After the European Union’s (EU) Eastern Enlargement in 2004-2007, most Western and Northern European countries’ labour markets became open for migrants from the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The scale of this intra-European migration, though smaller than migration from outside the EU, is nevertheless very significant: for example in 2016, out of the 3.3 million people who migrated to an EU country 1.3 where citizens of another member state. Despite this, relatively little attention is given to study the political dynamics of these émigré communities.
At the time of the Enlargement, many policymakers and pundits believed, as did numerous migration researchers that CEE migrants would “socialize” to the values and standards of consolidated liberal democracies, and “remit democracy home”. The rise of populism and democratic backsliding across Europe, especially CEE, question this notion. Some existing evidence shows that émigré communities are actually supporting far right and populist politicians more than voters in their home countries are.
The DIASPOlitic project asks if, how, and to what extent EU-diasporas contribute to democratic backsliding and the political fragmentation of Europe. We will gather data on EU-diasporas political views, as expressed through voting in national elections in origin states, and conduct ethnographic research among select groups (i.e. most radical or most liberal). We also want to know what explains the right-wing/populist shift in some migration groups – and how host countries can improve their integration policies to mitigate it.
Combining quantitative and qualitative research, DIASPOlitic will contribute to the understanding of EU-diasporas as transnational actors and social collectives, positioned in between host and sending societies and states, and other migrant communities, within a European transnational political space; affecting core understandings of European values, democracy and Europe itself.
Project Team
Dr Kacper Szulecki – researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, political sociologist specializing in transnational and European politics. Dr rer soc. in the Social Sciences (2012, Konstanz), M.Sc. in political science (2008, VU Amsterdam).
Dr Marta Bivand Erdal – research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, human geographer specializing in migration studies. Ph.D. in Human Geography (2012, Oslo), M.A. in Human Geography (2006, Oslo), B.A. in Geography (2002, Uni College London).
Dr Benjamin Stanley – assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland. Political scientist specializing in comparative European politics and populism studies. Ph.D. in Government (2010, Essex), M.A. in European Politics (2005, Essex) and International Studies (2001, Durham), B.A. in English Literature (2000, Warwick).
News
Our team at DIASPOlitic - Understanding the Political Dynamics of Émigré Communities in an Era of European Democratic Backsliding – is conducting interviews with Polish and Romanian migrants in Norway and Spain.
Meet our team:
Anatolie Coșciug is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. His doctoral research on transnational trade with second-hand goods imported from Western Europe to Romania by Romanian migrants is supervised by Thomas Faist (University of Bielefeld) and Alejandro Portes (Princeton University). He is a member of the Sociology Department at the University of Sibiu and executive director of the Romanian Center for Comparative Migration Studies at the UBB University in Cluj. In DIASPOlitic he conducts interviews with Romanian migrants in Oslo.
Angelina Kussy is an anthropologist and ethnographer. She holds a Master of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology degree from the University of Warsaw. Recipient of the Catalan's government grant (FI AGAUR) to write doctoral thesis on transnational social protection of Romanian migrants in Spain under the program of Social and Cultural Anthropology department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Collaborator in a research project on care and gender justice in the Department of Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Work at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Interested in social reproduction theory, critical studies on labor and care, intra-European migration from East to West, transnational social protection, inequalities, and social and ecological justice. In DIASPOlitic she conducts interviews with Polish migrants in Barcelona.
Gabriella Mikiewicz is a specialist in intercultural and research communications in migration contexts. She holds a master’s degree in the Erasmus Mundus programme, Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR). She wrote her Master's thesis on the topic of Eritrean transnational diasporas in 2019. Gabriella is currently based in Copenhagen where she is working as a freelancer on several strategic communications and research projects. She is interested in topics such as migration, integration, diaspora studies, and transnationalism. In DIASPOlitic she conducts interviews with Polish migrants in Oslo.
Corina Tulbure is a Romanian freelance journalist based in Barcelona. She has written stories of displacement and migration in Spain and other countries (Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Tunisia, Germany) and about frozen conflicts (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Kosovo). Tulbure holds a Ph.D. from the University of Barcelona in the field of Discourse Analysis. She is co-author of the volume “El último europeo” [The last European] (Oveja roja, Madrid, 2014) and has worked with organizations in Barcelona which speak against the situation of undocumented migrants in Spain and their lack of access to public services. She has also collaborated with the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) regarding the access of migrants to healthcare in Spain. Now, she is conducting research work about the internal bordering process in the city of Barcelona which affects “illegalized” people. She is a member of the OACU (Anthropology Observatory of Urban Conflict) Research Group of the University of Barcelona. In DIASPOlitic she conducts interviews with Romanian migrants in Barcelona.
