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Sisp Conference 2019

Sections and Panels

Section 6 - Partecipazione e movimenti sociali (Participation and Social Movements)

Managers: Massimiliano Andretta (massimiliano.andretta@unipi.it), Gianni Piazza (giannipiazza@tiscali.it)

Read Section abstractThe section promotes panels for the study of the transformations of political participation and social movements (new actors, organizations and strategies) in a phase characterized by the financial and economic crisis and the profound changes in the political and social context (the ongoing process of European integration and globalization, digitalization etc.). The economic crisis accelerates the processes of de-democratization at the national level and the detachment of people from traditional party politics, eroding the popular sovereignty and the socio-political foundations for conventional participation and decision-making processes in the mass liberal democracies. If reflections on post democracy are partly confirmed by empirical evidence, the predictions of an inevitable decline of civic engagement are refuted. In fact, political participation has found new forms of expression and channeling that have revitalized and transformed both the more traditional forms of participation and the more unconventional forms emerged in the sixties-seventies, especially those used by young people and women. Nevertheless, also new forms of non-progressive movements have (re) emerged (as the many right wing populist movements and extremist groups in several European countries as well as at the EU level), which raise the controversial question for scholars about the side effects of
‘bad social capital’ and how to study them. Waves of mobilizations have developed in recent years, both in Western countries (e.g. anti-austerity movements) and in other contexts (e.g. the Arab Spring), showing many elements that were already present in the processes of transnational mobilization of the past (e.g. the global justice movement). A new paradigm of collective action seems to gradually emerge with new forms of communication, multiple identities, different forms of coordination and resource mobilization, alternative practices and experimental democracy inside
social movements. In this context, an electoral democracy limited to a ritual of request for electoral consent to delegate the “professional politicians” and/or the so-called “technical” people to manage resources and problems of the state is largely inadequate. The issue of a participatory democracy emerges strongly, especially in times of economic crisis, with the growing importance of the movements that claims to be the true ‘representative’ of citizens’ demands. Indeed, in a period of socio-economic and political crisis, left-wing political-institutional actors are absent or too weak
and fragmented, and a growing space is left to the mobilizations and protests promoted by populist movements and parties. On the other hand, new urban and territorial movements have emerged, generating alternative discourses, performing new practices, and rethinking new types of relationship with the local state in seeking to answer social demands that neither the market nor the state have responded. In particular, these new mobilizations, claiming the “right to the city” and the right to the “commons”, oppose the continuous commodification of both urban and rural areas, the devastation of the territories and the dismantling of the welfare state system. To investigate not only
the nature of the new forms of “resilience” and “resistance” practices, but also how they reflect the social, cultural and political transformations (e.g. their impact on the overall political, and often party systems) becomes therefore essential. Moreover, mobilizations against or in solidarity with migrants and on migration policies occur also together with the protests and struggles of resident migrants for their labor and life conditions. The section hosts panels addressing these issues, starting from empirical research that reflect the adequacy of the theoretical and methodological tools until now used to analyze, understand and explain these processes. Panels with a comparative
approach and giving a special attention to methodology will be welcome. At the same time, this section aims to host panels with the goal of discussing the relationship between social movements and traditional political actors (i.e. political parties, unions, associations), left wing and right wing social movements, as well as the role of digital technologies in local, national and transnational mobilizations and the outputs of social movements.

Thursday 12th September 2019
  Studium 6 - Aula 2-B1 10.15-12.00
  Donato Valli - Aula 9 10.15-12.00
  Sperimentale Tabacchi - Aula SP7 10.15-12.00
  Studium 6 - Aula 2-B1 13.15-15.00
  Studium 6 - Aula 4-C2 13.15-15.00
  Sperimentale Tabacchi - Aula SP7 13.15-15.00
  Donato Valli - Aula 9 13.15-15.00
Friday 13th September 2019
  Studium 6 - Aula 4-C2 09.00-10.45
  Studium 6 - Aula 3-B2/B3 09.00-10.45
  Studium 6 - Aula 4-C2 11.15-13.00
  Studium 6 - Aula 3-B2/B3 11.15-13.00
  Studium 6 - Aula 4-C2 14.00-15.45
  Sperimentale Tabacchi - Aula SP1 14.00-15.45
  Donato Valli - Aula 1-2 14.00-15.45

 

Panel 6.1 The Cultural side of Populism: Politics, Emotions, Subcultures and Music in populist times


The last fifteen years have seen the marked growth of populist movements across Europe, which pose a serious threat to the stability of the European Union. By scapegoating ethnic minorities and reclaiming the restoration of ill-defined forms of popular and national sovereignty, populists are calling into question some of the EU’s founding principles. Populism has been the subject of many studies; however, most have concentrated on the political and economic dimensions of populism and overlook or downplay the important dimension of culture (Dunkel 2018). Significantly, practically no studies consider the role of popular culture in the formation and dissemination of populist ideologies. It is all the more surprising that these studies have neglected the importance of music in the increasing success of populist movements, despite the fact that music is ubiquitous and arguably one of Europe’s largest cultural outputs (Dunkel et al. 2018). Music has been uniquely tied to concepts of ethnicity, nationality, (collective) identity, self-expression, spatial belonging, and authenticity – ideas that populists emphasize in their rhetoric.
Music has always been an effective medium for the propagation of extreme-right ideologies (e.g. neo-Nazi subcultures), as well as left wing identities. It is also worth noticing the importance of music for progressive politics against the far right (e.g. Rock against racism in the UK or the ‘red wedge’). Music has also strongly been strongly associated with left-wing populism and populist messages, as the politics of Latin America above all teaches us. Music and other cultural practices do not only represent concepts like populism; as everyday practices, they have the power to mainstream such concepts as integral parts of a seemingly self-evident cultural reality.
This is linked to another significant lacuna in the analysis of populism thus far: emotion. Scholars have only recently brought emotions back into the analysis of social and political movements, power relations and institutions (Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta 2001; Holmes, 2004; Ost, 2004; Marcus, 2002; Berezin, 2002), yet it is precisely on ‘mobilizing’ emotions that populist actors and leaders concentrate. As has been recently pointed out, populism can be understood as ‘a performance of crisis’ (Paxton 2018). Explanations for rising support for populist parties have long pointed to objective, systemic crisis conditions that produce new grievances to which mainstream political actors are unable to respond, leaving the way clear for non-mainstream, new, populist actors (e.g. Bell, 1964; Lipset, 1960; Laclau, 2005; Ramet, 1999). Other scholars have stressed the political, economic and cultural sides of the crisis – whether a crisis of political representation, of economic deprivation or of cultural backlash (Kriesi, 2017). Rather than being a reaction to a pre-existing crisis, according to Moffitt (2015) and following a constructionist approach, populist political actors would construct specific failures that resonate with popular experience, and elevate them to the level of a perceived ‘crisis’.

In summary, over the last few years, a number of studies have dealt with the recent rise of European populism in comparative perspectives (Akkerman 2011; Wodak et al. 2013; Rooduijn 2014; Herkman 2015; Akkerman et al. 2016; Aalberg et al. 2017; Engesser et al. 2017). None of these studies, however, have investigated culture and music as significant parts of this development, despite the fact that contemporary populist movements increasingly draw on the affective power of culture (such as music, subcultures, etc.) and its potential to shape political identities as well as the narratives that sustain them (Duncombe and Bleiker 2015; Hindrichs 2018; Dunkel 2018). Ostiguy (2018) suggests that populism should be understood as a style, which is performed in order to create new ways of “relating with peoples” by exploiting “ways of dressing, accent, levels of languages, gestures, tastes” that are displayed publicly. In this sense, the influence of popular music and culture on the consolidation of the “populist zeitgeist” may not limit to the dissemination of “populist messages”, and may extend to the (re)production of lexicon, aesthetics and “Peoples” that are ready to be exploited by populist entrepreneurs.

We may even speculate over the potential of popular music for mainstreaming, on the one side, the perceptions of social and political exclusion and lack of representation of “ordinary citizens”, and, on the other side, specific “populist diagnoses” (such as the denounce of “economic and political elites” dominating the society, the restoration of “sovereignty” to cope with the perils of post-democracy, or anti-immigration claims) for addressing those problems. This, in turn, could alternatively reinforce some forms of political detachments and apathy, or inspire (implicitly or explicitly) new forms of civic, social and political engagement.

This panel calls for contributions addressing these neglected topics: cultural aspects and emotions in the study of politics and particularly in the study of populism from an interdisciplinary perspective (political science and political sociology, together with cultural and media studies and musicology) and from a standpoint of methodological pluralism. We welcome theoretical contributions focusing on: i. politics (populism) and emotions, ii. socio –cultural approaches to populism, iii. culture and politics, iv. the relation between populist ‘cultural’ productions and practices and their communication via the media. We also welcome contributions that will explore in more depth the relation between populism and culture(s), including music and political ‘subcultures’, possibly with empirical evidence drawn from different case studies in Europe and beyond, both past and present. The broad goal of the panel is to set a critical discussion of potential future directions for ‘populism’ research.
6.1 The Cultural side of Populism: Politics, Emotions, Subcultures and Music in populist times

Chairs: Manuela Caiani, Enrico Padoan

Discussants: Tiago Carvalho

Cultural and visual aspects of populism: the cases of Spain and Catalonia
Paolo Cossarini
AbstractCatalan separatism has lately caught much attention from scholars within nationalism studies. However, only little has been written about Catalan politics through the lens of populism. This paper focuses on this case drawing on theories of populism and highlighting the mobilization repertoire political actors have been developing in the run up to, and immediate aftermath of the 2017 referendum of independence. This paper’s contribution is threefold. First, through a discourse and visual analyses it aims to describe the narratives on the ground. Paying special attention to the ostensive use of flags, the anthem, slogans and mottos used in protests and marches, this paper highlights the process of identity formation in Catalonia, as well as in broader Spain. Second, it explores the extent to which all political parties have adopted a populist discourse and style in order to gain electoral support. Third, from a theoretical point of view this paper argues that a focus on emotions is a fruitful perspective for the study of Catalan (and broader Spanish) politics. Specifically, it maintains that different kinds of emotional vectors produce a conflation of key ideas of nationalism and populism in the Catalan/Spanish clash, trivialising the democratic grammar in the public debates.

Left-wing populism, pop culture and music: the case of Podemos
Loris Caruso
AbstractAs it is well known, at the moment of its emergence Podemos considered its political discourse as a transversal message that should be able to reach the majority of society, beyond the traditional borders of the left. Starting from the third year of its existence, when its affirmation in the Spanish political system was consolidated and the party was discussing how to stabilize without distorting itself, Podemos launched an internal debate about the type of music that must accompany the official events. It was a debate regarding the cultural profile of the party. From the beginning the party has always used pop and commercial music in its political events. However, in 2016 a reflection began on the fact that the political generation of Podemos leaders does not have "its own music", hence the party cannot count on music as a source of collective identity. Since that moment on, Podemos’ political events began to be joined by songs closer to the tradition of the left, such as "Todo Cambia" or "El pueblo unido". It was the prelude, perhaps, of the post-populist turn of the party.

The long term evolution of Far Right music in Italy and Germany. A converging pattern towards populist cultural mobilization?
Giorgia Bulli
AbstractThe importance of music in the Far Right political culture is acknowledged in recent academic and non-academic contributions in Italy (Marchi 1997) and Germany (Dornbusch and Raabe 2012, Botsch, Raabe, Schulze, 2019). Patterns of development of music in the different European contexts reflect the ideological prevailing dimension of the role of this cultural expression in the Far Right contexts (Dyck 2016). Labels such as “White power music” “Rechtsrock”, “Reichsrock” all point to variable trajectories in the recruitment and socialization functions of the extreme right music. In Italy, the concept of “rock identitario” designates the most successful form of music production by well-known bands directly linked to political movements, such as the music band ZetaZero Alfa, whose origin mixes up with the developing of the organization CasaPound Italia. However, the identitarian rock is only the arrival point of a long tradition of music development in the Italian Far Right. In Germany, recent investigations on the “Rechtsrock” phenomenon highlight the intense internationalization of networks of far right movements that mostly mobilize on the cultural manifestations of the extreme right ideology. Music’s capacity of recruiting new members and sympathizers amongst the young people in the far right environment is particularly evident in the German case, both at the national and at the local level. The paper will highlight how - not differently from other political languages - changes in the music production both reflect and go along with the transformation of the Italian and German Far Right from an organizational, political culture and strategic perspective.

Visual (Dis)information: An Analysis of Images Posted by the British National Party
Ofra Klein
AbstractFar-right actors are often related to the creation and dissemination of disinformation. Previous research on disinformation has largely overlooked the role of political parties in creating or distributing disinformation. This study analyzes information manipulation in images posted over a year on the page of the British National Party. Despite their growing importance, images are often overlooked in research on political (online) mobilization. For this study, close to 400 images were manually coded using the forms of information manipulation, as identified by Wardle and Derakhshan (2017). The findings show that outright lies are rare. However, most images do contain information that is presented in a misleading way. Satirical images often make fun of politicians’ inabilities, whereas exaggerations are mainly used to describe the subordinated positions of the “white British”, and to exaggerate the danger or presence of foreigners in the country. Fabrications were exclusively populist conspiracy theories that feared that “the system” had a purposeful plan to install Sharia law in Britain, or “ethnically cleanse” the British population for the sake of diversity. Factual posts often provide information or updates about the party. The findings demonstrate that posts containing disinformation generally attract more attention, and more negative emotional responses than posts that convey information in a factual manner. Reference: Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking. Brussels: Council of Europe report, DGI, 9.

Visual Analysis and Populism: The Case of Verona
Angela Adami
AbstractThe following article main contribution falls within the domain of methodology as it draws attention on the strength of visual analysis within the field of study of populism. The work focuses on the visual and discursive analysis of the posters published in occasion of two events – a concert in memory of Jan Palash and the World Congress of Families – organized in Verona in the early months of 2019 by a set of cultural organizations linked to the right and the radical right and to conservative catholic stances. Within the scope of this analysis, the actors analysed are cultural organizations operating at the edge of the political sphere and holding different connections to it. The use of visual analysis is geared at bringing agencies and ambivalences to the fore and allows to uncover (1) the communicative camouflage of these cultural organizations who spread radical right and catholic conservative messages, traditionally marked by highly recognizable communication features and symbols, in a more neutral and positive way; (2) the deployment of some populistic elements in their communication strategy, such as the reference to welfare chauvinism, to the current populist government as well as the identification of the ‘natural family’ as an homogenizing category associated with the good and moral side of society. While these features are per se not sufficient to define these cultural organzations as fully populistic actors, they are nonetheless important to underscore the role played in spreading a populist type of communication and in supporting the political agenda of populist leaders and parties.

 

Panel 6.2 Catholic mobilizations: religious movements in the public sphere (I)


Panel co-hosted by the standing groups “Participation and Social Movements” and “Religion and Politics”.

Chairs:
Avanza Martina, Senior Lecturer, University of Lausanne, CRAPUL martina.avanza@unil.ch
Alberta Giorgi, Assistant Professor, University of Bergamo alberta.giorgi@unibg.it

Discussant: Anna Lavizzari, Research Fellow at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, COSMOS anna.lavizzari@sns.it


Catholic mobilizations: religious movements in the public sphere

Starting in 2012-2013 in France against marriage equality, a wave of Catholic mobilizations rapidly spread all around Europe. Catholic organizations protested against the possible recognition (or the enforcement) of LGBT+ rights, and, later on, against the so-called ‘gender theory’. A few years later, this wave of mobilization is still in place and gained new fuel from the electoral and political success of the extreme right, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2018, for example, Hungary banned gender studies at colleges: this testifies for a renewed public legitimacy of religious discourse in the public and political spheres. Furthermore, the development of transnational networks facilitated the diffusion of mobilization resources and repertories of actions across countries. The 2019 World Congress of Families, organized by the International Organization for the Family to protect the ‘traditional’ family, will take place in Italy where the Minister of the family, a devoted Catholic, is openly anti-abortion.
This panel focuses on the Catholic mobilizations in Europe, to understand cross-country similarities and differences, internal organizations and claims between local actions and transnational networks, patterns of failures and successes, and alliances and opponents.
Conservative and reactionary mobilizations, very visible since 2012, tend to obscure progressive Catholics engaged, amongst others, in the Peace Movement or in the Refugees and Migrant solidarity movements but we would also like to include these groups to the analysis.

Theoretically grounded empirical papers are welcome on the following (but not exclusive) topics:
• Case studies and/or comparative analyses of Catholic mobilizations (conservative and progressive ones)
• Public and media discourse around Catholic mobilization
• Analysis of transnational networking
• Methodology papers on how to study these movements that pose specific challenges
• Papers addressing social movements theory: what these mobilizations can bring to SM theory, which is built on non-religious mostly progressive case studies?
• How to integrate religion in Social Movement Studies? Is there a Catholic specificity?
• Papers addressing the gendered agenda of these movements, but also their gendered organization.
6.2a Catholic mobilizations: religious movements in the public sphere - BETWEEN LEFT AND RIGHT

Chairs: Alberta Giorgi

Discussants: Martina Avanza

Social economy, local development, and Catholic ethics in Southern Europe: between moralizing capitalism and solidarity alternatives
Xabier Itçaina
AbstractWhile contemporary Catholic campaigns on issues related to family policy, educational policy and civilizational issues enjoy high visibility in the public sphere, this is not the case for socio-economic campaigns. Yet Catholic social thought continues to inspire conceptions of economic linkages and of local socio-economic configurations. These experiments have even undergone a silent process of renewal since the 2008 economic crisis. The hypothesis assumed in this paper is that the elective affinities existing between Catholic thought and economic approaches are to be numbered in the plural, and that this pluralism can be fully grasped only at the local scale. This paper (from Itçaina 2018) emphasizes the internal diversity of the various Catholic ethics. The Catholic entrepreneurial repertoire tends to oscillate between a straightforward discourse on the need to raise the moral standards of capitalism and a search for utopian alternatives to the market economy, with an infinity of nuances in between. The economic crisis has paradoxically given new visibility to this entrepreneurial repertoire, with Catholic discourse aiming to extract the socio assistance repertoire from its charitable dimension. Comparison will focus on the Spanish Basque Country and on the Italian province of Brescia, in Lombardy. Both territories have long been Catholic bastions, within industrialized regions, with high levels of regional social capital. Both have experienced, in different ways, a process of secularization, and both were affected by the 2008 economic crisis. The paper comprises four sections. The first addresses the theoretical debate about the contribution made by religion to local development. The second section compares narratives of the role played by the Catholic matrix in matters of local development in the Spanish Basque Country and in Brescia. The third section proposes a fieldwork-based typology of contemporary Catholic approaches to the economy. The final section reviews the individual career profiles of five Catholic entrepreneurs and activists, in order to refine at an individual scale what has been said about the role played by religious socialization in the shaping of economic ethics. Reference: Itçaina, X. (2018), Catholic mediations in Southern Europe: the invisible politics of religion, London and New York, Routledge Studies in Religion & Politics

“The sheltering experience at St Anthony’s church in Ventimiglia: challenging the borders between grassroot, catholic and political mobilizations”
Daniela Trucco
AbstractBetween May 13th 2016 and August 14th 2017, up to 13 thousands migrants have been hosted in the St Anthony catholic church situated in the popular neighbourhood of Gianchette in the town of Ventimiglia, situated at the southern French-Italian border. In the context of the so-called European migrations crisis, for 440 days the church basement, front and back yard, and the nave itself, were transformed in an emergency reception centre, firstly open to all migrants, then reserved to women, families, and minors aged 15 or less. At the initiative of the local bishop and priest, and with the coordination of the local Caritas association, the project called con-fine solidale (solidarity border) mobilized more than a hundred volunteers, functioned as an operational head quarter for NGOs, attracted media and political attention, and deeply overturned the entire neighbourhood. Based on an ethnographical research conducted within the shelter and its surrounding environment – including participant observation during the shelter’s daily activities and organizational meetings, as well as 15 in-deep interviews among its runners and volunteers, 8 more with public authorities and local representatives, and 10 among other shelters neighbours and opponents – this paper provides an in-deep case analysis on a “progressive” catholic mobilization. While presenting its main peculiarities, it focuses on the dynamics of cooperation and distinction with other migrants and refugees’ solidarity mobilizations in the area, challenging the traditional definitions of what is a grassroot, proximity-, religious- or political-based mobilization among migrants and refugees’ solidarity movements. The evolution in relationships with the so-called “no border” activists on the one hand and with professional NGO’s workers and the other hand, as well as the inner conflicts over the establishing of the shelter’s rules are eloquent at this extent. In a broader sense, and re-put in its context, this experience also challenges the boundaries between “pro” and “anti” migrants mobilizations – with neighbours mobilizing in solidarity acts (such as providing foods or cloths) while denouncing the annoyances related to the shelter’s activity and asking public authorities for its closing and/or transferring – and set a light on the ongoing transformations and growing cleavages in local catholic communities over the use and meanings attached to their “sacred” spaces and times. Essential bibliography Bassi M. (2014) « The Christian Support Networks for Immigrants in Palermo », Partecipazione e Conflitto, 7(1), 59-82. Marfleet Ph. (2011) « Understanding Sanctuary », Journal of Refugees Studies, 24(3), 440-455. Rabben L. (2016) « Sanctuary and Asylum: A Social and Political History », University of Washington Press. Trucco D. (2018) « Prendre en charge et mettre à l'écart. La ville, la frontière et le camp à Vintimille (2015-2017) » in Dubet F., Politiques des frontières, La Découverte, 145-160.

