Abstract
This chapter investigates alter-European activists’ complicated relationship with “Europe”. The chapter starts by demonstrating that conflicting understandings of EU-Europe already feature in previous pan-European mobilisations, from the European Social Forums in the early 2000s to the anti-austerity mobilisations in the 2010s. Similar to these preceding movements, contemporary transnational activists have a variety of problems with (EU-)Europe, which remains, at times, curiously absent from their campaigns. Drawing on original ethnographic data gathered in collaboration with the transnational civil society network European Alternatives in the aftermath of the UK’s EU referendum in 2016, the chapter moves on to discuss six different alter-European actors’ perspectives on Europe: (1) migrant citizens, (2) feminists, (3) greens and socialists, (4) Afro-Europeans and de-colonial activists, (5) Central and Eastern European activists and (6) Mediterranean activists. As their different perspectives and problems with (EU-)Europe illustrate, these contemporary transnational mobilisations are better understood as alter- rather than pro-European. More important than a common idea of Europe, here, is the convergence of different struggles in a common quest for political agency beyond borders.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
This ESRC-funded research project was conducted in collaboration with European Alternatives—a transnational network of more than 1000 individual members, grassroots activists and civil society organisations, with whom I already worked as an activist before entering the field as an engaged activist ethnographer, using participant observation, interviews and the analysis of key alternative media texts as primary methods of data collection. This chapter is an edited version of a chapter that has previously appeared in this context (see Scharenberg 2021).
- 2.
While Pleyers identifies “four cultures of activism across progressive activism in Europe” here (2015, p. 202, emphasis added), referring to activists’ different strategies and tactics, I prefer to focus on the different struggles present in alter-European activist networks in order to indicate that many of these actors’ actions connect with wider and longer-term issues and histories of struggle that are not necessarily born directly out of their engagement with “Europe”.
Reference Lists
Arruzza, C., Bhattacharya, T., & Fraser, N. (2019). Feminism for the 99 Percent: A Manifesto. Verso.
Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. Sage.
Braidotti, R. (2015). European Nomadic Identity. In P. Gielen (Ed.), No Culture, No Europe: On the Foundation of Politics (pp. 97–113). Valiz.
Büllesbach, D., Cillero, M., & Stolz, L. (Eds.). (2017). Shifting Baselines of Europe: New Perspectives Beyond Neoliberalism and Nationalism. Transcript.
Chambers, I. (2008). Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity. Duke University Press.
de Sousa Santos, B. (2006). The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond. Zed Books.
Deel, S., & Murray-Leach, T. (2015). Political Blockage and the Absence of Europe: Subterranean Politics in London. In M. Kaldor & S. Selchow (Eds.), Subterranean Politics in Europe (pp. 168–199). Palgrave Macmillan.
della Porta, D. (2005). Multiple Belongings, Tolerant Identities, and the Construction of ‘Another Politics’: Between the European Social Forum and the Local Social Fora. In D. Della Porta & S. G. Tarrow (Eds.), Transnational Protest and Global Activism (pp. 175–202). Rowman & Littlefield.
della Porta, D., & Caiani, M. (2009). Social Movements and Europeanization. Oxford University Press.
Douzinas, C. (2017). Syriza in Power: Reflections of an Accidental Politician. Polity.
El-Tayeb, F. (2011). European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. University of Minnesota Press.
European Alternatives. (2017a). ‘On the road to Rome’, European Alternatives Blog, 21 February. Available at: https://euroalter.com/on-the-road-to-rome/.
European Alternatives. (2017b). TRANSEUROPA Festival: Convergent Spaces (Final movie 2017)‚ 5 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQrn0X5q9A.
Flesher Fominaya, C. (2010). Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates. Sociology Compass, 4(6), 393–404.
Flesher Fominaya, C., & Cox, L. (Eds.). (2013). Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
GNDE, G. N. D. for E. (2019). The Green New Deal for Europe—Blueprint for Europe’s Just Transition (Edition II).
Hall, S. (1991). ‘Europe’s Other Self’, Marxism Today, August, pp. 18–19. Available at: http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/91_08_18.pdf.
Hall, S. (1992). The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds.), Formations of Modernity: Vol. Understanding Modern Societies: An Introduction (pp. 184–227). Polity.
Hall, S. (2002). ‘In But Not of Europe’: Europe and Its Myths. Soundings, 22, 57–69.
Juris, J. S. (2008). Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization. Duke University Press.
Kaldor, M. (2003). Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Polity.
Kaldor, M., & Selchow, S. (Eds.). (2015). Subterranean Politics in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan.
Klein, N. (2019). On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. Allen Lane.
Lahusen, C. (2004). Joining the Cocktail Circuit: Social Movement Organizations at the European Union. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 9(1), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.9.1.l06w4m11367600w4.
Mattoni, A. (2012). Media Practices and Protest Politics: How Precarious Workers Mobilise. Ashgate.
McNevin, A. (2011). Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political. Columbia University Press.
Pianta, M., & Gerbaudo, P. (2015). In Search of European Alternatives: Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe. In M. Kaldor & S. Selchow (Eds.), Subterranean Politics in Europe (pp. 31–59). Palgrave Macmillan.
Pitts, J. (2019). Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. Allen Lane.
Pleyers, G. (2015). Alter-Europe: Progressive Activists and Europe. In M. Kaldor & S. Selchow (Eds.), Subterranean Politics in Europe (pp. 200–230). Palgrave Macmillan.
Sassatelli, M. (2002). Imagined Europe: The Shaping of a European Cultural Identity Through EU Cultural Policy. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(4), 435–451.
Scharenberg, A. (2021). Transeuropa: Agency Beyond Borders in Alter-European Activist Networks [PhD thesis]. Goldsmiths, University of London. Available at: https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00030352.
Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995). The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 36(3), 409–440.
Solera, G. (2017). Citizen Activism and Mediterranean Identity: Beyond Eurocentrism. Springer International Publishing.
Touraine, A. (1988). Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society. University of Minnesota Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Scharenberg, A. (2021). Alter- Not Pro-European: The Question of Europe in Transnational Activist Networks. In: Blokker, P. (eds) Imagining Europe . Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81368-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81369-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)