were there that nationalist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic movements and political parties were on the rise, from the upsurge of Golden Dawn in economic crisis-ridden Greece, to the arrival of English Defence League (EDL) thugs on British streets. As yet then, Brexit was inconceivable, however, and indeed it failed to be conceived by the British elite until they were surprised by the 2016 referendum and the effectiveness of its antiimmigration campaign. The crisis of refugees fleeing from war in Syria and other devastation from the Arab Winter had not been imagined – at least not in the scale that eventuated, with its impact and reaction in Europe. We are currently confronted by all of these realities; can we make sociological sense of the bigger picture? The EDL, the mainstreaming of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) that claimed victory in the Brexit vote, the rehabilitation and popularity of the National Front in France, the advent of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD – which has, as we write, just won the second-largest party share of the vote in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election), the ‘protest’ phenomenon of Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident (PEGIDA) in Germany (and somewhat beyond), the continued interventions of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands and their gains in the national and European parliaments, the very close-run Austrian presidential election in 2016 (to be re-run in October) with far-right-wing populist Austrian Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer, gaining almost 50 per cent of the vote, in Sweden the rise in support for the far-right populist anti-immigration party the Swedish Democrats, and in Greece the popular and electoral surge of the aforementioned Golden Dawn: this is by no means a comprehensive listing, even for Europe. Nor is the growth of right-wing populist, nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-asylum seeker, anti-Muslim politics confined to Europe. Donald Trump’s phenomenal

European urban spaces in crisis

T he notion of crisis seems very much overloaded these days; the financial crisis in Europe post-2008 and ongoing social–political uprisings in different countries capture moments of ‘moralpanic cycles’ (Hall et al. 1978, 322) conveying mixed messages of conflicts, changes and challenges. Alongside particular national contexts we might notice mutually shared dynamics of urban spaces that bring to the fore some of the problematic and contradictory aspects of contemporary cosmopolitan complexities of the 21st century. On the background of the rise in extreme rightwing and neo-fascist parties, anti-Roma racism and xenophobic populist movements across different countries and regions, we should be alarmed about the current state of that same ‘cosmopolitan’ Europe. European cities, such as Athens, London or Berlin, for example, are associated with the European Union (EU) austerity and legitimacy crisis, social protests and the tensions that encompass difference, democracy and diversity in recent years. Since 2004, and in line with the initial political goal to create an enlarged economic area, the EU grants the right of free movement to its citizens within the territory of, currently, 28 member states. In effect, migration and social mobility as individually exercised ‘freedom rights’ (Grundfreiheiten) of EU citizens alter the social fabric in European nation-states, alias cities, rapidly. A recent study (EY 2014), conducted on behalf of the European Commission, DG JUSTICE, and looking more closely at ‘the governance of inclusion policies’ (EY 2014, 150) in various European cities (Barcelona, Dublin, Hamburg, Lille, Prague and Turin), points out that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis,

When Beliefs become Property: Liberal Legal Politics, Employee Resistance and Anti-Gay Christian Politics

This chapter analyses homophobic responses in two distinctive European contexts, Poland and Britain. It is based on a multi-method research project conducted as part of the ERC-funded ‘Living with Difference in Europe’ research programme. It adopts a social topographic approach to produce a cartography of homophobia: the analysis looks at the ways prejudices against lesbians and gay men are refracted through the lens of different national histories and socio-spatial relationships. Our findings show that homophobia is more frequently expressed in silent and subtle ways in Britain, whereas in Poland it remains more salient and blatant. We argue that, despite a transnational narrative of the idealisation of the ‘West’ as ‘homophobia-free’, homophobia still is present in both countries. The chapter demonstrates that we need to pay more attention to the different ways homophobia is expressed across Europe, looking more closely at specific national contexts as well as at the inter-connectivity of homophobia in a transnational age.

Far Right Populism and Women: The Normalisation of Gendered Anti-Muslim Racism and Gendered Culturalism in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT The paper approaches the rise of far right populism in Europe with a feminist lens and on the background of the discursively constructed sexist and racist features of the current moral panic. It is argued that we can follow up a continuum of normalised culturalist gendered discourses in Europe, and for some time, in the Netherlands in particular. The paper is organised by looking, first, at the place of gender in far right discourses and the role of women in far right-wing populist parties. Second, a feminist critique of processes of normalisation is presented, helping to clarify the term ‘culturalism’. To illustrate the dynamics of gendered culturalism and the way it impacts the everyday life of Muslim women in the Netherlands, some interview sequences of an empirical study with female Dutch-Moroccan citizens are discussed. The experiences of the women illustrate how far right populist perspectives and prejudices entered their daily lives, and which counter strategies, the women used to resist intimidation.

The New Year’s 2015/2016 Public Sexual Violence Debate in Germany: Media Discourse, Gendered Anti-Muslim Racism and Criminal Law

The New Year’s Eve 2015/2016 sexual attacks on non-migrant women in German public spaces near the main train stations in Cologne and Hamburg, but also in Stuttgart, have triggered far-right populist debates on the ‘integration and gender equality skills’ of new immigrants and North African male refugees, in Germany and elsewhere. This chapter discusses some of the national and international media coverage of the New Years Eve 2015/2016 sexual attacks, and the political, legal and societal responses to it in the period January to July 2016. By this, it highlights institutional gendered anti-Muslim racism framing the perception of public sexual violence and moral panic.

Unpacking Prejudice: Narratives of Homophobia in Cross-National Context

This chapter analyses homophobic responses in two distinctive European contexts, Poland and Britain. It is based on a multi-method research project conducted as part of the ERC-funded ‘Living with Difference in Europe’ research programme. It adopts a social topographic approach to produce a cartography of homophobia: the analysis looks at the ways prejudices against lesbians and gay men are refracted through the lens of different national histories and socio-spatial relationships. Our findings show that homophobia is more frequently expressed in silent and subtle ways in Britain, whereas in Poland it remains more salient and blatant. We argue that, despite a transnational narrative of the idealisation of the ‘West’ as ‘homophobia-free’, homophobia still is present in both countries. The chapter demonstrates that we need to pay more attention to the different ways homophobia is expressed across Europe, looking more closely at specific national contexts as well as at the inter-connectivity of homophobia in a transnational age.

Everyday Active Citizenship the Balkan Way: Local Civil Society and the Practice of ‘Bridge Building’ in Two Post-Yugoslav Cities

Active citizenship in the post-war Western Balkans has traditionally been studied in the context of either Western-style (and usually foreign-funded) Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) or, more recently, protest movements. This chapter highlights a wider range of betterand lesser-known forms of civil society in the contemporary postYugoslav space. It shows how interest associations, student unions, religious groups and online communities can all contribute to vibrant civil society, even if their work seems distant from the post-war area’s current problems. This civil society, the chapter argues, creates an environment in which the people of the western Balkans can enact their citizenship and, little by little, ‘build bridges’, across ethnic lines and beyond.

When I Land in Islamabad I Feel Home and When I Land in Heathrow I Feel Home

According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) ‘de-territorialization’ is followed by a moment of re-territorialization. This moment, however, has to be regarded as a continuing educational process that becomes a different spatial site of social practices. It is argued in this chapter that regional, local as well as global identification override national and mono-ethno cultural identities, while shaping particular notions of gendered belonging and creating specific diasporic practices. Based on a sample of interviews with professional and academic South Asian British citizens in London, in Leicester, and in a number of Northern English cities gendered and generational patterns in terms of local diasporic identities are explored. Apart from multiple cultural belonging, foremost, territorial bonds and notions of group loyalty collapse at a point where temporary migration and settlement alternate in individual biographies.