L'anticapitalismo nel discorso cattolico conservatore "anti-genere" (2006-2014): appropriazione culturale strategica o ibridazione politica?
Romain Carnac
AbstractMolti ricercatori (Brustier, 2014; Carnac, 2014; Garbagnoli e Prearo, 2017; Kuhar e Paternotte, 2017) hanno notato che i repertori d'azione, gli stili, gli slogan, i simboli e le figure storiche dei movimenti sociali di sinistra sono stati ripresi dal movimento cattolico conservatore impegnato nella "controverse du genre" degli anni '90 in Francia. Lo studio dei discorsi "anti-genere" che si sono ampiamente diffusi in ambito pubblico durante le polemiche scolastiche sui curricula di biologia nelle scuole superiori (2011) e sulle misure per combattere gli stereotipi di genere e la violenza nella scuola elemetare (2013-2014) e, naturalmente, il dibattito sulla legge "Mariage pour Tous" che permette il matrimonio alle coppie omosessuali (2012-2013), rivela che questa presenza di riferimenti tradizionalmente collocati a sinistra nello spettro politico non si limita alla forma, ma riguarda anche la sostanza del discorso. Sulla base dell'analisi sistematica di un ampio corpus di oltre 180 testi pubblicati tra il 2006 e il 2014 (libri, articoli di stampa, discorsi, post di blog), ci proponiamo in questa communicazione di dimostrare che il discorso dei movimenti cattolici conservatori impegnati nella lotta contro la "teoria di genere" tende ad inquadrarla come una lotta contro gli eccessi del capitalismo - o addirittura contro il capitalismo in generale. Questa struttura dominante (Benford e Snow, 1992) fa leva sui capisaldi dei discorsi della sinistra radicale e di movimenti alterglobal: deplorando le tendenze all'"individualismo", al "consumismo" e alla "mercificazione" che caratterizzano l'"ultraliberismo"; opposizione dell'"ecologia" alla "predazione"; difesa dei più deboli contro il regno della "legge del più forte"; denuncia delle "lobby" che spingono per la "deregolamentazione" che minaccia gli equilibri sociali, etc. Questo discorso risuona con alcuni elementi della dottrina sociale della Chiesa, quelli incentrati sulla critica dell liberalismo e l'economia di mercato, che si affermano dalla fine del XIX secolo, e che oggi occupano un posto importante nel discorso magisteriale (soprattutto dopo l'elezione al Pontificato di Bergoglio nel 2013). Tuttavia, questo discorso è lontano dalle posizioni difese dai partiti politici con cui il movimento cattolico "anti-gender" ha creato legami di alleanza, promozione o cooptazione. Come comprendere questa integrazione di elementi del discorso anticapitalista? La spiegazione strategica suggerita da Kováts e Petó (2017) sembra la più ovvia: il desiderio di sedurre un pubblico più ampio e di "licenziare tutti i boschi" nell'offensiva ideologica contro la "teoria di genere" spiegherebbe questa forma di amalgama argomentativa. L'integrazione di elementi del discorso anticapitalista si realizza il più delle volte sotto forma di "appropriazione culturale", in modo molto superficiale e strumentale. Tuttavia, alcune delle interviste con attivisti e autori dei testi del corpus mostrano che alcuni dei cattolici mobilitati sembrano investire più profondamente in queste tradizioni di sinistra radicale per realizzare un "bricolage" politico che li mescola con posizioni ultra-conservatrici; ciò che è in gioco qui è sia l'immagine di sé che l'immagine pubblica. Benford, R. D. & Snow, D. A. (1992). Master Frames and Cycles of Protest. In A. Morris and C. M. Mueller (eds.), Frontiers of Social Movement Theory (pp. 135-155). New Heaven: Yale University Press. Brustier, G. (2014). Le Mai 68 conservateur. Que restera-il de la Manif pour tous ?. Paris: Cerf. Carnac, R. (2014). L'Église catholique contre 'la théorie du genre'. Construction d'un objet poémique dans le débat public français contemporain. Synergies Italie, n°10, 125-143. Garbagnoli, S. & Prearo, M. (2017), La Croisade anti-genre, du Vatican au Mariage pour Tous. Paris: Textuel Kováts, E. & Petó, A. (2017). Anti-Gender Discourse in Hungary: A Discourse Without a Movement ? In Kuhar, R. & Paternotte, D. (Eds). Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality (pp.117-131). London: Rowman & Littlefield international Kuhar, R. & Paternotte, D. (Eds) (2017). Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality. London: Rowman & Littlefield international.

Integral Ecology and Alterfeminism : New Hat for Old Moons.
Magali Della Sudda
AbstractIntegral Ecology : New Hat for Old Moons. In 2012-2013, France has seen strong protests against Same-sex Marriage. Beside the Manif Pour Tous association, many women's groups emerged to claim their opposition to the destruction of natural family. Some of them claim their Catholicism and set up editorial activities to set bridges between ecology and Christianism. Same-Sex marriage and gender equality threaten family and sexual identities. Since the 80's, the Catholic Church has sharpened its opposition to liberalism and to reproductive rights. Theological arguments are no longer accurate in secular societies, as the French one. While some groups of the Right try to rebuilt conservatism with the old-time rhetoric, youngsters reframe conservatism by including the necessity of ecology. Against Liberalism and Political ecology, they call for Christian Integral ecology as cast in the Encyclical "Laudato Sì" of Pope Francis. "Since everything is closely interrelated, and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis, I suggest that we now consider some elements of an integral ecology, one which clearly respects its human and social dimensions" (Laudato Sì, 137, May 24th 2015). Few month before the publication of the Encyclical, a group of students who took part in demos against the Same-Sex Marriage founded a magazine. Limite magazine provides an extended range of views on contemporary issues driven by ecology. They refer to French thinkers of ecology such as Jacques Ellul or Bernard Charbonneau, but also to Ivan Illich anarchist views on technic, gender roles, biopower or education. Among them, Marianne Durano, uses integral ecology to reclaim an alterfeminism. She calls for a new feminism, "integral feminism". She does not contest Second wave feminism, though she uses an ecological rhetoric to oppose contemporary liberal feminism. "Feminism is integral", she explains, "because we believe that we must completely and radically transform the values of our capitalist, technocratic and competitive society, so that women can find their place there without having to deny themselves to become self-made men like others." (Le Figaro, 20/10/2017). To which extent this new frame allows encounters between radical ecology and Christian ecology? How this rhetoric shapes ordinary practices and conservative eco-feminism? This paper shows how ecological rhetoric defines a political subject distinct from liberal, intersectional or queer feminist politics. It focuses on women self-help and autonomy ranging from reproductive issues to women's career. This reflection is based on observations (two meetings), interviews, informal conversations and on-line analysis (website, Facebook) realized between 2014 and 2018. This material is completed by the extensive analysis of Marianne Durano's publications, interviews and related articles published in Limite.

 

Panel 6.2 Catholic mobilizations: religious movements in the public sphere (II)


Panel co-hosted by the standing groups “Participation and Social Movements” and “Religion and Politics”.

Chairs:
Avanza Martina, Senior Lecturer, University of Lausanne, CRAPUL martina.avanza@unil.ch
Alberta Giorgi, Assistant Professor, University of Bergamo alberta.giorgi@unibg.it

Discussant: Anna Lavizzari, Research Fellow at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, COSMOS anna.lavizzari@sns.it


Catholic mobilizations: religious movements in the public sphere

Starting in 2012-2013 in France against marriage equality, a wave of Catholic mobilizations rapidly spread all around Europe. Catholic organizations protested against the possible recognition (or the enforcement) of LGBT+ rights, and, later on, against the so-called ‘gender theory’. A few years later, this wave of mobilization is still in place and gained new fuel from the electoral and political success of the extreme right, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2018, for example, Hungary banned gender studies at colleges: this testifies for a renewed public legitimacy of religious discourse in the public and political spheres. Furthermore, the development of transnational networks facilitated the diffusion of mobilization resources and repertories of actions across countries. The 2019 World Congress of Families, organized by the International Organization for the Family to protect the ‘traditional’ family, will take place in Italy where the Minister of the family, a devoted Catholic, is openly anti-abortion.
This panel focuses on the Catholic mobilizations in Europe, to understand cross-country similarities and differences, internal organizations and claims between local actions and transnational networks, patterns of failures and successes, and alliances and opponents.
Conservative and reactionary mobilizations, very visible since 2012, tend to obscure progressive Catholics engaged, amongst others, in the Peace Movement or in the Refugees and Migrant solidarity movements but we would also like to include these groups to the analysis.

Theoretically grounded empirical papers are welcome on the following (but not exclusive) topics:
• Case studies and/or comparative analyses of Catholic mobilizations (conservative and progressive ones)
• Public and media discourse around Catholic mobilization
• Analysis of transnational networking
• Methodology papers on how to study these movements that pose specific challenges
• Papers addressing social movements theory: what these mobilizations can bring to SM theory, which is built on non-religious mostly progressive case studies?
• How to integrate religion in Social Movement Studies? Is there a Catholic specificity?
• Papers addressing the gendered agenda of these movements, but also their gendered organization.
6.2b Catholic mobilizations: religious movements in the public sphere - THE GENDER ISSUE

Chairs: Alberta Giorgi

Discussants: Anna Lavizzari

Anti-Gender, Pro-Life and Pro-Family Mobilizations in Italy: a Neocatholic Front
Massimo Prearo
AbstractDrawing on the Italian case, this paper aims at thinking the nationalist and populist complex alliances, especially taking into consideration the participation of the anti-gender movements to the electoral campaign of 2018, the post-March 4, 2018 election context, and the organization of the World Congress of Families in Verona in March 2019. The analysis of the anti-gender movements (discourses, media interventions, social networks, interviews, conferences, statements, etc.), and of its leaders' role, such as Massimo Gandolfini, among others, will lead to a better understanding of how, through the debate centered around the concept of gender and summarized in the fight against "the gender ideology" and through the pro-family rhetoric, the pro-life galaxy has reshaped its configuration. More specifically, the paper will present an analytical hypothesis: the emergence (or the resurgence) of a new (or renewed) Catholic project that has its roots in the genealogy of Italian Catholic action and feeds on nationalist and populist alliances to implement what I propose to call a Neocatholic political project. Thus, the paper aims at intersecting the analysis of the religious and the political dimensions of these mobilizations to understand how a new form of Catholic movements are emerging from this historical context. The Italian context, in this perspective, his particularly heuristic since it allows us to propose a crossed analysis of the religious framework of the mobilizations, the political acting of the activists and the construction of a rebuilt – rather than a new – social movement. The paper seeks also to question the categories mobilized to qualify the “anti-gender” activism (conservative, neoconservative, or traditionalist activist Catholicism) and to think the “after” of the anti-gender mobilizations (“after” the struggle against the “gender ideology”, the civil union bill, the medical assisted reproduction, surrogacy, etc.), a context that goes beyond the foundation of the movement to enter in the political field and play a role of Catholic mediation between the right and far-right parties and the Neocatholic people. Bibliography (selected works) Sarah Bracke, David Paternotte, Unpacking the sin of gender, «Religion & Gender», 6, 2016, pp. 143–54. Betty Clermont, The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America, Clarity Press, 2009. Sara Garbagnoli, Massimo Prearo, La crociata “anti-gender”. Dal Vaticano alle manif pour tous, Torino, Kaplan, 2018. Roman Kuhar, David Paternotte (eds), Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe. Mobilizing against Equality, London, Rowan & Littlefield, 2017. Marco Marzano, Quel che resta dei cattolici. Inchiesta sulla crisi della Chiesa in Italia, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2012. David Paternotte, Sophie van der Sussen, Valérie Piette (eds), Habemus Gender! Deconstruction d’une riposte religieuse, Bruxelles, Université de Bruxelles, 2015. Massimo Prearo, L’opzione populista del movimento anti-gender, in Se il mondo torna uomo. Le donne e la regressione in Europa, a cura di Lidia Cirillo, Roma, Alegre, 2018, pp. 49-63. Yann Raison du Cleuziou, Une contre-révolution catholique. Aux origines de La Manif pour tous, Paris, Seuil, 2019

Religious Organizations in Poland
Agnieszka Bejma
AbstractThe traditions of civic engagement are quite rich in Polish history. The Catholic Church played a special role during the partitions of Poland (XVIII-XX century), ensuring that national values, traditions and culture were maintained. The first religious associations were established in Poland in the inter-war period. The Catholic Church played also a particularly important role in the fight against the undemocratic regime (period of the Polish People's Republic), defending human dignity and protecting opposition activists. The political changes in Poland have opened a new stage in the development of religious organizations. At the beginning of the 1990s, their activity was focused mainly on the rejection of the anti-abortion law, and later other postulates related mainly to the protection of Christian values in the public sphere against gender ideology and LGBT movements. The aim of the article is to analyze the role of religious movements in the public sphere in Poland. It will be also important to find answers to the following research questions: How did church organizations develop after 1989? Are these to a larger extent national/local or transnational organizations? What is the specificity of Polish church organizations and religious movements? Who is involved in the activities of church organizations in Poland? What kind of challenges and limitations do they have to face?

When gender equality became gender ideology? The strange case of Portugal
Alberta Giorgi
AbstractGender and sexual politics are topics of debate in many European countries. As many researches have shown, religious actors and faith-based organizations have been extremely vocal against the so-called ‘gender ideology’, mobilizing in (or supporting) anti-gender protests all over Europe. In this picture, Portugal stands out: despite having one of the highest percentage of Catholic population in Europe, it enforced a quite progressive legislation on gender equality in a relatively short time-span; sectors of the Catholic Church (namely, Caritas) adopted the concept of gender mainstreaming in their social action. However in the last years in Portugal too the Catholic Episcopal Conference became targeting gender ideology. Drawing on the analysis of the public debate and on documents issued by Catholic Church and related institutions, in this contribution I focus on this conundrum: when and why gender equality became gender ideology in Portugal. I focus on the entanglements between two interrelated explanatory factors: historical legacy, and the European anti-gender campaign.

\"The vigils are a call for you to get involved\": how repertoires help to capture youth activism against same-sex marriage in France
Marie Balas
AbstractBetween fall 2012 and summer 2013, protest in France against same sex-marriage provided the opportunity for a large mobilization among part of the Catholic youth. Supported by parishes and youth movements, traditionalist students and young workers crusaded at the side of “La Manif pour Tous”( LMPT). These participants, who mainly come from Catholic bourgeoisie or aristocracy, emphasized on the “political” dimension of their commitment, asserting the necessity “to reclaim the political field” and “go into politics in a different way”. These days and as LMPT has entered the doldrum, this mobilization only represents a minority of activists. However, a small network has managed to build up a pool of militants and to hold a position in the public debate arena. Based on ethnographic observations of two such groups (Veilleurs and Gavroches), the communication proposes to highlight the research value of tactical repertoires (Fillieule, 2010), i. e. the concrete apparatus for occupying urban public space. Complementary to the essential work on these Catholic protagonists trajectories and networks, the attention paid to body techniques, scenographic material, in situ statements and occupied places constitutes these repertoires as an observatory of politicization. Capturing the practical arrangements thus offers to enrich the analysis beyond the declarations: for various reasons indeed (over-declaration effects, among others), interviews with the actors of these groups have often proved insufficient to restitute the logics of commitment. The paper proposes to show how the performances material sheds light on a decisive moment in these militants careers: that of their initiation into activism. Three components of the commitment can be grasped: 1) resources transfers from the religious sphere, suggesting how these dominants "learn to protest" (Agrikoliansky and Collovald, 2014); 2) framing conflicts and "strategic ambiguities" (Hendrick, 2012), which reintroduce political and confessional markers into the protest and ensure internal cohesion; 3) the patrimonial stake, which enlightens their use of the gramscian "cultural struggle" motif, and suggests the importance of class issues on such mobilizations field.

