Global Migration and the Rise of Populism

Dear Colleagues,

It is a shared opinion among scholars that the term populism, to which thousands of articles, books, and conferences are dedicated, has controversial theoretical foundations. The remarkable work of Gino Germani, Margaret Canovan, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and others has offered innovative perspectives and interpretations. However, their rigorous analytical approach is not reflected in political debates nor in the media, which have abandoned critical thinking in favour of following a homogeneous view that presents populism in a Manichean way—the bad populism against the good democratic mainstream—as a threat to democracy and a great risk for the future development of the European Union and global governance—whatever that means. In this black and white approach, the issue of migration—which is, in fact, an extremely complex issue, crossing economics, politics, countries, legal frames, human rights and philosophical questioning—has been exploited by the mainstream, mainly to denounce the exclusionary—or even racist—approach of the “populists” towards immigrants. While any concession to racist thought must be firmly condemned, as well as legally prosecuted with adequate tools, it is no longer scientifically acceptable to reject the question posed by the so-called populist forces around the issue of sovereignty, especially when the mainstream forces in power have not been able to give any concrete—political and human—response to migration, as the existence of the reprehensible parking places for refugees in Greece tragically demonstrates. The same overlap between sovereignty and populism is debatable since, in sovereignism, we recognize forces that are more attributable to the conservative tradition than to populism. During the summer of 2015, the so-called “long summer of migration”, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war zones, mainly from Syria, took the Balkan route (a land route that passes through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans), giving rise to one of the largest movements of migrants in Europe in recent years—a “migrant/refugee reception crisis” [1,2]. The expansion of far-right and right-populist groups across Europe benefited from anti-migration mobilizations [3]. During the European elections of 2014, one of the main issues raised by the media was the electoral performance of so-called “populist parties” [4,5]. Populism includes the rise of demagogy that promises “power to the people” in post-democracy times [6].

This Special Issue aims to deconstruct the same notion of populism, exploring its link with the notion of sovereignty, and invites papers that make a distinction between right-wing parties, traditional conservatives, republican right, neo-fascist, and the extreme right. For each one of these “sub-groups”, it is important to understand which type of narratives they propose in the frame of sovereignty against globalism, especially concerning new migratory flows. At the same time, we will look at the relationship between so-called left-wing populism and the mainstream “progressive” left regarding the migration narrative. This Special Issue also welcomes papers illustrating various political analyses of the migration issue that come from the traditional right or republican right, defined as populist today. In other words, the issue of migration has to be considered both with respect to the political discourse—framed through demagogical arguments and socioeconomic analysis, looking at the global trends in the re-organisation of global governance—and the transformations of work through technological changes.

References:

1. Rea, A., Martiniello; M., Mazzola, A.; Meuleman, B. The refugee reception crisis in Europe polarized opinions and mobilizations; Éditions de l’ Université de Bruxelles: Brussels, 2019.
2. Fouskas, T. (2019). Unravelling solidarity and hostility: Mobilizations concerning migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in anti-migrant times in Greece. In The Refugee Reception Crisis in Europe: Polarized Opinions and Mobilizations; Rea, A., Martiniello, M., Mazzola, A., and Meuleman, B., Eds.; Éditions de l’ Université de Bruxelles: Brussels, 2019, pp. 121–143.
3. Fielitz, M. The Changing Faces of Neo-Nazism. In Trouble on the Far Right; M. Fielitz and L. Laloire, Eds.; Verlag: Bielefeld, 2016, pp. 195–204.
4. Lazaridis, G.; Campani, G.; Benveniste, A. The Rise of the Far Right in Europe: Populist Shifts and ‘Othering’. Palgrave: London, 2016.
5. Lazaridis, G. and Campani, G. Understanding the populist shift: othering in a Europe in crisis; New York Routledge: London, 2017.
6. Campani, G. and Pajnik, M. Democracy, Post-democracy and the Populist Challenge. In Understanding the Populist Shift: Othering in a Europe in Crisis; G. Lazaridis, G. Campani., Eds; Routledge: London, 2017, pp. 179–196.

Prof. Dr. Giovanna Campani
Dr. Theodoros Fouskas
Guest Editors

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• migration
• populism
• sovereignty
• racism
• solidarity