Reaching Out to Close the Border: The Transnationalization of Anti-Immigration Movements in Europe (MAM)

About the project

This project is led by Kristian Berg Harpviken, PRIO, and is a collaboration between, PRIO, Department of Sociology and Human Geography and C-REX. The project period is January 2020 – December 2023.

Please visit the PRIO project page for detailed information on the progress of the project.

Immigration is seen as a major concern by many Europeans. Simultaneously, opposition to immigration – across the political spectrum – is the issue which most forcefully mobilizes politically. It is this Mobilization Against Migration (MAM) that gives our project its name.

It is a paradox that anti-immigration movements, whose key concern is opposing mobility across borders and who advocate isolationism, nationalism and cultural traditionalism, often work transnationally, with joint events, strategies and campaigns across borders and in multilateral forums.

MAM studies contemporary European anti-immigration movements, by focusing on

  • interaction (forms and consequences),
  • framing (political-ideological underpinnings), and
  • outcomes (on migration policies).

A comprehensive analytical state-of-the-art framing will be followed by a pilot study to trace transnational outcomes in Europe, five comprehensive studies of most different cases (Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, UK), and a major synthesizing comparison.

The main sources of data are internet (both to map interaction and gather documents), and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The multidisciplinary team draws from globally leading research environments on social movements, radicalization, conflict and migration.

A core ambition of the project is to inspire new projects on transnational anti-immigration mobilization, while also drawing up and generating interest in a new agenda on the contentious governance of migration.

Case studies of the anti-immigrant movement are conducted in Italy (led by Pietro Castelli Gattinara), Germany (led by Manès Weisskircher), Great Britain (led by Aleksandra Lewicki), Norway (led by Katrine Fangen), Portugal (led by Thais Franҫa) and Poland (led by Manès Weisskircher).

Funding

This project is funded by the Research Council of Norway

 

 

Published Sep. 10, 2021 11:11 AM - Last modified Sep. 10, 2021 11:23 AM