 

Panel 6.3 The agency of xenos (foreign) within the practices and discourses of struggle of Urban Social Movements. (I)


La sessione intende sviluppare una riflessione sull’agency dello straniero in relazione alle pratiche e ai discorsi di lotta dei movimenti sociali urbani (USM—urban social movements). Intorno alla figura dello straniero si producono trasformazioni delle strategie di azione degli USM che riguardano principalmente l’erogazione di servizi di assistenza all’individuo (e.g. consulenza legale in materia di soggiorno, prestazione di assistenza sanitaria, corsi di lingua e di formazione) e l’organizzazione di mobilitazioni collettive sulle politiche messe in atto dalle istituzioni formali di potere in materia di migrazione e diritti socio-politici.
Tali pratiche fungono da mezzo per la costruzione di campagne politiche e culturali più ampie che riguardano il sistema di welfare (abitativo, sanitario, educativo su differenti scale territoriali), le condizioni di lavoro e di vita, il godimento dei diritti politici e sociali, i principi dell’antirazzismo.
Obiettivo della sessione è mettere in comunicazione studiosi che abbiano trattato il tema dell’agency dello straniero da diversi punti di osservazione: la partecipazione dello straniero alle pratiche di lotta degli USM (cioè come le istanze dello straniero modificano le pratiche e i discorsi degli USM); il nuovo ruolo politico che gli USM ricoprono in relazione alla figura dello straniero (cioè come gli USM organizzano nuovi spazi di welfare e mobilitazioni politiche); le interferenze tra i due soggetti che incidono nei processi di mobilitazione transnazionale (alla luce delle diverse forme di coordinamento e dei nuovi mezzi di comunicazione e di scambio delle istanze di lotta).
Le proposte analitiche dovranno essere incentrate su componenti di innovazione nei modi di inquadrare, approcciare e studiare il fenomeno in questione favorendo il punto di vista storico, comparato, interdisciplinare e multidisciplinare con lo scopo di mettere in contatto analisi dai campi degli studi sugli USM, sulle migrazioni, delle scienze politiche e affini.
Gli approcci storico e comparato sono favoriti per poter far emergere le pratiche analitiche più innovative, ma sono benvenute anche le proposte di analisi che prendano in considerazione interventi di respiro internazionale. Sono altresì ben accolti i contributi di ricerca che abbiano usato approcci qualitativi, quantitativi o mixed, capaci di portare in luce le molteplici dimensioni di cui si compone il tema in questione. Uno dei risultati attesi dalle discussioni di questi elementi è arrivare alla definizione di possibili approcci di analisi capaci di evidenziare gli aspetti diversi dell’agency dello straniero in relazione ai USM e in grado di confrontare le indagini concluse e quelle che si intendono avviare.

Discussants: da stabilirsi.
6.3a The agency of xenos (foreign) within the practices and discourses of struggle of Urban Social Movements.

Chairs: Federica Vingelli, Angela Maria Osorio Mendez

Discussants: Gianni Piazza

“Being There: Migrant Networks and Collective Mobilization in Niger”
Alessio Iocchi, Vladimir Blaiotta
AbstractDuring last years, the Republic of Niger has metamorphosed from a transit destination for waves of migrants to a hosting country, mostly in connection with EU policies to reduce mobility in and from Africa. The enactment of the law 36/2015 specifically aimed at limiting inter-state circulation for AU and ECOWAS citizens has strongly influenced socio-political dynamics, especially in Niger’s urban areas, occasioning a relatively new landscape for both migrants and Nigeriens for claim-making and agency. The quantitative increase of migrants in Niamey’s urban scenario is progressively re-shaping the organizational features of trade union-hailing mobilization initiatives in different policy areas, such as basic service-delivery, professional training, gender-based micro-financing initiatives and small-scale trading and farming schemes. The present contribution aims to discuss the interaction between Niger’s hosting community and the different set of migrant communities residing in Niamey by presenting some preliminary accounts about the coordinated action carried out by Niger’s general trade union movement and migrant social networks in the effort to influence Niger’s policy-making arena. Such instances provide some insightful observations on how the mere ‘art of presence’ (Bayat 2010) of migrant communities in a relatively short time-span is influencing Niger’s social movements’ claim-making actions. Niger’s main trade union (USTN) has showed a swinging attitude, ranging from practices of appropriation of migrants’ claims to outward support for their demands, apparently undecided between open co-optation and an underlying antagonism. Aim of this work is to discuss how such endeavours are increasingly posing critical questions for the organization and discursive representation of social movements, as well as for their everyday social practices of negotiation with political authority.

 

Panel 6.3 The agency of xenos (foreign) within the practices and discourses of struggle of Urban Social Movements. (II)


La sessione intende sviluppare una riflessione sull’agency dello straniero in relazione alle pratiche e ai discorsi di lotta dei movimenti sociali urbani (USM—urban social movements). Intorno alla figura dello straniero si producono trasformazioni delle strategie di azione degli USM che riguardano principalmente l’erogazione di servizi di assistenza all’individuo (e.g. consulenza legale in materia di soggiorno, prestazione di assistenza sanitaria, corsi di lingua e di formazione) e l’organizzazione di mobilitazioni collettive sulle politiche messe in atto dalle istituzioni formali di potere in materia di migrazione e diritti socio-politici.
Tali pratiche fungono da mezzo per la costruzione di campagne politiche e culturali più ampie che riguardano il sistema di welfare (abitativo, sanitario, educativo su differenti scale territoriali), le condizioni di lavoro e di vita, il godimento dei diritti politici e sociali, i principi dell’antirazzismo.
Obiettivo della sessione è mettere in comunicazione studiosi che abbiano trattato il tema dell’agency dello straniero da diversi punti di osservazione: la partecipazione dello straniero alle pratiche di lotta degli USM (cioè come le istanze dello straniero modificano le pratiche e i discorsi degli USM); il nuovo ruolo politico che gli USM ricoprono in relazione alla figura dello straniero (cioè come gli USM organizzano nuovi spazi di welfare e mobilitazioni politiche); le interferenze tra i due soggetti che incidono nei processi di mobilitazione transnazionale (alla luce delle diverse forme di coordinamento e dei nuovi mezzi di comunicazione e di scambio delle istanze di lotta).
Le proposte analitiche dovranno essere incentrate su componenti di innovazione nei modi di inquadrare, approcciare e studiare il fenomeno in questione favorendo il punto di vista storico, comparato, interdisciplinare e multidisciplinare con lo scopo di mettere in contatto analisi dai campi degli studi sugli USM, sulle migrazioni, delle scienze politiche e affini.
Gli approcci storico e comparato sono favoriti per poter far emergere le pratiche analitiche più innovative, ma sono benvenute anche le proposte di analisi che prendano in considerazione interventi di respiro internazionale. Sono altresì ben accolti i contributi di ricerca che abbiano usato approcci qualitativi, quantitativi o mixed, capaci di portare in luce le molteplici dimensioni di cui si compone il tema in questione. Uno dei risultati attesi dalle discussioni di questi elementi è arrivare alla definizione di possibili approcci di analisi capaci di evidenziare gli aspetti diversi dell’agency dello straniero in relazione ai USM e in grado di confrontare le indagini concluse e quelle che si intendono avviare.

Discussants: da stabilirsi.
6.3b The agency of xenos (foreign) within the practices and discourses of struggle of Urban Social Movements.

Chairs: Federica Vingelli, Angela Maria Osorio Mendez

Discussants: Gianni Piazza

Effetto framing: variazioni nella rappresentazione giornalistica delle minacce legate all’immigrazione
Matteo Gerli
AbstractSecondo lo storico dell’età contemporanea Silei (2008), le società umane hanno sempre conosciuto momenti di paura e, più in generale, di insicurezza sociale. A tutte le latitudini e in ogni epoca storica, situazioni di pericolo – reali o percepite come tali – si sono manifestate, turbando lo stato di quiete raggiunto fino a quel momento dalle formazioni sociali e innescando meccanismi di difesa e reazione. Convinzioni morali, filosofiche e religiose hanno talvolta contribuito ad amplificare il senso di angoscia collettiva, alimentando idiosincrasie e forme di emotività potenzialmente lesive per il tessuto sociale. Ma se “le paure” costituiscono una costante nella storia delle civiltà, è altrettanto vero che con il tempo cambiano le loro forme di socializzazione e i contesti in cui esse si sviluppano e si propagano. Le profonde trasformazioni economiche e sociali intervenute negli ultimi tre o quattro decenni hanno prodotto un diffuso senso di incertezza e precarietà. Nuove minacce hanno visto la luce, determinando una drastica contrazione di ciò che, per almeno un terzo di secolo, era sembrato appartenere al campo del “controllabile” e del “prevedibile” (D’Alessandro, 2010). Diversi sono i fattori di criticità che, alla luce della riflessione sociologica, sembrano caratterizzare le società occidentali nell’epoca della tarda o post-modernità. La globalizzazione economica e le politiche di deregulations hanno riportato in primo piano tutti quei problemi legati alla povertà (per esempio, la diffusione della criminalità legata a condizioni di miseria) che erano stati “esorcizzati” attraverso la costituzione dello stato sociale (Bauman, 2000). La perdita di controllo da parte dello Stato su buona parte dei processi economici che oltrepassano i confini nazionali ha reso i mercati sempre meno prevedibili e con ciò si è ridotto drasticamente il margine di manovra in mano ai governanti (Habermas, 1998; Held, 2006). L’espansione e il potenziamento delle relazioni umane, frutto dell’introduzione di sempre più sofisticati mezzi di comunicazione e di trasporto, ha determinato un affievolimento di quei presupposti identitario-culturali su cui si erano venuti a formare gli stati democratici novecenteschi, mentre si registrano sempre più spesso forme regredite di reazione all’avanzata della cosiddetta società multiculturale (Marini, 2004; Cotesta, 2009). L’ambiente e il territorio sono sempre più esposti a fattori di pericolosità e inquinamento legati all’irresponsabilità di certe scelte (Gallino, 2005; Latour, 2018). In sintesi, se da un lato si registra una discrepanza tra decisori e destinatari delle decisioni, dall’altro viene meno l’idea di poter controllare attraverso procedure istituzionalizzate le conseguenze delle nostre stesse decisioni collettive (Beck, 2000). Inoltre, il ritorno sulla scena del terrorismo internazionale, stavolta di matrice religiosa, dopo quelli di ispirazione nazionalistica, indipendentista e politica, sembra elevare al massimo grado il senso di precarietà e di impotenza dell’uomo occidentale (Chaliand e Blin, 2007). Tuttavia, gli eventi sembrano incaricarsi di elevare alcune di queste al di sopra delle altre. Invero, è soprattutto il fenomeno migratorio a catalizzare le sue ansie e la sua urgenza di protezione. «Fatto sociale totale», come lo ha definito Palidda (2008), sull’immigrazione convergono la quasi totalità delle minacce contemporanee – dalla criminalità al terrorismo, passando per il welfare shopping, oppure per la perdita dell’identità culturale nazionale –, facendone il fulcro delle principali tensioni che attraversano le società di destinazione dei flussi migratori. Tutto ciò, d’altro canto, si concilia perfettamente con l’enfasi posta da molte formazioni politiche (soprattutto, anche se non in modo esclusivo, di estrema destra) sull’urgenza del controllo delle frontiere nazionali e, più in generale, sull’opportunità di limitare il diritto alla mobilità di certi individui (Ambrosini, 2014). Come sottolinea Svendsen (2007), la paura, nel caso specifico dello straniero migrante, è infatti una fonte di “creatività” e una risorsa politica: alimentata dal circuito informativo di massa, che non si risparmia di sfruttare gli allarmismi per finalità commerciali, essa è una carta vincente in mano alle autorità pubbliche, un mezzo efficace da impiegare per cercare di riaffermare la propria sovranità di fronte alle sfide poste dalla globalizzazione in un epoca in cui il crollo delle vecchie ideologie ha di fatto privato l’orizzonte politico di punti di riferimento stabili. È già stato osservato come il sistema dei media, e con esso del sistema dell’informazione, sia in grado di sfruttare la propria posizione di potere per veicolare immagini della realtà conformi alla propria logica di funzionamento (Altheide & Snow, 1979; Altheide, 2006; Marini, 2016). I media, in questa prospettiva, sarebbero portatori di un loro precipuo modo di guardare e di rappresentare la realtà, guidato dalle consuetudini operative e dalla cultura professionale in larga parte orientata a trarre profitto dalla spettacolarizzazione delle notizie. Ne sarebbe un tratto specifico la tendenza a prelevare dalla realtà solo quegli accadimenti che abbiano in sé caratteristiche corrispondenti alla media logic, o che siano più suscettibili di essere ricontestualizzati secondo i suoi canoni: eventi straordinari o carichi di drammaticità, conflitti, scandali, etc. Tuttavia, si può ritenere che le strategie dei media non si formino in una sorta di “vuoto pneumatico”, ma sono piuttosto sottoposte ad una inevitabile negoziazione con diversi attori sociali, che, intervenendo nello spazio pubblico con proprie finalità e strategie, contribuiscono a dare vita ad un variegato e dinamico campo discorsivo (Bourdieu, 1996; Benson e Neveu, 2005; Sorrentino 2006; Helbling, 2013; Benson e Wood, 2015; Marini e Gerli, 2017). Luogo di competizione e di tensioni conflittuali per la definizione dell’oggetto del dibattito, il campo discorsivo può quindi essere rappresentato come uno spazio di interazione, pubblico ma non pienamente aperto ed inclusivo, all’interno del quale si manifestano le strategie comunicative di una pluralità di attori che hanno per finalità il framing di un tema di rilevanza pubblica (Entman, 1993; Barisone 2009; Benson e Wood, 2015; Marini e Gerli, 2017). Coerentemente con questi presupposti, il presente contributo si propone di analizzare i dispositivi narrativi che i giornali adottano nella rappresentazione dei fenomeni migratori come fonti di incertezza e quindi come catalizzatori di ansie e paure sociali. In particolare, oggetto specifico della ricerca sono: (1) le connessioni tematiche tra l’immigrazione e altri temi affini, capaci di collocare la issue all’interno di frames variabili, in ragione della costruzione narrativa delle notizie; e (2) lo standing degli attori che concorrono alla costruzione di tali frames. Tale obiettivo è perseguito attraverso un’analisi automatizzata del contenuto di articoli di giornale pubblicati nel periodo campione giugno-novembre 2017 sui temi “immigrazione” e “terrorismo” da cinque testate italiane, di cui tre nazionali (la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera e il Giornale) e due regionali-locali (Il Mattino e Il Resto del Carlino). Attraverso un confronto con la letteratura esistente in materia (per esempio, Sciortino e Colombo, 2004; Colombo, 2007; Benson 2009 e 2013; Binotto, Bruno e Lai, 2016; Marini e Gerli, 2017; Mancini, Mazzoni, Barbieri, Damiani e Gerli, 2019; Bonerba, Gerli, Marini e Verza, 2019), la ricerca si propone di mostrare che: 1) le minacce e le insicurezze legate all’immigrazione costituiscono un campo discorsivo e cognitivo in cui si intrecciano varie componenti tematiche tre loro interdipendenti; 2) tale campo sta attraversando una fase di riconfigurazione contraddistinta dall’emersione di una “nuova” minaccia – la minaccia alla sicurezza e all’integrità nazionale – che si affianca a quelle più “tradizionalmente” legate al discorso sull’immigrazione, quali la minaccia economico-culturale e la devianza; 3) le rappresentazioni giornalistiche risultano incardinate all’interno di un complesso di strategie narrative che rispondono all’orientamento politico-culturale e alla readership delle testate analizzate.

Immigration, Divisiveness, and The War on Facts. An Analysis of the United States
Alia Katia Nardini, Silvia Giagnoni
AbstractAcross the Atlantic, the current discourse in the U.S. conservative media is dominated by a narrative of security that lumps together illegal immigration, crime, and terrorism (Giagnoni 2018). The traditionally open response to immigration into the United States is under severe scrutiny today, as the Republican Party reverts to a much older political tradition, epitomized by the doctrines of restrictionism and nativism (Nardini 2018). Rooted in an idea of nations as culturally homogenous, right-wing populism artificially manufactures conflict between society’s common interest, and the priorities of “others,” usually minorities, and specifically migrants, who are supposedly favored by the “corrupt” elites (Greven 2016). Despite the existence of sound research that proves the opposite (Krogstad, Passel and Cohn 2018; Nowrasteh 2015, 2016), the Trump Administration claims that undocumented migrants are on the rise, that immigrants are more prone to crime, and that foreign-born terrorism represents a threat to national security and national interest. Tapping on pre-existing stereotypes about Latinx (Chavez 2013; Santa Ana 2013, 2014, 2015; Picker and Sun 2013), the President has repeatedly claimed that immigrants (and Mexican immigrants more specifically) resist cultural and linguistic assimilation, and that they represent an economic burden or damage for the host country (Woods and Arthur 2017). The current discourse on security has been disseminated via conservative media--Fox News TV and its echo chamber of the web, which routinely use spurious research to support its claims (Giagnoni 2018). In addition, facts are today being questioned even when provided by “vetted” sources, such as research conducted by experts and academics (Banulescu-Bogdan 2018). The demise of investigative TV journalism and the rise of the deleterious “live interviews” are among the problems that have lead to a scarce use of fact-based knowledge (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2010 et al.). Today, the so-called “journalism of affirmation,” where evidence tends to be cherry picked to prove a point, prevails (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2010) and, along with “fake news,” has exacerbated divisions in the country. Immigration is unquestionably a complicated issue. From a representational perspective, it is regarded as a “low-feedback topic,” because, unlike sports events or market returns, its outcomes are harder to observe (Gentzkow and Shapiro 2006). Its uncertainties make it difficult to discuss without bias and have given the Trump Administration (and right-wing populists elsewhere) a platform to spur controversy and reignite divisive (if not hate) politics. However, data and facts still have the power to promote a more informed electorate and ensure a more effective political discourse. This paper argues for better and more fact-based knowledge on the complicated issue of immigration, so that political actors can rethink their use of evidence to support a more appropriate debate on the topic, and journalists can rightfully reclaim their key role as guarantors of the democratic process.

 

Panel 6.4 Immigration as contentious issue: actors, media and strategies (I)


Immigration has become one the most debated issue in contemporary western democracies (Hepburn and Zapata-Barrero 2014), shaping in most of the cases the political communication in the course of electoral campaigns. The refugee crisis had a huge impact on the European political landscape (della Porta 2018). At the crossroads between solidarity manifestations, migrants’ struggles and harsh oppositions, refugees and asylum seekers flows intersecting the European territory have rapidly become a controversial issue, especially in those countries more affected by them (Zamponi 2018; Andretta and Pavan 2018).
The issue is at the centre of the propaganda put forward by new or renewed populist or far-right parties and leaders, as it became the main tool for them to gain media attention and electoral consent (Mudde 2007). Though voters’ preferences are also shaped by political discourses (Dunleavy and Ward 1981), and by media (see Kosho 2016 specifically on the immigration issue) , those political actors try to exploit people’s attitudes of closure towards immigrants, deepened by the economic crisis and the more recent refugees crisis, and especially widespread among European citizens (Esipova, Ray, Pugliese, Tsabutashvili 2015). Moreover, in the protest arena not only both anti-immigrants and pro-immigrants attitudes are the more and more expressed in grass-roots protests (della Porta 2018; Andretta and Pavan 2018), but also the migrants as autonomous actors have a central role in struggles and mobilizations for better life and work conditions, the rights to move and for housing (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017).
In this panel, we host papers dealing with immigration as contentious issue at the crossroads between electoral arena, media arena and protest arena, drawn on empirical investigation and theoretical perspective. Case studies, comparative investigations and longitudinal studies are welcome, in one of the three arenas selected and/or across them.
We therefore encourage submissions addressing the following research questions:
1. Discussing the media arena: to what extent media strategies affect public opinion on the immigration issue? How do media frame the immigration issue and what are the main differences across media, countries and local contexts? What is the impact of new media use on the media system in this respect? What kind of political actors (parties, movements, leaders, NGOs) prevail in the media discourse when the immigration issue is debated?
2. Discussing the electoral arena: how do parties and leaders frame the immigration issue? To what extent they discuss it during the electoral campaigns? To what extent the immigration issue is crucial for the electoral success of new populist or far-right parties? Are new or old parties alike connected with protest actors dealing with immigration? On the other hand, to what extent the immigration issue affect citizens’ electoral behaviour? Are there differences across voters, time and space?
3. Discussing the protest arena: what are the main features of the actors protesting on the immigration issues? What actors prevail in the protest arena? What role do migrants have as protest actors? What frame prevail in the protest arena? To what extent the protest arena is connected with the electoral and media arena when dealing with the immigration issue? What are the main differences across time and/or space? What are the main strategies of both anti and pro immigrant protest actors and of the migrants themselves? To what extent protest react to media, institutions and parties on the immigration issue?
6.4a Immigration as contentious issue: actors, media and strategies

Chairs: Massimiliano Andretta, Gianni Piazza

Discussants: Massimiliano Andretta

A successful mobilization in solidarity with the migrants: the case of the “Diciotti” ship at the port of Catania in Sicily
Gianni Piazza, Federica Frazzetta
AbstractNever before in recent years, the actions of solidarity towards the migrants have been the target of populist and right-wing political parties, governments and a large part of the Western public opinion, in particular way in Italy. This is because the policies for managing migratory flows have become increasingly restrictive and punitive towards migrants, by both the center-right and center-left governments. The M5S-League government in power has accentuated even more this trend, using the immigration issue in an instrumental way broadening their political consensus, with slogans like “Italians first!” or “Stop invasion”. First, the new Minister of the Interior Salvini decided to “close” the harbours to the ships that have rescued the migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Then, the “Salvini decree” on security and migration was approved, which provides for a further narrowing on the possibilities to apply for and obtain asylum or residence permit, cancelling the possibility of appeal if the request is rejected. Consequently and in parallel, government policies and judicial repression have affected the NGOs ships present in the Mediterranean in order to rescue the migrants from the danger of drowning at sea, thanks also to a national climate of opinion and adverse press campaigns. Humanitarian NGOs activists have been accused by the media and the magistracy of favouring illegal immigration and having relations with the traffickers of migrants, while the Libyan patrol boats, supplied and trained by the Italian government, try to prevent the rescue of the castaways. However, there were reactions to this, marked by demonstrations and other protest events by the NGOs, groups and voluntary, anti-racist, pro-migrants associations, both of the progressive Catholic area and of the radical and antagonist left. Among these protests, stands out the mobilization that occurred at the end of August 2018 at the port of Catania (Sicily), in support of migrants rescued by the Coast Guard and stuck on the ship “U. Diciotti” by the Minister Salvini for several days, with the aim of “getting them off”, and allowing them to enter on Italian land. Objective reached Saturday night 25, also for the availability of the CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference), Ireland and Albania to host them. In this paper, we want to describe and analyse this successful mobilization that, unexpectedly, starting from a few dozens of anti-racist activists has involved thousands of demonstrators coming from all over Sicily and even from the rest of Italy. Not only has the main goal been achieved, but the activists and ordinary citizens have largely outclassed the counter-mobilization of neo-fascists in support of the government and against migrants. In order to put pressure on the government, the protesters in solidarity with the migrants employed various forms of action, from legal to demonstrative and symbolic actions, up to the disruptive ones, such as attempts to reach the Diciotti ship by sea (by swimming or by boat) or confrontation with the police. Thanks to the participant observation, the analysis of press and documents and some interviews with the demonstrators involved, we will focus on the composition of individual and collective actors, their frames and the forms of action used, trying to identify the factors that led this mobilization to be successful.

The politics of regional asylum governance in Italy: anti-migrant and pro-refugee campaigning as a cause and effect of asylum policy-making.
Andrea Pettrachin
AbstractThis paper investigates the role played by anti-migrant movements and pro-refugee NGOs in regional asylum governance in Italy between 2016 and 2018 and their impact on asylum policy responses. It does so, by developing a “micro-macro-micro” approach to open the “black box” of asylum governance processes and investigate the cognitive, environmental and relational factors that influence decision-making processes and shape asylum policy outputs at the regional and local levels. The paper then applies this approach to the case of the recent asylum crisis in three Italian regions (Veneto, Tuscany and Sicily), drawing on around 120 semi-structured interviews with institutional and political actors (Mayors, Regional authorities, MPs, Prefects) and members of both anti-migrant movements and pro-refugee NGOs. At the micro level, the paper investigates the impact of anti-migrant and pro-migrant campaigning on policy-makers’ perceptions, understandings and strategies. The paper applies the literature on sensemaking, mostly developed in organizational studies, to investigate the cognitive and environmental mechanisms that shape the decisions of key actors during the asylum crisis. Crucially, the analysis reveals that, although public opinion importantly influences decision-making processes, actors’ strategies are shaped, more than by public attitudes on immigration per se, by how political actors frame and make sense of them. Despite available polls suggesting that public attitudes on immigration do not vary significantly in different Italian regions, these cognitive processes do vary significantly throughout the country and the semi-structured interviews reveal that these are importantly shaped by anti-migrant movements and pro-migrant campaigning. At the macro level, the analysis applies social network analysis, relying on around 100 structured questionnaires with the same interviewees, to map actors’ relations and to investigate their agency and power dynamics. The paper focuses specifically on the role of anti-migrant movements, advocacy NGOs and service providers, clarifying their position in the networks, their (different forms of) power, how they differently mobilised the network’s relational potential, and their different impact on local asylum policy responses. The analysis reveals that, in the three Italian regions analysed, different types of non-governmental actors occupy central positions in the network (anti-migrant movements in Veneto, advocacy NGOs in Sicily and service providers in Tuscany), with important implications for the organization of the reception system. Finally, the “macro to micro component” of the analysis examines the impact of policy outputs on cognitive micro-level mechanisms. It sheds light on the interplay between the “regulatory” and the “public reaction” dimensions of the Italian asylum crisis (Castelli Gattinara, 2017), illustrating the relationship between public attitudes on migration, frame emergence, asylum policy-making, politics and public mobilisations in the active constitution of asylum governance and the Italian asylum crisis.

Politicizing support and opposition to migration in France: The EU asylum policy crisis and direct social activism
Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Lorenzo Zamponi
AbstractThis paper studies how the EU migration policy crisis shaped the strategies of competing social movement actors. Focusing on the case of France, it investigates the processes activated by the humanitarian emergency in the protest arena, including grassroots mobilization in solidarity with asylum-seekers, and reactive mobilization against their arrival by anti-immigration movements. Combining original data from Protest Event Analysis and 21 face-to-face interviews with activists from anti-refugee and solidarity groups, the study empirically compares the main strategies and forms of action pushed forward by these contrasting movements, and offers new insight on how crises shape the repertoires of contention of collective actors. We show that the logic of emergency driving the management of migration facilitated the appropriation of the context of crisis by grassroots collective actors. Within both the solidarity and the anti-immigration camp, the context of crisis triggered “direct” forms of activism, in addition to conventional actions relying on institutional intervention or media coverage. The results of the study thus bring new empirical evidence on the factors inducing movements to intervene on society avoiding the mediation of the state, and offer a qualitative and quantitative account of direct social activism in France. Discussing direct activism comparatively for pro- and anti-immigration collective mobilization, moreover, the study offers a reflection on the broader implications of the politicization of migration on protest.

 

Panel 6.4 Immigration as contentious issue: actors, media and strategies (II)


Immigration has become one the most debated issue in contemporary western democracies (Hepburn and Zapata-Barrero 2014), shaping in most of the cases the political communication in the course of electoral campaigns. The refugee crisis had a huge impact on the European political landscape (della Porta 2018). At the crossroads between solidarity manifestations, migrants’ struggles and harsh oppositions, refugees and asylum seekers flows intersecting the European territory have rapidly become a controversial issue, especially in those countries more affected by them (Zamponi 2018; Andretta and Pavan 2018).
The issue is at the centre of the propaganda put forward by new or renewed populist or far-right parties and leaders, as it became the main tool for them to gain media attention and electoral consent (Mudde 2007). Though voters’ preferences are also shaped by political discourses (Dunleavy and Ward 1981), and by media (see Kosho 2016 specifically on the immigration issue) , those political actors try to exploit people’s attitudes of closure towards immigrants, deepened by the economic crisis and the more recent refugees crisis, and especially widespread among European citizens (Esipova, Ray, Pugliese, Tsabutashvili 2015). Moreover, in the protest arena not only both anti-immigrants and pro-immigrants attitudes are the more and more expressed in grass-roots protests (della Porta 2018; Andretta and Pavan 2018), but also the migrants as autonomous actors have a central role in struggles and mobilizations for better life and work conditions, the rights to move and for housing (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017).
In this panel, we host papers dealing with immigration as contentious issue at the crossroads between electoral arena, media arena and protest arena, drawn on empirical investigation and theoretical perspective. Case studies, comparative investigations and longitudinal studies are welcome, in one of the three arenas selected and/or across them.
We therefore encourage submissions addressing the following research questions:
1. Discussing the media arena: to what extent media strategies affect public opinion on the immigration issue? How do media frame the immigration issue and what are the main differences across media, countries and local contexts? What is the impact of new media use on the media system in this respect? What kind of political actors (parties, movements, leaders, NGOs) prevail in the media discourse when the immigration issue is debated?
2. Discussing the electoral arena: how do parties and leaders frame the immigration issue? To what extent they discuss it during the electoral campaigns? To what extent the immigration issue is crucial for the electoral success of new populist or far-right parties? Are new or old parties alike connected with protest actors dealing with immigration? On the other hand, to what extent the immigration issue affect citizens’ electoral behaviour? Are there differences across voters, time and space?
3. Discussing the protest arena: what are the main features of the actors protesting on the immigration issues? What actors prevail in the protest arena? What role do migrants have as protest actors? What frame prevail in the protest arena? To what extent the protest arena is connected with the electoral and media arena when dealing with the immigration issue? What are the main differences across time and/or space? What are the main strategies of both anti and pro immigrant protest actors and of the migrants themselves? To what extent protest react to media, institutions and parties on the immigration issue?
6.4b Immigration as contentious issue: actors, media and strategies

Chairs: Massimiliano Andretta, Gianni Piazza

Discussants: Gianni Piazza

LA DUPLICE TENSIONE: EMERGENZE E PRESE DI PAROLA NEL RACCONTO DELL'IMMIGRAZIONE NELL'ARENA DEI MEDIA MAINSTREAM
Rolando Marini
AbstractLA DUPLICE TENSIONE: EMERGENZE E PRESE DI PAROLA NEL RACCONTO DELL'IMMIGRAZIONE NELL'ARENA DEI MEDIA MAINSTREAM Rolando Marini Abstract per il convegno annuale SISP, Lecce 12-14 settembre 2019 L'arena dei media mainstream può essere considerata l'ambiente più importante e denso per le interazioni tra gli attori dello spazio pubblico (Ferree et al. 2002; Koopmans e Statham 2010). L’evoluzione di un tema nell’arena dei media può essere quindi considerata il riflesso di interazioni “reali” e proficuamente studiata come prodotto dell’interazione “mediata” tra attori politici, attori mediali e attori della società civile, del confrontarsi delle loro strategie e logiche. In tal senso, il campo delle interazioni comprende non solo le finalità di rappresentazione e di costruzione simbolica da patte degli attori politici e degli attori dell'associazionismo civico e religioso, ma anche le finalità simboliche dei media. Queste ultime non vanno però considerate uniformi, ossia non solo schiacciate sulle logiche spettacolari, tipiche dei media commerciali, né riducibili a quelle della politicizzazione, proprie dei media partigiani. Tali strategie, ad esempio quelle di advocacy, possono rappresentare delle finestre di opportunità per le associazioni, per la chiesa nelle sue varie espressioni e per il mondo intellettuale, cioè attori rilevanti dello spazio pubblico, rappresentanti di una società civile che non ha sempre accesso ai media mainstream. In questo scenario, il tema dell’immigrazione si propone con delle peculiarità, poiché si inscrive nella fase e nel quadro politico della contrazione e ridisegno del welfare state, venendo a collocarsi nelle dinamiche di declino dei sistemi tradizionali di protezione sociale (D’Alessandro, 2010) e nel campo aperto delle situazioni di incertezza (Beck, 1986). È stata da tempo individuata la difficoltà di elaborare nuove coordinate di progettualità per quella che viene chiamata politica del multiculturalismo (Habermas e Taylor, 1998; Cesareo, 2000; Ambrosini, 2008). Si percepisce in tal senso uno scarto tra le retoriche con cui si pratica il discorso politico sull’immigrazione e le politiche realizzate, mentre queste costituiscono un insieme frammentato e confuso (Ambrosini, 2008 e 2014). Proprio la mancanza di un rapporto chiaro tra problema e soluzioni possibili lo rende adatto ad uno slittamento neo-ideologico e, soprattutto, lo carica di connotazioni e di frame emotivi, soprattutto quando la ripresa del tema è generata da situazioni di vera o presunta emergenza. . Le dinamiche di saturazione e trascinamento e lo standing degli attori politici[U1] L’aggregato tematico riguardante l’immigrazione presenta già da tempo una marcata sensibilità alle situazioni che nel circuito media-politica si vengono a definire come emergenziali. Il tema, infatti, dagli anni Novanta assume una strutturazione tipica, fatta di sequenze di eventi dotati di un grado elevato di notiziabilità, capaci di trascinare eventi-notizie minori; il tutto rimbalza verso la discussione politica, la cui difficoltà di generare policies contribuisce a rialimentare la reattività del sistema dell'informazione mainstream rispetto a eventi pur simili tra loro ma ugualmente “drammatici”, come gli sbarchi o i naufragi, che emergono significativamente dal 2013, aggiungendosi e affiancandosi ai numerosi eventi di devianza e criminalità. Ne emerge una lettura che accentua, anche emotivamente e simbolicamente, le criticità relative alla gestione dei flussi e dell’accoglienza, dal livello locale a quello internazionale. La costruzione narrativa dell'emergenza irrisolta, così formatasi, acquista anche maggiore forza dalla cronaca di vari momenti critici nei rapporti tra italiani e immigrati (Marini e Gerli 2017). La politica viene prevalentemente messa in scena come conflitto neo-ideologico: rappresentazione che trova terreno fertile nel frame delle emergenze cicliche (Colombo, 2007; Gerli e Marini, 2019). Lo studio della triangolazione tra media, politica e società civile appare particolarmente utile per l'indagine delle variazioni del tema all'interno di questo scenario. L'indagine qui presentata è stata condotta su un campione di sei mesi (giugno-novembre) di tutte le notizie aventi come tema l'immigrazione, pubblicate dai quotidiani la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera come giornali nazionali a maggiore diffusione(con una comparazione 2008 / 2014 / 2017) e Il Mattino e Il Resto del Carlino (2017) come giornali locali-regionali. La tecnica utilizzata è l'analisi del contenuto come inchiesta, nella quale il testo viene interrogato tramite un questionario-scheda di rilevazione (Losito 2004). Il ruolo dei mezzi d'informazione, più volte criticato, soprattutto per la combinazione immigrazione-insicurezza (ad es. Binotto, Bruno e Lai 2016), appare evolversi seguendo linee di sviluppo preminenti caratterizzate da: 1. copertura multi-livello del fenomeno e delle politiche (dal locale all'internazionale): tale linea di de-domestication indebolisce parzialmente la precedente centralità dell'arena nazionale e della forte ma sterile conflittualità interna; 2. sottolineatura delle varie criticità nella gestione dell'accoglienza; 3. graduale diminuzione della voce della società civile: solo nel 2008 vi è stato un significativo standing della cosiddetta advocacy coalition, fatta di associazioni, intellettuali e chiesa, come conseguenza della strategia di mobilitazione mediale contro il decreto immigrazione sulla sicurezza da parte del governo Berlusconi; 4. emersione del protagonismo dei cittadini e dei migranti e contestuale emersione di sottotemi relativi ai conflitti e alle violenze tra cittadini italiani e immigrati-profughi: questo può essere anche letto come strategia di presidio anti-razzista, ma anche come processo di popolarizzazione che “insegue” la polarizzazione che “ribolle” nei social media; 5. allargamento del contesto dell'immigrazione al terrorismo in Europa; 6. insistenza sul controllo morale della politica in ordine alla difesa dei diritti umani, ma, parallelamente, problematizzazione delle prassi e strutture attraverso cui la si realizza. Sembra pertanto che, oltre alle varie forme do drammatizzazione degli eventi straordinari più forti, i media stiano allargando lo spazio semantico-narrativo del tema, conferendogli una forma alquanto articolata. In questa configurazione plurale, si mantiene una linea di messa in evidenza delle criticità e delle inadeguatezze della prassi politica (anche quella animata da intenzioni progressiste e multiculturaliste), così come la sottesa tematizzazione delle frizioni interculturali. Questo potrebbe consentire di esprimere un “elogio” ai mezzi d'informazione mainstream analizzati (estensdibile a quelli con pari caratteristiche), seppure vi sia una perdita delle voci della società civile che può indebolire notevolmente la disponibilità pubblica di contronarrazioni. Tale immagine non stereotipizzata dei media- che almeno una volta ne evidenzia una condotta ragionevolmente “buona” - tuttavia va controbilanciato e commisurato con altri aspetti deteriori del loro comportamento, che tuttavia sembra più facile rinvenire in altri settori del mondo giornalistico, specie in quelli che uniscono partigianeria e spettacolarizzazione non temperate da buona informazione. Riferimenti bibliografici Altheide, D.L. (2006). Terrorism and the Politics of Fear. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Altheide, D.L. (2009). Terror Post 9/11 and the Media. New York: Peter Lang. Ambrosini M. (2008), Un’altra globalizzazione. La sfida delle migrazioni transnazionali, Il Mulino, Bologna. Baumgartner F.R., Johnes B.D. (1993), Agendas and Instability in American Politics; trad. it. parziale (cap. 6) La dinamica dell’attenzione dei media, in S. Bentivegna (a cura di), 1994, pp. 131-154. Beck U. (1986), Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main. Benson R. (2013), Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison, Cambridge University Press, New York. Binotto M, Martino V. (2004), FuoriLuogo. L’immigrazione e i media italiani, Pellegrini/Rai-ERI, Cosenza-Roma. Binotto M., Bruno M., Lai V. (2012), Gigantografie in nero. Ricerca su sicurezza, immigrazione e asilo nei media italiani, Lulu Press, Raleigh. Binotto M., Bruno M., Lai V. (2016), Tracciare i confini. L’immigrazione nei media italiani, FrancoAngeli, Milano. Bobbio L., Roncarolo F. (a cura di) (2015), I media e le politiche. Come i giornali raccontano le scelte pubbliche che riguardano la vita dei cittadini, Il Mulino, Bologna. Boydstun A. E. (2013), Making the News. Politics, the Media, and the Agenda Setting, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Colombo A. (2007), Gli immigrati nella stampa nazionale quotidiana, in Primo rapporto sugli immigrati in Italia (cap. XIV), Ministero dell’Interno, Roma. Cotesta V. (2009), Sociologia dei conflitti etnici. Razzismo, immigrazione e società multiculturale, Laterza, Bari. D’Alessandro R. (2010), La società smarrita. Quattro letture del presente fra paure, crisi e migrazioni, FrancoAngeli, Milano. Dearing G.W., Rogers E.M. (1996), Agenda-Setting, Sage, Thousand Oaks. Downs A. (1972), Up and Down with Ecology: The Issue-Attention Cycle, in Public Interest, 28, pp. 38-50, ripubblicato in D.L. Protess, M.E. McCombs (eds.), 1991, pp. 27-33. Elder C.D., Cobb R.W. (1983), The Political Uses of Symbols, New York, Longman. Koopmans R., Statham P. (eds.) (2010), The Making of a European Public Sphere. Media Discourse and Political Contention, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Losito G. (2002), L’analisi del contenuto nella ricerca sociale, Granco Angeli, Milano. Marini R. (2004), Immigrazione e società multiculturale. Processi di integrazione, politiche pubbliche e atteggiamenti di cittadini in Umbria, FrancoAngeli, Milano. Marini R. (2017), La logica dei media e la cultura della società, in Altheide D. L., Snow R. P. (19

Discourses of solidarity: between contention and subsidiarity
Donatella Selva
AbstractThe “refugee crisis” has brought to an upsurge of movements characterised by a re-politicisation of solidarity: voluntary associations working with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are traditionally bound to moral and material assistance (i.e. providing them with basic sustenance and legal advocacy); new solidarity movements added to those activities also a political practice of claim-making addressing power holders. The Italian landscape of solidarity groups is thus characterised by a multi-layered structure, made by non-profit cooperatives working with migrants and refugees, entities founded or inspired by the Christian conception of solidarity, social movements mobilising in protest events, alongside with well-rooted associations such as ARCI and other NGOs engaging in many activities. All of those groups contribute in shaping a counter-hegemonic public discourse of solidarity with migrants, relying on very different definitions of solidarity and ways to interpret their role in the whole society. This paper draws the boundaries of the solidarity sphere in Italy, in terms of actors, communication strategies and semantic, to understand the discursive construction of the contention. In order to do that, groups have been selected among the most relevant experiences to maximise their differences in three variables: type of subject (religious entities, NGOs, non-profit, social movements, ARCI, private sector); location (North/Centre/South Italy and isles, but paying also attention to the centre/periphery distribution); time of settlement. A computer-assisted critical discourse analysis has been performed relying on a set of documents like the self-presentation of such groups, Facebook and Twitter posts, Instagram stories. This approach allowed to identify common discursive strategies, topoi and rhetorical stances; the use of emotions and storytelling; definitions of solidarity and of migrants; and the conceptualisation of the social antagonism with public authorities upon the issue of immigration policies. Results show that solidarity groups exploit a conflictual frame to enter the public discourse, making the protest arena and the media arena overlap in terms of communicative repertoire. On the other hand, many other groups root their online presence by emphasising other elements, like activities with migrants, professionalisation and expertise of their components, thus building a counter-hegemonic discourse on immigration which remains de-politicised.

Immigration and Elections: Parliamentary and Social Media debate in the 2018 Italian National Election Campaign
Stella Gianfreda, Massimiliano Andretta, Paola Imperatore
AbstractThe 2018 Italian general election has shown once again how the debate on immigration shapes parties’ electoral campaigns and media coverage, polarises the public opinion, and finally impacts on the electoral results (Vibruzzi 2019, Milazzo 2019). In this paper, we aim to investigate mainstream and populist parties’ communication strategies on the immigration issue during the three months preceding the elections by integrating two sources of data: parliamentary debates and social media communication on Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, while the political debate during electoral campaigns has been intensively analysed by focusing on the media level of analysis in the context of the hybridisation of the media systems (Mazzoleni 1999, Norris 2001, Cepernich 2017), there is a lack of studies that compare parties’ political communication within institutions and on the social media. In order to partially fill this gap, our paper will answer the following research questions: to what extent are parliamentary debates polarised during the electoral campaign and to what extent are they used to strengthen party electoral strategies? Besides, to what extent does inter-party competition produces more clearly defined patterns of party positions in the parliamentary arena rather than on the social media? Finally, is there content and framing coherence between the communication strategies used by parties and leaders in the parliament and on the social media? The empirical analysis of this work develops in two stages. First, through co-occurrence analysis and concept mapping supported by T-lab we explore the relevance of four frames (security, humanitarian, socio-economic and cultural-identitarian) in political leaders’ discourses (see Helbling 2014, Castelli Gattinara 2016, Pirro and van Kessel 2018). Then, we perform a specificity analysis across political parties, leaders and discursive arenas, to check which frames are typical or exclusive of a specific actor/arena as compared to the others. We will then classify parties and leaders based on their prevailing framing strategies and on the congruence between their parliamentary and their social media framing of the immigration issue. A typology of party position on the immigration issue will be finally developed and discussed. By originally integrating two sources of political communication, this paper contributes to disentangling the complex puzzle between party ideology and identity, political framing strategies and parties’ issue-dimensional differentiation in electoral campaigns.

 

Panel 6.5 Bowling together? Exploring forms of youth political engagement in contemporary times


Literature on youth and political participation has grown steadily in the past decades. However, the changing political and social landscape in Europe and beyond – recently characterized by a populist and conservative turn, as well as by a resurge of mobilization around environmental and feminist issues - leaves several unanswered questions concerning the evolving political attitudes and aims that drives young people into political mobilization.
This panel wishes to discuss how young people participate in politics through different forms of conventional, alternative and innovative actions. In particular, the panel focuses on the role of youth and their political engagement along two main lines of research: i) continuities and discontinuities in patterns of youth political participation and the consequences of such actions on politics, societies and youth biographies ii) the range of social and political values and identities expressed by young people - from progressive, liberals, to conservative, nationalist and religious - through their modes of participation.
Papers can further examine a wide range of modes of participation (including electoral, semi-institutional behaviour, political consumerism, e-activism and disruptive/protest-related activities, and others) and can address hybrid patterns of political engagement, looking at the interplay between online, electoral, non-institutional and innovative modes of participation.
We welcome papers from a variety of methodological approaches, which may focus on different issues that have gained momentum in recent years and around which young people mobilise and engage politically: feminism and gender equality, religion, nationalism and independentism, climate change and environment, among others.
6.5 Bowling together? Exploring forms of youth political engagement in contemporary times

Chairs: Anna Lavizzari, Ilaria Pitti

Discussants: Anna Lavizzari, Ilaria Pitti

Becoming a citizen or transcending the nation? A comparative study of youth engagement for citizenship rights in the UK and Italy
Chiara Milan, Bogumila Hall
AbstractScholarly attention to the political participation of the youth has been growing in the past decades. However, amongst different forms of engagement, the activism of youth of migrant descent is still absent from most academic and socio-political accounts. Little has been written so far on the youth mobilization for the right to citizenship, or the collective efforts of racialized subjects to resist assimilation processes. Furthermore, issues of race and racialization have rarely been addressed in social movement studies. Aiming to fill this gap, this paper compares different practices of resistance and multiple forms of engagement of racialized youth in Italy and the UK, two countries of distinct citizenship regimes and colonial legacies. It focuses in particular on the way the youth of migrant descent struggle to overcome the racial construction of national identity, either by striving to be incorporated into the nation in Italy (through a campaign to access citizenship rights organized by the Italiani senza cittadinanza – Italians without citizenship), or rather by openly challenging the white supremacy structuring the ideas around the nation and history-writing in the Decolonizing campaign in the UK’s universities. Relying on the idiom of legal rights in Italy, while challenging the multiply exclusions on which citizenship relies in the UK, in both cases the youth expressed their political agency, often neglected in their countries of residence. By putting the studies on resistance and social movements in conversation with post-colonial sociology, the inquiry into the two campaigns points at the interconnections and at the limits of the two respective frameworks, showing that different citizenship regimes and diverse elaborations of the colonialist legacy brought about diverse forms of resistance and different demands.

Fridays For Future in a Comparative Perspective: Youth Participation in the First Global Climate Strike
Lorenzo Zamponi, Donatella Della Porta, Daniela Chironi, Martín Portos, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Anja Baukloh
AbstractThe first Global Climate Strike, that took place on March 15th, 2019, following the initiative of 16-year-old Swedish high school student Greta Thunberg, saw the participation of hundreds of thousands young people throughout the world, to demand immediate action against climate change. Fridays For Future seems to be the first massive pan-European youth mobilisation on environmental issues. This paper is based on a protest survey that was conducted on March 15th in nine European countries (Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and United Kingdom). Protesters were surveyed (N=1905) on such issues as socio-demographic characteristics, prior experiences of political participation and formally organised activities, organisational membership, reason to protest, networks, sources of information, attitudes towards the role of Greta, prognostic frames regarding climate change, political trust, among others The paper will present the first results of the data analysis, focusing in particular on the role of young school students in the protest.

Giovani di seconda generazione e attivismo politico in Italia
Veronica Riniolo
AbstractLa disaffezione dei giovani, in Italia così come in Europa, nei confronti della politica nelle sue forme tradizionali è stata ampiamente discussa e dibattuta. Tuttavia il dinamismo e l’attivazione delle nuove generazioni nella sfera pubblica contraddicono l’ipotesi di una apatia politica generalizzata. Ciò è particolarmente vero per le seconde generazioni, ovvero per i figli dei migranti nati e/o cresciuti nel paese di arrivo dei genitori, che nel corso degli ultimi anni si sono sempre più affacciati nell'arena pubblica. Tuttavia le pratiche di cittadinanza messe in campo dai giovani di origine immigrata sono un tema ancora ampiamente inesplorato dalla letteratura con poche eccezioni. La presente ricerca empirica di taglio sociologico è stata guidata dalle seguenti domande di ricerca: 1) quali sono gli spazi di partecipazione scelti dai giovani di seconda generazione per far sentire la propria voice in un contesto – quello italiano – sfavorevole? 2) Se e come il background migratorio dei giovani attivisti incide sulle motivazioni e sulle strategie di attivazione in campo politico? 3) E, infine, l’attivismo delle seconde generazioni presenta caratteri propri e distinti rispetto a quello delle prime generazioni di migranti? Per rispondere a tali quesiti a partire dal gennaio 2017 sono stati raccolti 30 racconti di vita di giovani attivisti in diverse città italiane e 11 interviste semi-strutturate rivolte ai rappresentanti delle istituzioni e del terzo settore che hanno sostenuto le loro battaglie. Accanto a ciò, è stata svolta osservazione partecipante in occasione di eventi chiave. La ricerca ha mostrato che sono in atto da un lato processi di riappropriazione riflessiva da parte dei giovani con background migratorio dei discorsi e delle narrazioni sulle seconde generazioni e dall'altro processi di riappropriazione della sfera collettiva per co-costruirne il senso con altri attori. Le reti relazionali – online e offline – tra giovani presenti in diverse città italiane sono divenute il tratto distintivo delle rivendicazioni a livello nazionale. Si delinea un profilo di attivista propenso a modalità di partecipazione orizzontali e non gerarchiche. Più che sulla base di una identità collettiva, i giovani di seconda generazione si muovono su obiettivi comuni e condivisi. Infine, i figli dei migranti – a differenza dei propri genitori – proclamano e rivendicano l’essere parte a pieno titolo della società italiana.

Elite Discourses and Youth Political Engagement
Marco Giugni, Maria Grasso
AbstractWe test the impact of the discourses of political elites on the political engagement of young people. We examine the effect of different kinds of elite discourses on young people’s political trust, efficacy, and participation. We distinguish between pro-youth and anti-youth discourses made by a leftist, respectively a rightist politician in the government, respectively in the opposition. To our hypotheses we use a x 2 (discourse: pro-youth, anti-youth) x 2 (ideology: left, right) x 2 (role: government, opposition) between-subjects factorial design, which yields 8 experimental conditions as outlined below. We find some evidence for a causal effect of elite discourses on youth political engagement. We found more specifically an effect on political trust as well as on political participation. Quite surprisingly, anti-youth discourses tend to reduce the political trust of young people and also their propensity to participate politically. We also found some indications that the ideology or partisan affiliation of the politicians making the statement as well as their role as members of the government or of the opposition, albeit not very strong and consistent. Yet, the effect of pro-youth or anti-youth discourses seems to depend on these characteristics of those who hold them.

 

Panel 6.6 The consequences of populism: civil society, discourses and policies (I)


This panel aims to reflect on the consequences of the recent success of populist parties and movements in Europe, a topic still in its infancy in populist research, which mainly focus on the causes. With populist parties assuming more stable positions within the party system and governments (today 11 governments in Europe see the presence of a populist party), it is even more crucial to explore the impact of populists’ success on several domains, including: the civil society and social movements, the party system and the political discourse, media debate and the public opinion, as well as on policies (especially those related to sensitive topics such as welfare, immigration, labour, etc.). Many outcomes associated with the quality of democracy can indeed influenced by populism. On the one hand, it is stated that radical right populism endangers some of the constitutional foundations of liberal European democracies such as pluralism and the protection of minorities. However, other scholars agree that populists could actually correct democratic deficiencies by speaking to a large group of citizens disillusioned with mainstream politicians and by giving to citizens the feeling that there is someone who ‘listened to their grievances’.
In this panel, we welcome single and comparative case studies in Europe as well as quantitative works aiming at reflect on these issues. A special attention will be paid to both right wing and left wing populism in various European countries, including Western and Eastern/Central Europe.
6.6a The consequences of populism: civil society, discourses and policies

Chairs: Manuela Caiani, Paolo Graziano, Enrico Padoan

Discussants: Stella Gianfreda

Anti-neoliberal populism in power: Impact on welfare state change in Southern Europe
Beatrice Carella
AbstractThe paper investigates the relationship between anti-neoliberal, left-leaning populism in power and social policy reforms in the South of Europe. It addresses the hypothesis that we can establish a correspondence between the distinctive articulation of the populist discourse and the orientation of policy proposals and outcomes once the populist actor enters the policy-making process. To explore this relationship I will adopt one of the recent theoretical approaches advanced in the field of populist studies, the so-called ‘minimal’ perspective that emphasizes the elements of ‘people-centrism’ and ‘anti-elitism’ as core defining features of populism. The analysis includes the cases of Syriza, Podemos, the Five Star Movement and the Left Bloc (the latter being added as a ‘deviant’ case of non-populist anti-neoliberal party), and the social policies that were proposed and adopted in the different countries after the four parties acquired substantial policy positions in the government or parliament. The outcomes of this comparative analysis will show that the diverging policy configurations in the various countries find a correspondence in the changing discourse of the four parties over time and the varying articulation of the ‘people’. This preliminary finding sheds light on the empirical applicability of the ‘minimal’ approach while contributing to our understanding of the nature of ‘populist policy’.

Classi popolari, populismo e rappresentazioni della politica: una ricerca in quattro periferie italiane
Loris Caruso
AbstractDopo che per decenni se ne è decretata la fine, secondo diversi osservatori e analisti stiamo assistendo, negli anni della Grande Recessione, al ritorno della politica di classe (D'Hooge, Achterberg e Reeskens 2018). Classi popolari e popolo sono al centro della comunicazione politica e mediatica contemporanea (Hutter, Kriesi e Vidal 2017; Ramiro 2016). A questi settori della società, ai loro orientamenti e alle loro scelte elettorali, sono stati attribuiti alcuni tra i più importanti fenomeni politici contemporanei, come la Brexit, la vittoria di Trump, l’ascesa di Salvini, e la svolta securitaria e anti-immigrazione di molti partiti e governi europei. Le ricerche esistenti indagano il rapporto fra classi popolari e partecipazione politica concentrandosi prevalentemente sulla dimensione elettorale. Diversi studiosi parlano, da questo punto di vista, di una ‘proletarizzazione’ del voto ai populismi di destra e all’estrema destra, mettendo questo fenomeno in relazione alle conseguenze sociali della Grande Recessione (Evans, 2017, Rydgren 2012, Arzheimer 2013). La politica di classe sarebbe tornata, quindi, ma nella forma del disincanto democratico, della cultura autoritaria e della vicinanza al populismo di destra e di estrema destra. Ma il rapporto tra classi popolari e politica è riducibile a una lettura così univoca? La rappresentazione della dimensione politica da parte di questo settore della società è riducibile al disincanto e al disgusto? È vero che al suo interno prevale un senso comune di destra e incline all’autoritarismo politico e culturale? In una ricerca qualitativa realizzata nei quartieri popolari di quattro città italiane (Milano, Firenze, Roma e Cosenza), siamo partiti da queste domande, costituendo una rete di ricerca nazionale e indagando le rappresentazioni della politica diffuse tra gli abitanti di questi quartieri. Come detto, il tema della politica di classe viene attualmente affrontato in letteratura prevalentemente indagando quantitativamente i fenomeni elettorali. Ci è sembrato che mancasse un’indagine più approfondita degli schemi culturali e delle rappresentazioni politiche. La nostra ricerca si è quindi concentrata sul modo in cui gli intervistati si rappresentano tre dimensioni fondamentali per rappresentarsi lo spazio politico e definirsi al suo interno. La prima riguarda la rappresentazione dei problemi sociali considerati prioritari: quali sono i principali problemi della società italiana, nella rappresentazione degli intervistati? In che modo questi problemi sono legati alla propria condizione sociale? La seconda dimensione è decisiva perché un eventuale sentimento di distacco verso la politica, di rabbia e di frustrazione sociale si indirizzi verso la destra o verso la sinistra, verso l’alto della società (le élite) o verso il basso (i gruppi sociali più deboli, le minoranze). Si tratta dell’attribuzione di responsabilità nei confronti degli attori sociali: di chi è la responsabilità dei problemi sociali considerati prioritari? Delle istituzioni o di gruppi sociali specifici? E tra le istituzioni, di quelle pubbliche o di quelle private, di quelle nazionali o di quelle sovranazionali? In terzo luogo, abbiamo indagato il tema del distacco e del disgusto verso la politica. Davvero, tra le classi popolari, questi sentimenti verso la dimensione politica sono univoci? Quali sono gli atteggiamenti verso i partiti e le istituzioni rappresentative? Prevalgono atteggiamenti autoritari, oppure le persone chiedono ancora qualcosa alla politica rappresentativa e democratica?

Italy, the promised land of populism? Evidence from an expert survey on European parties and social media big data
Paola Imperatore, Massimiliano Andretta, Enrico Calossi, Lorenzo Viviani
AbstractThe aim of the paper is to analyse the issue of politicization of anti-political-establishment sentiment that emerges in Italy during the 2018 political elections. Due to the disputed nature of the representative democracy in contemporary political systems, different forms of anti-politics may emerge, taking the form of an oppositional sentiment on the level of the masses, which can either manifest itself as apathy or detachment (and therefore abstentionism), or take the form of an active anti-politics. Populism tends to graft itself onto ideologies that are already present in the political conflict, with parties and leaders that, even if considered as anti-establishment outsiders, are characterized as anti-party parties of the new radical right and new radical left, and not as traditional anti-system parties. The phenomenon of populism finds particularly fertile soil in the case of Italy, for structural reasons related to the historical events that have marked the formation of its political system and due to the effect of the traumatic thawing of mass parties after the collapse of the main post-World War II parties. The 2008 crisis provided further possibilities for changes in the political framework and created another structure for developing new populist political parties. The political Italian system witnessed an increase in the number of political subjects linked to populism with three different cases: the Five Stars Movement, Matteo Renzi's leadership of the PD, and the Lega of Matteo Salvini. However, albeit with different intensity, a large part of parties and leaders witness some populist characteristics. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the ambivalent political offer of Italian populism by combining data from an Expert Survey (Mapping Populism in Europe – MAPE) conducted at a European level, and big data analysis of Italian leaders and parties FB posts and Tweets. The main results of the Italian case will be presented through the reconstruction of the positioning of Italian parties and leaders on a number of crucial characteristics: leadership, policy issues, ideology, electoral and communication strategies. We will thus reconstruct a typology of populist parties and leaders in Italy.

Populism in power: Antagonism and Polarization in contemporary Greece and Italy
Giorgos Venizelos, Lisa Zanotti
AbstractDespite the conventional view that populism is an oppositional feature, Western liberal democratic party systems are currently experiencing populist parties entering and in fact leading governments. The accelerating rise of populisms in power leads to a series of questions: What are the implications for the political party systems? What are the effects of populist political polarization? We apply a comparative analysis between the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government (2015-2018) in Greece and the Movimento Cinque Stelle – Lega coalition (2018 -) in Italy which we consider paradigmatic case studies for a number of reasons: not only the two coalition governments are the sole in the European framework ran by two populist parties in partnership, but they are also ideologically antithetical. Our central claim is that neither in Greece nor in Italy populism in government is a new phenomenon. Rather, while the contemporary populist revival is articulated on new issues, it comes in different configurations which result in diverse forms of polarization that are rooted on both new and old cleavages and are expressed in different axes of competition. We blend two strains in the literature that have been prominent in populist studies: we employ theoretical and analytical perspectives as a strategy to detect and analyze the discourses articulated by the aforementioned governments; we rely on party system literature to examine the determinants of the formation of government coalitions in both countries to interpret the changes, if any, in the respective party systems.

 

Panel 6.6 The consequences of populism: civil society, discourses and policies (II)


This panel aims to reflect on the consequences of the recent success of populist parties and movements in Europe, a topic still in its infancy in populist research, which mainly focus on the causes. With populist parties assuming more stable positions within the party system and governments (today 11 governments in Europe see the presence of a populist party), it is even more crucial to explore the impact of populists’ success on several domains, including: the civil society and social movements, the party system and the political discourse, media debate and the public opinion, as well as on policies (especially those related to sensitive topics such as welfare, immigration, labour, etc.). Many outcomes associated with the quality of democracy can indeed influenced by populism. On the one hand, it is stated that radical right populism endangers some of the constitutional foundations of liberal European democracies such as pluralism and the protection of minorities. However, other scholars agree that populists could actually correct democratic deficiencies by speaking to a large group of citizens disillusioned with mainstream politicians and by giving to citizens the feeling that there is someone who ‘listened to their grievances’.
In this panel, we welcome single and comparative case studies in Europe as well as quantitative works aiming at reflect on these issues. A special attention will be paid to both right wing and left wing populism in various European countries, including Western and Eastern/Central Europe.
6.6b The consequences of populism: civil society, discourses and policies

Chairs: Manuela Caiani, Paolo Graziano, Enrico Padoan

Discussants: Lisa Zanotti

I precari atavistici e l'affermazione dei movimenti populisti in Europa
Massimo De Minicis
AbstractL'affermazione dei movimenti populisti come risposta alla precarizzazione delle società democratiche europee. Da alcuni decenni assistiamo alla controversa affermazione di una economia di mercato globale. I mercati sono stati, così, aperti e integrati, ed è apparsa una nuova élite economica che con il possesso dei diritti di proprietà intellettuale ha fatto sì che una piccola minoranza di persone raccogliesse gran parte del reddito disponibile. A livello mondiale l’offerta di manodopera è quadruplicata con circa due miliardi di persone che sono diventate parte della forza lavoro del mercato globale. Tali processi hanno determinato una innegabile pressione al ribasso sulle retribuzioni della forza lavoro nel mondo occidentale Appare evidente come questa situazione non cambierà nei decenni futuri. Sotto questa riorganizzazione del capitalismo industriale si è realizzato un aumento consistente della diseguaglianza sociale determinando una nuova composizione delle nostre società. La nuova struttura appare così comporsi in una élite economica, con forme di accumulazione in termini di rendita finanziaria, immobiliare e di proprietà intellettuale sempre più intense, sotto a questa vi è la presenza di una classe salariata, individui in possesso di un lavoro associato a qualche forma di status contrattuale nella concezione che ne dava Alain Supiot. Sotto la classe dei salariati vi è il precariato e infine una moltitudine di persone abbandonate in una condizione di estrema povertà. Ma in questa nuova composizione sociale che cosa realmente intendiamo per precariato. Al di là delle definizioni di carattere giuridico e normativo, si può delimitare in termini sociologici la condizione di precario? E a quali esiti il precariato sta conducendo la nostra società e la nostra democrazia? Il paper proposto cercherà di rispondere a queste sollecitazioni, evidenziando cl'estrema precarizzazione delle nostre società hanno determinato l'affermazione dei fenomeni populisti di destra. In tal senso il contributo partirà concettualmente dai concetti teorici di precarizzazione della nostra società espressi da Guy Standing. A differenza di altre analisi, infatti, lo studioso inglese ci offre del precariato una dimensione collettiva con una sua evidente incidenza sui fenomeni politici. Il precariato si caratterizza in primis per la sua instabilità professionale e esistenziale. Tale dinamica non permette di costruire alcuna narrativa professionale. Nessuna esperienza che gli consente di affermare sto diventando qualcosa. Altra condizione di comunanza dei soggetti precari è quella di realizzare lavoro per il lavoro. Attività che non sono riconosciute, remunerate e spesso ignorate, ma sono indotte perché altrimenti i precari subiranno conseguenze in termini normativi o morali. Il precariato è poi consapevole che il suo livello di istruzione è al di sopra delle professioni che spera realisticamente di raggiungere. Questo è quello che crea la mentalità del precariato. Una incapacità strutturale di sapere qual è l’utilizzo migliore del tempo a sua disposizione. Il precariato può così considerare il lavoro solo a livello reddituale, speso in una dimensione cottimale. Un errore, una decisione sbagliata e i precari potrebbero essere lì fuori nelle strade, nel loro immaginario, vicino alla moltitudine degli abbandonati. Ma come ha reagito il precariato a questa situazione, come si è evoluto e quale inclinazioni ideali e sociali ha sviluppato? Per Standing la classe del lavoro precario si è composta in tre distinti gruppi che hanno determinato in parte conseguenze politiche importanti, anche nell'affermazione dei movimenti politici nazionalisti e populisti. Il primo di questo gruppo, infatti, chiamato il gruppo dei precari atavistici. Lavoratori precari che guardano al passato con rimpianto. Il prima il tempo dei loro padri e delle vecchie comunità del capitalismo industriale è il mondo da riedificare. Un tempo di dignità del lavoro industriale, dal settore siderurgico a quello automobilistico e manifatturiero, composto da operai e artigiani. I precari atavistici hanno ricevuto una educazione improntata sulla identità del lavoro e della comunità nativa. Crescendo, però, loro i figli di quei padri operai o artigiani non hanno incontrato nessuna di queste forme ideali e sociali, e vivono, così, in un continuo senso di privazione e scoramento per il passato smarrito. Spesso gli atavistici, non hanno un alto grado di istruzione e sono soggetti così alle forme di suggestione rivendicazionista post-conservatrici o post-reazionarie. Cadono così facilmente nell'assenso verso ideali politici e sociali che potremmo definire come razzisti e nazionalisti, fondamento culturale per l'affermazione dei movimenti populisti di destra. Il secondo gruppo consiste nel gruppo cosiddetto dei nostalgici, migranti, rifugiati, appartenenti a minoranze etniche. Definiti da Standing come nostalgici perché non hanno una senso di identità territoriale, di casa, cambiano spesso luogo di vita, devono accettare qualsiasi tipo di privazione lavoristica ma ogni tanto la pressione e le ingiustizie diventano troppo alte e deflagrano in forme di proteste intense. Il terzo raggruppamento del precariato consiste in quello definito come i progressisti. I precari progressisti hanno ricevuto una alta formazione, i loro genitori gli hanno detto che studiando avrebbero avuto un futuro certo e appagante. Terminati gli studi, però, anche questo gruppo del precariato si ritrova senza un narrazione professionale certa e spesso in una condizione di indebitamento insolvibile che si estende sempre più nel futuro. Questo terzo gruppo di precariato potrebbe finire nell’anomia, nella alienazione con forme di costernazione e un continuo senso di ansia, ma soprattutto è soggetto a un sentimento di rabbia. Fortunatamente questa parte del precariato non cade nelle suggestioni post-conservatrici e post-reazionarie, mostra una visione di progresso, una strada per il paradiso come ci dice Standing. Consapevoli che la realtà di protezione e distribuzione del reddito del XX secolo è andata a pezzi e non tornerà mai più. L'obiettivo del paper sarà , quindi, quello di concentrarsi sul primo gruppo di precariato evidenziato da Standing, i precari atavistici, evidenziando come la diffusione di tale gruppo sociale ha determinato lo spazio elettorale e culturale per l'affermazione dei partiti e dei movimenti populisti. Con un approccio quantitativo e qualitativo verranno analizzati così parallelamente i dati elettorali dei partiti populisti di destra parallelamente ai dati di diffusione delle forme di lavoro contingenti, precarizzanti in Europa caratterizzanti il precariato di carattere atavistico. L'ultima parte del paper sarà dedicata alla indicazione di possibili soluzioni in termine di politiche lavoristiche e welfaristiche per limitare la diffusione dei movimenti reazionari e xenofobi, e rilanciare forme e dinamiche per la realizzazione di comunità più giuste e solidali lontane dalle fascinazioni degli ideali populisti.

Populism in Power and its Consequences: a Comparison between Left-wing and Right-wing Populism across Europe
Tiago Carvalho, Manuela Caiani
AbstractWhereas 80% of the literature about populism is concerned about the causes of the phenomenon, little attention has been paid so far in exploring the ‘consequences ‘ of the increasing presence of populist parties , either from the left and the right, in power (Paxton and Hunger 2018). However this appears a quite relevant issue, since European governments all across Europe (from the West to the East) increasingly see the presence of a ‘populist’ party. Although the topic is closely connected to normative issues (e.g. the quality of democracy), what is lacking now is an empirical exploration of the consequences of populism. This is what we will do in this paper, by comparing Western and Eastern and Central European countries and left wing and right wing populisms in power. In particular, by focussing on eight European countries (Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Denmark and Finland) and mainly using secondary sources at disposal, including public opinion national and international datasets, online organizational documents, reports from watch-dog organizations, newspaper analysis, this paper aims at providing a comprehensive and extensive overview of the (potential) consequences of populism in power (i.e. government) on various political domains: i. the impact on policies, ii. politics (institutions, the other parties and the populist groups themselves), and iii. polity (i.e. the public and public attitudes on salient issues for populism). Portugal will represent a crucial ‘negative’ case (of not populism).

The struggle over the protest arena: changing patterns of protest movements and the rise of the populist parties
Ivaylo Dinev
AbstractThe paper explores how protest politics has developed in Eastern Europe since 2008 and how this development is related to the rise of the populist parties. The main argument relies on the expectation that social movements and populist parties in the region are following same logics when it comes to the mobilization of grievances. Whereas in Western Europe traditionally left-libertarian social movements are situated in the protest arena, the Eastern counterpart has tended to include variety of actors that struggle to achieve hegemony over the representation of the "people" (Stoyanova 2016). How grievances are mobilized and by which political forces? Yet, single country studies or comparative analysis across states were developed, on empirical level past research had a limited scope – focusing on social movements or on populist parties. This lack of systematic large comparison across states on the relations between social movements and populist parties lead to less extensive knowledge of the nature of the protest arena. In my work, I rely on mixed method research that combines large N’s statistical analysis of Eastern Europe with analysis of unique dataset of protest events in Slovenia and Bulgaria (2009-2017).

‘Populistization’ of mainstream Parties? Empirical hints for a Contagion of populist and nativist Messages
Jakob Schwörer
AbstractThis study tests the widely spread notion that mainstream parties are increasingly using populist and nativist messages. Conducting a quantitative content analysis, I investigate how populist and nativist communication in election manifestos develops over time by analysing 31 programs of mainstream parties in Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy. The findings suggest that a populist contagion is taking place – except in Germany – due to the emergence or electoral success of populist parties and due to shifts in public opinion. However, the contagion of nativist messages seems to be more widespread. Accordingly, mainstream parties are more prone to adopt messages against immigration and outgroups than against the political elite. The article concludes claiming that the populist contagion does not threaten democracy since anti-pluralist and illiberal messages are not adopted by mainstream parties. The contagion of nativist statements remain the main cause of concern.

 

Panel 6.7 Social Innovation. Theories, Practices, and Conflicts (I)


The theme of Urban Social Innovation (USI) is today pivotal to rethink forms and contents of the urban governance of social services, integrating in a unitary framework the debate on the transformation of democracy and the Social State, the relations between State, Market and the Third Sector, finally the relationship between institutional vs bottom-up action on the territories (Moulaert 2013, Polizzi et al., 2013). Social Innovation refers both to innovation in services and at the same time in the restructuration of the relationship among cities’ inhabitants, through a promotion of their activation and participation as recipients. By this way, Social Innovation is defined as an answer to the erosion of social capital, and as a instrument for building a new urban welfare that focuses on the activation of civil society, but also as a framework for the expression of new forms of grassroots participation and as the experimentation of direct democracy and self-organization practices, in response to the crisis of traditional forms of representation.
Indeed, under the umbrella of Social Innovation we can identify also practices that act “legitimizing” neoliberalism by “softening” it, and activating individuals in order to compensate the weakening of public intervention. According to this point of view, the main European documents on the subject (BEPA 2014) identify in the USI an instrument that seeks responses to emerging social needs in society and in the market, faced with the withdrawal of the public actor due to austerity policies.
Activation of individual and strengthening of civil society seems to conform to a sort of “caring neoliberalism” (Peck 2012), in which the inclusion of civil society serves to partially balance the retreat of the State, offering cheaper services. The risk is that systems and practices that respond to the needs and interests of specific groups of the population are systematically privileged, “at the expense of others who are experiencing new ways of oppression, for example of cultural minorities, and who pursue ‘principles’ of universality, democracy and social justice” (Mingione, Vicari Haddock 2017, p.17).
Against the afore-mentioned definition of Social Innovation, a plurality of bottom-up experiences innovate the theme by developing new social relations – grounded on the territory – building cooperative communities, and revitalising urban spaces under the lines of a shared, horizontal and open management of services.
Thus, Social Innovation turns to sum up an amount of practices aiming at the re-politicization of society by a community self-understood as the genius loci of social development, a search for “enabling social rights in social life”, and for the “research of a State democracy that guarantees the basic rights, on the one hand, and the continuous reinvention of social life on the other” (Moulaert 2009).

The panel on “Social Innovation. Theories, Practices, and Conflicts” is thought as in strong continuity with the 2018 SISP Conference on “The Resilient City. Actors, Practices, and Problems”, which recollected thirteen contributions. At that time, the discussion was focused on different practices, actors, and strategies brought together by the common reference to the “resilience” label. The concept of resilience is intrinsically ambiguous and ambivalent, in terms of its effects on the urban governance strategies, economic restructuration, inequalities and power relations. It refers both to grassroots mobilization and community self-organization, practiced by the subalterns, as a strategy of bottom-up re-politicization and to grassroots mobilization against privatization and commodification. And, on the contrary, it refers also to strategy strongly imbued by neoliberal values and orientations, reinforcing urban privation and marketization of urban spaces, urban inequalities and gentrification, till to provide the ideological and practical instruments to strengthen upper class’s power.
Also Social Innovation runs the risk to become a passe-partout concept, ambiguous and ambivalent. It can refer:
1) to new urban and territorial movements, generating alternative discourses, performing new practices, and rethinking new types of relationship with the local state in seeking to answer social demands that neither the market nor the State have responded. In particular, these new mobilizations, claiming the right both “to the city” and “to the commons”, oppose the continuous commodification of urban and rural areas, the devastation of the territories and the dismantling of the welfare State system;
2) to a renewed equilibrium between the “institutional” and the “not-institutional field”, as the public actor engages itself in promoting citizen’s activism, with the result of widening public institutions’ sphere, and of inverting the privatization of public sector (Subirats, García Bernardos 2015);
3) to fall into a laissez-faire strategy, rather than being part of a new season of collaborative governance (Polizzi, Vitale 2017), with the effect of exacerbate, rather than reducing, the gap between those who have the resources to take action and those who are deprived of it, and thus end up being increasingly placed in conditions of marginality. As a consequence, Social Innovation can turn in an instrument of gentrification.

The panel recollects contributions that critically analyse the theory and practice of Social Innovation, with particular reference to those acting on the urban field.
We look for papers devoted to analyse Social Innovation in the following approaches:
- Social policies and local welfare.
- Urban governance.
- “New volunteerism” and Social enterprise.
- Platform economy and collaborative networks.
- Commons management and production.
- Resilient communities.

In all these fields we are particularly interested on contributions that critically analyse the changing relation between citizens, collective actors, private and Third Sector organizations, and institutions, and that explore how these players likely change the urban governance within Social Innovation’s regime.

Both case studies and comparative studies are welcome.

Contributions can be submitted in Italian and in English.

References
BEPA, Bureau of European Policy Advisors (2014), Social Innovation: A Decade of Changes, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Mingione E., Vicari Haddock S. (2017), “Innovazione sociale e città”, in Sociologia Urbana e Rurale, 113: 13-29.
Moulaert F. (2009), Social Innovation: Institutionally Embedded, Territorially (Re)Produced, in MacCallum D., Hillier J., Moulaert F., Vicari Haddock S. (eds.), Social Innovation and Territorial Development, Ashgate.
Moulaert F., MacCallum D., Mehmood A., Hamdouch A. (2013, eds.), International handbook of social innovation: Collective action, social learning and transdisciplinary research. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Peck J. (2012), “Austerity urbanism”, City, 16(6): 626–655.
Polizzi E., Tajani C., Vitale T. (2013), Programmare i territori del welfare. Attori, meccanismi ed effetti, Roma, Carocci.
Polizzi E., Vitale T. (2017), “Governo collaborativo e catene relazionali di innovazione, Sunti a partire dal caso di Milano”, Quaderni di Rassegna Sindacale, 18(2).
Subirats J., García Bernardos A. (2015, eds.), Innovacion social y politica urbanas en Espana. Experiencias significativas en la grandes ciudades, IcariaEditorial, Barcelona.
6.7a Social Innovation. Theories, Practices, and Conflicts

Chairs: Luca Alteri, Adriano Cirulli, Luca Raffini

Discussants: Luca Alteri, Adriano Cirulli, Luca Raffini

Dire e fare l'investimento sociale: street-level bureaucracy nelle politiche per la casa torinesi
Tommaso Frangioni
AbstractQuesto lavoro prende le mosse da quegli autori che individuano nel Social Investment (SI) un’articolazione delle politiche sociali innestato sul tronco del neoliberismo (Vandenbroucke e Vleminck 2011; Ascoli, Ranci e Sgritta 2016; Busso 2017): da un lato la governance delle misure socio-assistenziali si amplia, con una maggiore centralità di soggetti privati come produttori degli strumenti di policy, sia sul versante ideazionale che nella fase di implementazione, mentre l’approccio passa alla copertura dei “nuovi” rischi e a una ridefinizione delle politiche sociali come fattore produttivo (Hemerijck 2013, 2017); dall’altro rimane l’orientamento al mercato, e viene posta ancora maggiore enfasi sul soggetto destinatario, rafforzando quegli aspetti di individualizzazione e attivazione tipici di un’etica neoliberista (Muehlebach 2012; Bloom 2017; Dubois 2018). Questo intreccio viene analizzato a partire dalle politiche abitative nel Comune di Torino, mettendo in luce come queste siano effetto di una costruzione che procede contemporaneamente dall’alto (aspetto ideazionale) e dal basso (pratiche degli operatori street-level). Da un lato, analizzare i discorsi dei soggetti incaricati di gestire l’emergenza abitativa torinese permette di indagare il frame diagnostico (Snow e Benford 1988; Crawford 2015) utilizzato per rappresentare la questione abitativa e le modalità attraverso cui rispondere (interventi temporanei). Dall’altro, diventa centrale la discrezionalità come categoria operativa: perché l’attivazione possa avvenire, è necessario che il soggetto beneficiario si rimetta all’intreccio di discrezionalità – a volte confliggenti – che caratterizzano tanto gli operatori pubblici quanto quelli del terzo settore. La proposta interpretativa generale è dunque che sia in atto una riarticolazione delle politiche abitative locali in cui il paradigma top-down del SI si lega alle modalità quotidiane di produzione bottom-up delle politiche, lette attraverso la lente della discrezionalità sfumata e tailored che gli operatori devono maneggiare nei loro incontri con i soggetti beneficiari (Hasenfeld 1985). Cercherò inoltre di mettere in luce alcuni elementi critici di questo sistema, a partire dalla difficoltà che si incontrano nell’offrire un sostegno di lungo periodo, e dalla nozione di attivazione solidale - una forma di attivazione “impropria” - che invece emerge a partire dall’osservazione di uno dei movimenti per la casa locali.

Enhancing Commons production in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. The role of the (local) State.
Iolanda Bianchi, Sergio Villamayor, Marc Parés, Mara Ferreri, Laura Calvet-Mir, Nuria Reguero, Marina Pera, Marc Castelló
AbstractOver the last few decades, the Commons have re-emerged as a form of production alternative to the Market and the State. However, a growing literature suggests that the latter may have an important role in the emergence, development and territorial distribution of the Commons. This paper will present results from a study of the importance of local State for the formation, establishment and territorial distribution of commons initiatives in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB). In the study, we mapped urban commons initiatives in the 36 municipalities of the AMB, building on 14 existing databases and maps. We have analysed and categorised them through virtual ethnography. We also did 20 semi-structured interviews to initiative’s representatives in the neighbourhoods with a major concentration of commons initiatives. The result is a map of 1160 commons initiatives, unevenly distributed throughout the AMB areas. Preliminary analysis shows that 40% of the initiatives aims to offer an alternative to market provision, while 20% present an alternative to the welfare state. Almost half of the initiatives do not manifest any relations with the public administration, and those that do, are mostly linked to local municipalities. Interviews revealed that commons initiatives have a different perception of the (local) State and that the latter does have an important role in enhancing them. The paper will conclude offering a theoretical discussion on the importance of the local State to the emergence, development and territorial distribution of urban commons.

Il dilemma delle risorse per le organizzazioni nonprofit: alla ricerca delle best practices per il sistema di finanziamento degli ETS
Manfredi Valeriani
Abstract-- Abstract in Italian; Working paper available in English -- Lo studio del terzo settore è caratterizzato da una molteplicità di definizioni e approcci, alcuni molto distanti tra loro. Nonostante le svariate differenze però, vi è un generale accordo sul fatto che caratteristica fondamentale del terzo settore, sia la mancanza di orientamento al profitto. Tuttavia, le implicazioni di tale definizione sono spesso motivo di dibattito tra chi ad esempio cerca l’assenza di profitto nella tipologia di attività dell’organizzazione e chi nella gestione di eventuali surplus (Bloodgood, Tremblay-Boire, & Prakash, 2014). Ad ogni modo, l’assenza di profitto è una caratteristica che si incontra spesso nella letteratura sul no-profit a prescindere dall’approccio teorico utilizzato o dal sistema legale-culturale di riferimento. L’assenza di profitto è fondamentale peculiarità del terzo settore e marca la fondamentale differenza con il settore privato (Mercato) e il sistema governativo (Stato) (Anheier, 2014; Johnson & Prakash, 2007; Powell & Steinberg, 2006). Se le aziende sono costruite e strutturate per acquisire risorse tramite le loro attività, e lo stato può contare su entrate semi certe attraverso l’obbligo di pagare le tasse, il terzo settore si trova in una situazione di maggiore precarietà. Gli enti di terzo settore (ETS) si trovano spesso a condurre attività a favore dell’interesse generale, o a supporto di comunità distanti o ristrette. Facendo ciò, gli ETS spesso operano in aree che il mercato e/o lo stato trascurano o non sono in grado di soddisfare, svolgendo così una fondamentale funzione di reindirizzazione e ridistribuzione di risorse. Questa condizione, pur rendendo gli ETS essenziali per il benessere e lo sviluppo della società, spesso ne limita l’operato. La ricerca di risorse diventa così fondamentale preoccupazione delle organizzazioni no-profit che pur senza voler ottenere o ridistribuire utili, necessitano di risorse per sopravvivere e svolgere le loro attività. Tra l’altro, gli ETS operano in un a condizione di elevata competizione, devono rendere conto ad una serie di stakeholders e si ritrovano spesso in condizioni di svantaggio quando si trovano a contrattare con altri enti quali aziende o governi. Si capisce quindi quanto l’acquisizione di risorse sia interessante argomento di ricerca per studi riguardanti il terzo settore. Questo articolo si propone di analizzare possibili trend nella distribuzione di fondi per gli ETS, cercando di rispondere alla domanda “cosa influenza la scelta degli ETS di affidarsi a specifici strumenti di finanziamento?”. L’articolo si concentra sul settore italiano che tra la recente riforma volta ad omogenizzare la normativa vigente in ambito di terzo settore, e il preciso e comprensivo censimento promosso dall’Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (Istat), offre un unicum in quanto a coerenza d’indagine e disponibilità dei dati. Dopo un’introduzione teorica che affronta le principali implicazioni della dipendenza degli ETS dalle risorse (Agg, 2006; Borzaga & Defourny, 2001; Doh & Teegen, 2002; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003; Teegen, 2003), le differenze di questi enti rispetto a quelli degli altri settori e una revisione dei sistemi di classificazione internazionale per il terzo settore (i.e. l’ICNPO – International Classiffication for Nonprofit Institutions - promosso dalle Nazioni Unite e utilizzato dall’Istat) l’articolo utilizza i dati istat per condurre una preliminare analisi statistica che possa rappresentare una base per analisi future. Nello specifico, l’articolo prenderà la principale distinzione possibile per quanto riguarda gli ETS e i finanziamenti (ETS a prevalente finanziamento pubblico e ETS a prevalente finanziamento privato) e cercherà di investigare la distribuzione di questa distinzione rispetto ad alcune macro-variabili: collocazione geografica, area di attività (ICNPO), anni di attività e forma legale degli ETS italiani. Vista la natura categorica dei dati e lo scopo introduttivo della ricerca l’analisi si baserà sul chi-quadrato come indice di correlazione (McDonald, 2009). I risultati mostreranno quali fattori sembrano avere una correlazione con determinate scelte di finanziamento, aprendo così la strada a studi più specifici su campioni più ristretti. Bibliografia Agg, C. (2006). Trends in Government Support for Non-Governmental Organizations. Golden Age” of the NGO Behind Us. Anheier, H. K. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management, policy. Routledge. Bloodgood, E. A., Tremblay-Boire, J., & Prakash, A. (2014). National styles of NGO regulation. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(4), 716–736. Borzaga, C., & Defourny, J. (2001). The emergence of social enterprise. London: Routledge. Doh, J. P., & Teegen, H. (2002). Nongovernmental organizations as institutional actors in international business: theory and implications. International Business Review, 11(6), 665–684. Johnson, E., & Prakash, A. (2007). NGO research program: A collective action perspective. Policy Sciences, 40(3), 221–240. McDonald, J. H. (2009). Handbook of Biological Statistics (3rd ed.). Sparky House Publishing, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. http://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004 Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. R. (2003). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. Stanford University Press. Powell, W., & Steinberg, R. H. (2006). The nonprofit sector: A research handbook. Yale University Press. Teegen, H. (2003). International NGOs as global institutions: using social capital to impact multinational enterprises and governments. Journal of International Management, 9(3), 271–285.

Imprenditorializzazione del Terzo settore: ibridazione, innovazione sociale e rischi di frammentazione
Marco Libbi, Anna Reggiardo
AbstractIl terzo settore è spesso associato a fenomeni di innovazione sociale. Obiettivo di questo paper è considerare le opportunità e i rischi di distorsione della sua imprenditorializzazione. Collochiamo il TS in una linea ideale che va da un agire informale, “puramente sociale”, ad un agire imprenditoriale, “puramente strumentale”. Questa collocazione permette di osservare fenomeni di cosiddetta ibridazione e indagare se questi rappresentino o meno fenomeni di innovazione sociale. Il TS nasce in risposta a bisogni sociali e di partecipazione della società civile, nelle sue dimensioni espressiva e di servizio. In seguito alla crisi economica entrambe queste dimensioni del TS sono andate in direzione di un modo di agire sempre più imprenditoriale (Maier, Meyer e Steinbereithner 2016), tale da garantire autonomia (o resilienza), fuori dal settore pubblico. La creazione di questo mercato “terzo” vede elementi classici dell’imprenditorialità quali competizione, ricerca di efficacia ed efficienza sul piano economico, professionalizzazione e burocratizzazione. Per studiare questi fenomeni si sono scelti due differenti dimensioni di analisi: il volontariato organizzato e l’impresa sociale. Mentre il volontariato si colloca “classicamente” in una dimensione non imprenditoriale e principalmente sociale, l’impresa sociale è ormai definita come soggetto dalla natura ibrida (Battilana e Lee 2015) ed emblematica di innovazione organizzativa e nella modalità di agire. L’analisi del volontariato si basa su 42 interviste fatte a volontari (e staff) che operano in differenti centri cittadini italiani per differenti organizzazioni di advocacy. Questo permette di inserire le riflessioni in un contesto di tensione centro-periferia presente non solo a livello cittadino ma anche globale. Considerando pratiche innovative e nuovi modi di agire il TS rappresenta un fenomeno di riuscita innovazione sociale (anche urbana) fino a che risponde a esigenze di socialità. L’imprenditorializzazione del TS, strategia di resilienza, cambia le relazioni sociali in modo ambiguo, andando anche in direzione di fenomeni di frammentazione e distorsione.

Le Politiche Urbane contro la crisi: Italia e Spagna a confronto.
Lorena Toscano
AbstractNegli ultimi quattro decenni abbiamo sentito parlare di recessione economica che ha influenzato le politiche urbane e che sembra contraddistinguere gli attuali contesti urbani europei. L’obiettivo principale della tesi è stato l’incidenza della crisi economica sulle politiche urbane e l’individuazione di eventuali modelli interpretativi, a proposito della risposta fornita, quando fornita, da amministrazioni locali ed enti regionali. Per prima cosa ho cercato di inquadrare e di comprendere le eventuali soluzioni per uscire dalla recessione economica individuando due tipologie di risposte cittadine alla crisi economica, come politiche pubbliche, una keynesiana e una neoliberista. La città Keynesiana è la città del consumo, rilancia lo sviluppo della città come motore dell'accumulazione, l'urbanizzazione del capitale. Invece, la città Neoliberista promuove le politiche locali allo scopo di migliorare e rafforzare la competitività tra le città, passando dal sostegno dal lato della domanda per la riproduzione della forza lavoro alla promozione dal lato dell’offerta dell’investimento capitale. Poi ho analizzato la storia di due mid-size cities Cosenza e Bilbao, e dall'analisi comparata tra le due città emerge che entrambe sono state investite in maniera tragica dalla crisi economica, sono state spinte da obiettivi comuni ma con intensità e modalità differenti. Mentre Bilbao è stata testimone negli ultimi anni di una miracolosa trasformazione che l’ha situata all'avanguardia internazionale della trasformazione urbanistica, dando il nome a quello che oggi si chiama “effetto Guggenheim”, con l’effetto Guggenheim Bilbao è stato capace di creare una nuova identità urbana, un carattere nuovo allo skyline, divenendo il simbolo dell’intera città. Per quanto riguarda Cosenza invece, rappresenta sicuramente un contesto piuttosto sviluppato, con la città di riferimento in espansione, dotata di un polo universitario. Appare si una realtà urbana media del Mezzogiorno sviluppata e attiva, ma nel settore delle realtà urbane risulta ancora indietro, rispetto ai contesti urbani molto più sviluppati come nel caso la città di Bilbao. Infine, confrontando i due casi di studio ho identificato ambedue le città in uno dei due modelli interpretativi, cioè quello neoliberista e sulla base dei dati statistici e delle politiche urbane applicate dagli enti locali ho cercato di descrivere gli scenari futuri per le città urbane affinché crescano e migliorino ancora di più.

 

Panel 6.7 Social Innovation. Theories, Practices, and Conflicts (II)


The theme of Urban Social Innovation (USI) is today pivotal to rethink forms and contents of the urban governance of social services, integrating in a unitary framework the debate on the transformation of democracy and the Social State, the relations between State, Market and the Third Sector, finally the relationship between institutional vs bottom-up action on the territories (Moulaert 2013, Polizzi et al., 2013). Social Innovation refers both to innovation in services and at the same time in the restructuration of the relationship among cities’ inhabitants, through a promotion of their activation and participation as recipients. By this way, Social Innovation is defined as an answer to the erosion of social capital, and as a instrument for building a new urban welfare that focuses on the activation of civil society, but also as a framework for the expression of new forms of grassroots participation and as the experimentation of direct democracy and self-organization practices, in response to the crisis of traditional forms of representation.
Indeed, under the umbrella of Social Innovation we can identify also practices that act “legitimizing” neoliberalism by “softening” it, and activating individuals in order to compensate the weakening of public intervention. According to this point of view, the main European documents on the subject (BEPA 2014) identify in the USI an instrument that seeks responses to emerging social needs in society and in the market, faced with the withdrawal of the public actor due to austerity policies.
Activation of individual and strengthening of civil society seems to conform to a sort of “caring neoliberalism” (Peck 2012), in which the inclusion of civil society serves to partially balance the retreat of the State, offering cheaper services. The risk is that systems and practices that respond to the needs and interests of specific groups of the population are systematically privileged, “at the expense of others who are experiencing new ways of oppression, for example of cultural minorities, and who pursue ‘principles’ of universality, democracy and social justice” (Mingione, Vicari Haddock 2017, p.17).
Against the afore-mentioned definition of Social Innovation, a plurality of bottom-up experiences innovate the theme by developing new social relations – grounded on the territory – building cooperative communities, and revitalising urban spaces under the lines of a shared, horizontal and open management of services.
Thus, Social Innovation turns to sum up an amount of practices aiming at the re-politicization of society by a community self-understood as the genius loci of social development, a search for “enabling social rights in social life”, and for the “research of a State democracy that guarantees the basic rights, on the one hand, and the continuous reinvention of social life on the other” (Moulaert 2009).

The panel on “Social Innovation. Theories, Practices, and Conflicts” is thought as in strong continuity with the 2018 SISP Conference on “The Resilient City. Actors, Practices, and Problems”, which recollected thirteen contributions. At that time, the discussion was focused on different practices, actors, and strategies brought together by the common reference to the “resilience” label. The concept of resilience is intrinsically ambiguous and ambivalent, in terms of its effects on the urban governance strategies, economic restructuration, inequalities and power relations. It refers both to grassroots mobilization and community self-organization, practiced by the subalterns, as a strategy of bottom-up re-politicization and to grassroots mobilization against privatization and commodification. And, on the contrary, it refers also to strategy strongly imbued by neoliberal values and orientations, reinforcing urban privation and marketization of urban spaces, urban inequalities and gentrification, till to provide the ideological and practical instruments to strengthen upper class’s power.
Also Social Innovation runs the risk to become a passe-partout concept, ambiguous and ambivalent. It can refer:
1) to new urban and territorial movements, generating alternative discourses, performing new practices, and rethinking new types of relationship with the local state in seeking to answer social demands that neither the market nor the State have responded. In particular, these new mobilizations, claiming the right both “to the city” and “to the commons”, oppose the continuous commodification of urban and rural areas, the devastation of the territories and the dismantling of the welfare State system;
2) to a renewed equilibrium between the “institutional” and the “not-institutional field”, as the public actor engages itself in promoting citizen’s activism, with the result of widening public institutions’ sphere, and of inverting the privatization of public sector (Subirats, García Bernardos 2015);
3) to fall into a laissez-faire strategy, rather than being part of a new season of collaborative governance (Polizzi, Vitale 2017), with the effect of exacerbate, rather than reducing, the gap between those who have the resources to take action and those who are deprived of it, and thus end up being increasingly placed in conditions of marginality. As a consequence, Social Innovation can turn in an instrument of gentrification.

The panel recollects contributions that critically analyse the theory and practice of Social Innovation, with particular reference to those acting on the urban field.
We look for papers devoted to analyse Social Innovation in the following approaches:
- Social policies and local welfare.
- Urban governance.
- “New volunteerism” and Social enterprise.
- Platform economy and collaborative networks.
- Commons management and production.
- Resilient communities.

In all these fields we are particularly interested on contributions that critically analyse the changing relation between citizens, collective actors, private and Third Sector organizations, and institutions, and that explore how these players likely change the urban governance within Social Innovation’s regime.

Both case studies and comparative studies are welcome.

Contributions can be submitted in Italian and in English.

References
BEPA, Bureau of European Policy Advisors (2014), Social Innovation: A Decade of Changes, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Mingione E., Vicari Haddock S. (2017), “Innovazione sociale e città”, in Sociologia Urbana e Rurale, 113: 13-29.
Moulaert F. (2009), Social Innovation: Institutionally Embedded, Territorially (Re)Produced, in MacCallum D., Hillier J., Moulaert F., Vicari Haddock S. (eds.), Social Innovation and Territorial Development, Ashgate.
Moulaert F., MacCallum D., Mehmood A., Hamdouch A. (2013, eds.), International handbook of social innovation: Collective action, social learning and transdisciplinary research. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Peck J. (2012), “Austerity urbanism”, City, 16(6): 626–655.
Polizzi E., Tajani C., Vitale T. (2013), Programmare i territori del welfare. Attori, meccanismi ed effetti, Roma, Carocci.
Polizzi E., Vitale T. (2017), “Governo collaborativo e catene relazionali di innovazione, Sunti a partire dal caso di Milano”, Quaderni di Rassegna Sindacale, 18(2).
Subirats J., García Bernardos A. (2015, eds.), Innovacion social y politica urbanas en Espana. Experiencias significativas en la grandes ciudades, IcariaEditorial, Barcelona.
6.7b Social Innovation. Theories, Practices, and Conflicts

Chairs: Luca Alteri, Adriano Cirulli, Luca Raffini

Discussants: Luca Alteri, Adriano Cirulli, Luca Raffini

Pratiche di innovazione sociale tra partecipazione e conflitto. Sguardi dalla periferia romana
Marina Ciampi, Anna Maria Paola Toti, Adriano Cirulli, Alessandro Ippoliti
AbstractLe trasformazioni in atto nelle città stanno richiamando l’attenzione di studiose e studiosi sui temi della riqualificazione, della rigenerazione e delle pratiche di innovazione sociale messe in atto da istituzioni, cittadini e organizzazioni della società civile. Le periferie urbane rappresentano un ambito di analisi particolarmente interessante, in cui emergono con forza le ambivalenze delle dinamiche sociopolitiche nelle realtà urbane contemporanee. Accanto al degrado ambientale e strutturale, a vecchie e nuove povertà, a marginalità ed esclusione, si registrano anche esempi di attivazione e partecipazione dei cittadini residenti nelle aree periferiche. che, in relazione più o meno conflittuale con le istituzioni o con gli altri attori presenti sul territorio, offrono un potenziale canale di ricostruzione di un tessuto sociale altamente frammentato. Il paper proposto intende presentare e sottoporre a discussione i primi risultati di una ricerca qualitativa, supportata anche dalla metodologia visuale, in corso in due quartieri della semi-periferia romana, il Trullo e Tor Pignattara. Due quartieri della città di Roma che si caratterizzano anche come territori di adozione, in cui nuovi abitanti orientati recentemente verso le aree periferiche per ragioni socioeconomiche, si innestano in un contesto di relazioni e pratiche sociali, e in cui si sono attivate esperienze di riqualificazione e innovazione sociale, sia per iniziativa istituzionale, sia come frutto di iniziative dal basso di parte della cittadinanza. In particolare, il contributo si focalizza su come i diversi tipi di residenti e di attori presenti nei due quartieri percepiscono la condizione di perifericità, gli aspetti della vita nelle due periferie considerati problematici, fonte di disagio, tensioni e conflittualità, e su come percepiscono le pratiche di innovazione attivate nel territorio.

Social innovation applied to production and reuse of commons in cities. Social enterprises for cultural heritage in the urban context.
Elena De Nictolis
AbstractThe European Union defines social innovation by leveraging its ability to respond to social needs also by attracting inputs from the public and private sectors, including civil society, to improve social services. The literature on social innovation, as underlined by Cossetta and Palumbo (2014), has highlighted that social innovation requires an empathic approach, in which institutions and companies must not limit themselves to studying the profiles of service users, but to merge into their world, sharing the production process. This approach seems to be particularly suitable for generating solutions at the urban level, for example to favor the construction of infrastructures for a community welfare based on integration and economic development (Kelly, 2015) or to respond to the challenge of youth education and integration also outside school contexts. Social innovation is therefore able to identify the potential that the urban context can offer if the unused capacity is enhanced and new synergies are created between the actors (Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, 2014). Social innovation has become a buzzword for policy strategies on the urban spaces, goods, services in European cities, and the normative assumptions that are behind it (its ability to improve welfare services) often obscure its dark sides (Larsson and Brandsen, 2016) and policy failures, mainly related to its capacity to actually impact on urban inequalities and disempowerment processes. A recent analysis of social innovation practices focused on social entrepreneurship and collaborative economy clearly shows disempowerment processes, in particular in cases where public institutions are involved: the initiators and civic actors involved in the processes showed concerns about social innovation being made subservient to certain political agendas, in particular the dismantling of welfare state (Avelino et al, 2017). This article proposes a way of conceptualizing processes of urban social innovation arguing that the high expectations of social innovation on solving urban inequalities and urban challenges should transition towards an iterative approach, stressing the importance of small incremental results and embracing a human-centered and rights-based approach. Building on existing notions in urban social innovation research and theory (Wittmayer et al, 2017) the article will introduce case studies on policy domain whose analysis is still in its infancy in the social innovation literature: model of sustainability for cultural heritage reuse in cities. The article will present a comparative analysis of case studies of reuse and management of cultural heritage in cities by establishment of collaborative economy circuits or through the constitution of community enterprises/cooperatives. The comparison will involve established/successful case studies and case studies that are at their initial stage of development, extracting a basket of case studies from the dataset developed by the Horizon2020 project “OpenHeritage.eu”, in which the author is involved as a researcher. Bibliography Avelino, F. et al. (2017), Transformative social innovation and (dis)empowerment, Technological forecasting and social change. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.002. European Commission, definition of Social Innovation, http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1022 (last visited May 9, 2019). Hirsh-Pasek, K., Michnick Golinkoff, R. (2016) Transforming cities into learning landscapes. The Stanford Social Innovation Review, https://ssir.org/arti- cles/entry/transforming_cities_into_learning_landscapes. Kelly, M. (2015) Building the inclusive city, collaborative approaches to economic development are seeing results. The Stanford Social Innovation Review, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/building_the_inclusive_city. Larrsson, O. and Brandsen, T. (2016) The Implicit Normative Assumptions of Social Innovation Research: Embracing the Dark Side, in Social Innovations in the Urban Context, in Brandsen, T. (eds), Social Innovations in the Urban Context. New York: Springer. Wittmayer, J. et al. (2017), Editorial Synthesis: Methodological Challenges In Social Innovation Research, European Public & Social Innovation Review. Vol. 2, n.1.

Volunteering and migration: from emergency governance to new and radical paths of social innovation. Notes from the experiences of Calabrian solidarity.
Elena Musolino
AbstractThe debate on the role and characteristics of volunteering in Italy with respect to the function of integration for migrants is of growing interest, both in its evolution from the regulatory point of view and for its different forms in terms of inclusion and solidarity. Reference will be made to the specificities of the voluntary commitment for (and with) asylum seekers in Italy, presenting the regulations and the main implementation agreements, highlighting the strengths but also the risks that the current dynamics imply in reproducing and strengthening structural inequalities. The social commitment of migrants and in their favour has for years been a very lively space for social mobilization (Ambrosini and Van Der Leun 2015), but some mechanisms have undermined its effectiveness. In its progress towards more and more depoliticised forms, associationism seems to push migrants to form their own cultural associations, however, they interface with institutions with difficulty and to which they usually relegate only a recreational role (Mantovan 2013). Significant elements of change, however, begin to emerge in the current phase, where multiple factors of crisis overlap, which have consolidated problematic structures of emergency governance but also produced the conditions for the advancement of institutions and solidarity networks that counteract the basic assumptions, through the preparation of paths of maturation of solidarity, responsibility, political awareness oriented to accept the point of view of migrants and more open to their participation. Starting from the results of a qualitative survey on the Calabrian territory (1), we will highlight some paths of urban solidarity capable of interpreting new voluntary actions in which to identify a certain criticism of the dominant languages and practices of urban regeneration and solidarity economy (D’Agostino, 2015). Ambrosini M. - Van Der Leun, J., (2015), “Introduction to the special issue: Implementing human rights: Civil society and migration policies”. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 13, pp. 103–115. D’Agostino, M., (2015), Rifugiati e richiedenti asilo. Esperienze di rigenerazione urbana ed economia solidale a confronto. In Laboratori per lo sviluppo delle competenze e lo scambio di esperienze in materia di immigrazione (pp. 11-39). Cosenza: Pellegrini Editore. Mantovan, C., (2013), “Cohesion without participation: immigration and migrants' associations in Italy”. Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 47, 3, pp. 253-268. (1) The considerations are part of a research, funded by a European Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund 2014-2020 (FAMI), which involved the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Calabria as project partners under the supervision of Alessandra Corrado and Mariafrancesca d'Agostino – VAI project – Volunteering Among Immigrants http://www.vai-project.eu/it/

From governance-driven democratization to democracy-driven governance? Democratic innovations in the 21st century
Adrian Bua, Sonia Bussu
AbstractSince the 2008 financial crash new social movements have gained momentum often making transformative demands and in some cases translating their aspirations for greater equality into local electoral victories of associated political parties and coalitions (Tormey 2016). A primary strategy of these new forces of participatory politics is to connect social movements to the state through “bottom-linked” forms of collaboration and social innovation (Pares et al 2017). Scholars of democratisation have argued that the resulting institutional innovations, while drawing inspiration from now well-tested forms of deliberative democracy such as mini-publics, tend to be characterised by bottom-up agenda setting and are more critically oriented (Sintomer 2018). The chief ambition and challenge of these new forms of participatory politics are to successfully institutionalise the pre-figurative politics and social justice values that inspired them in the first place. We refer to this “second-wave” strategy as one of “democracy-driven governance” (DDG). Whereas its first-wave predecessor, “governance-driven democratization” (Warren 2013), mobilises citizens into an elite-driven reform project, DDG mobilises bureaucracy to respond to social innovation initiatives developed in response to the effects of the economic crisis, and the legitimacy crisis of the old establishment that it unleashed (Blanco et al 2018; Pares et al 2017). This paper develops a conceptual distinction between GDD and DDG; it then draws on two paradigmatic (Flyvberg 2006) cases (Barcelona, see Blanco et al 2018; and Nantes, see Griggs et al 2018) of these different forms of participatory governance in order to develop the conceptual distinction and assess the opportunities and constraints for these different approaches to democratic innovation to act as a democratizing force in the context of the contemporary capitalist political economy.

 

Panel 6.8 Right to the city and mobilization for public services rights: The fight for the commons in Western and Eastern Europe (I)


In the decade following the peak of the Great Recession, the privatization and commodification of natural resources, urban space and public services has inspired social action, political mobilizations and protests in many cities around the world. In particular, in Southern Europe we are witnessing the rise and consolidations of various forms of urban mobilizations, under the claim of the “right to the city”. With the broad aim of constructing “cities for people and not for profit”, these grassroots groups (i.e. squatting movements, citizens’ committees, social center activists) mobilize on different issues: privatization of spaces and services, gentrification processes, pollution, and many others. Despite the specific claims at stake of each mobilization, what distinguishes the urban social movements is their double intention of voicing the effects of neo-liberal urbanization process, and also performing alternatives practices. By employing different tactics, these variety of citizen initiatives and grassroots groups put in place a radical alternative model of space organization that goes beyond the dichotomy public/private and affirm urban spaces as “urban commons”, namely resources belonging to the collectivity that cannot be inserted in the commodification and privatization process.
​Even though these types of practices are not a novelty, they are assuming an increasing importance. Indeed, the exacerbating effects of neoliberalism, deregulation dynamics and austerity politics are more and more unaffordable for an increasing part of urban dwellers. Therefore, the concept of “urban commons” is becoming crucial for the analysis of contemporary urban and social dynamics. Nevertheless, empirically and theoretically, the practices related to the urban commons are far way from being exhausted.

This panel welcomes proposals that include studies addressing and elaborating on the dynamics of urban activism, right to the city groups and mobilization for public space and public services rights, from a theoretical as well as empirical point of view. In particular, the panel encourages proposals for papers that can improve our understanding of social movements for the commons, and how space, public services and natural resources transformed into an arena for cultural, political and social conflicts in Western and Eastern Europe.
6.8a Right to the city and mobilization for public services rights: the fight for the commons in Western and Eastern Europe

Chairs: Carlotta Caciagli, Chiara Milan

Discussants: Chiara Milan, Carlotta Caciagli

La lotta per le case popolari in un quartiere di Roma: il Quarticciolo.
Chiara Davoli, Alessia Pontoriero, Pietro Vicari
AbstractLa proposta di ricerca si incentra sull’analisi di alcune dinamiche di resistenza presenti all’interno di un quartiere popolare romano il “Quarticciolo”, situato nella periferia est di Roma lungo la strada consolare Prenestina. All’assenza di politiche pubbliche, gli abitanti del quartiere hanno risposto attraverso alcune pratiche come assegnazioni abusive delle case popolari, occupazioni di seminterrati e spazi Ater per la creazione di nuovi alloggi e nuovi servizi (come la palestra) e attività di manutenzione degli spazi comuni e dei giardini presenti all’interno del quartiere. In questa realtà, nel 2017, nasce il “Comitato di Quartiere Quarticciolo”, un’esperienza di organizzazione e lotta per il diritto alla casa a cui partecipano attivamente circa 30 famiglie. La ricerca, condotta attraverso l’osservazione del contesto e la realizzazione di alcune interviste in profondità, propone un’analisi di questa organizzazione collettiva nata negli ultimi anni e contribuisce alla riflessione sulle pratiche di riappropriazione di spazi urbani abbandonati e in disuso che rappresentano modi di attivazione dal basso per la soddisfazione di diversi bisogni, altrimenti non garantiti dalle istituzioni pubbliche.

Practices of resistance to the exploitation of urban space: the civic movements in Belgrade
Marco Siragusa
AbstractThe catastrophic end of socialist Yugoslavia spread out the doors to neoliberal offensive even in the Balkan. The social ownership of the means of production was replaced by private property, pubblic investments by private ones, solidarity between people by unrestrained competition among nations. These processes didn't spared the urban spaces, transformed from places “for” the working class to the object of expropriation and value creation for capital. The economic and political transition, restarted after the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, represented the perfect context for the redefinition of the “right to the city”. In recent years, Belgrade, the main city of Serbia, has experienced a deep transformation process that has not been concluded and is undergoing a costant redefinition. The deindustrialization and the NATO bombing in 1999 left a radical impoverishment of some areas of the city and a high number of abandoned buildings. The necessity to attract international capitals, in order to boost economic growth, has favored the sale of large sectors of the economy including the territorial planning. Economic crisis has accelerated these processes, as demonstrated by big urban projects launched by the last governments. The most important is the so-called Belgrade Waterfront, a plan of over 3 bilion euros financed by a company based in Dubai and destined to radically change the face of the Savamala district and the city. However, there are other important projects such as the construction of the metro and the renovation of old buildings, transformed into hotels and accomodation facilities for tourists. While on the one hand we are witnessing to a new neoliberal offensive, on the other hand there are mobilizations and practies of resistance carried out by civic movements. The most significant, in terms of political scope and mobility, are certainly the movement Ne da(vi)mo Beograd (We Don't sink Belgrade) and the Ministarstvo prostora (Ministry of Space) able to place the issue of managing urban spaces and the decision-making process at the center of the pubblic debate. This work aims to offer an analysis of the composition of these movements, their claims and practices. In order to do this I will use interviews with representatives of these two movements and a reconstruction of the ongoing conflict between institutions and movements.

Spazi e tempi diversi Il caso dell’area della Stazione Centrale di Napoli: nuove spazialità per la costruzione di una città inclusiva
Fabrizia Cannella, Fabrizia Cannella
AbstractLa città oggi si caratterizza dall’essere sede di flussi che la intercettano, l’attraversano e la cui rilevanza crescente prevale (e si contrappone) a quella dello stare. Il movimento, i flussi di persone, popolazioni e merci percorrono la città contemporanea suggerendo nuove interpretazioni rispetto ai legami tradizionali tra spazio e società. Il movimento andrebbe dunque inteso come presupposto essenziale per la lettura delle pratiche delle popolazioni urbane contemporanee e come strumento strategico per rendere permeabili le politiche alla vita urbana. La caratterizzazione e consistenza dei flussi migratori restituisce in prima linea questa condizione post-moderna della città come spazio d’attraversamento. I migranti racconto storie di persone che si muovono dai loro paesi d’origine alla ricerca di uno spazio più adeguato dove stare, storie mosse anche da quel coraggio che caratterizza chi decide di vivere una nuova possibilità: possibilità che si materializzano e si trasferiscono nella dimensione urbana. L'osservazione dei processi insediativi generati dall’immigrazione e conformati dal movimento porta alla luce un susseguirsi di pratiche trasformative dello spazio urbano che evidenziano un recupero di logiche organizzative e modalità d’interazione sociale ormai svanite (Lanzani, 2003). Vi è forse infatti uno spazio, un’urgenza di urbanistica, attivato dalle logiche insediative delle popolazioni migranti, che racconta di altre forme di abitare la città contemporanea in cui l’incontro ha luogo e si ferma. In questa prospettiva, il paper presenta i primi esiti di una ricerca sviluppata attraversando la fenomenologia della vita quotidiana dello spazio della realtà napoletana dell’area della Stazione Centrale di Napoli, storicamente interessata da una rilevante incidenza di popolazione immigrata ed inserita in un processo di trasformazione urbana, avviato nel 2006, che ha guardato essenzialmente alla fisicità e al decongestionamento del suo centro magnetico: la Piazza Garibaldi e la Stazione Centrale. Metodologicamente la ricerca si compone di uno sguardo interno costruito su di un’oscillazione continua tra osservare, ascoltare, camminare che tramite il rapporto e l’interlocuzione con le persone traccia nuovi itinerari e trae nuove spazialità per la costruzione di una città inclusiva, interculturale e diversa; insieme ad uno sguardo esterno, diagonale sulla città, che permette di prendere consapevolezza dell’oggetto di studio, effettuando un controllo sociale indiretto. L’area attraversata si compone di un mix sociale ed etnico fatto anche di tensioni e l’attrazione che ha esercitato sulle popolazioni immigrate è derivata in particolare dalla presenza di un tessuto socioeconomico fortemente caratterizzato dall’irregolarità e dall’informalità, in accordo con la presenza della ferrovia, centro magnetico di diverse realtà e interessi. In questo scenario si considererà la centralità dello spazio alla luce dei fenomeni dell’immigrazione, esaminandone il suo ruolo all’interno dei processi d’inclusione delle popolazioni straniere. Si sono prese in considerazione alcune tipologie di spazi urbani con spiccata vocazione sociale che si aggiunge all’originaria funzione a cui sono destinati. L’approccio spazialista vuole ricostruire nuove geografie del tempo e delle persone, intercettando altre specie di spazi, lontani e vicini, con dinamiche che superano la visione della città come esito di un’intenzionalità istituzionale ma descrivono spazi e tempi diversi da quelli preminenti nella città contemporanea.

The contested urban/mobile commons of housing squats. A comparison between Metropoliz and the ex-Penicillina Leo in Rome, Italy
Margherita Grazioli
AbstractSince the post-IIWW, Rome was characterised as a self-made city enduring a permanent housing crisis, whereby urban governance and real-estate capitals have had to deal with the autonomous geographies and forms of inhabitance produced by self-made forms of inhabitance and housing rights movements asserting a demand for public, and affordable, housing supply that was incompatible with the ‘official’ urban planning, primarily oriented towards furthering real-estate investment (Cellamare, 2014; Grazioli, 2017a). This incompatibility between housing supply and demand has been further exacerbated in the prolonged aftermath of the 2008 crisis. As a result, squatting for housing purposes gained a new momentum, which culminated in the so-called Tsunami Tours, namely the simultaneous squatting for housing purposes of vacant buildings realised in 2013-4 by Housing Rights Movements and grassroots trade-unions (Armati, 2015). During this new wave of squatting, Housing Rights Movements combined more ‘traditional’ demands for public, affordable housing with the assertion that housing squats are urban as well as mobile commons (Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2013; Stavrides, 2016) where urban regeneration and anti-capitalist politics are practised through the repurposing of vacant parts of the city, and where the squatters’ can exert right to stay put in the neoliberal city (Grazioli and Caciagli, 2018). On the other hand, the spatial and relational regeneration which they realise is not an ontological condition engendered in the act of squatting. It is the product of the effort of consolidating among the squatters organisational rites that can maintain the squats’ alternative modalities of social reproduction, while establishing network that enable their political mobilisation (Grazioli, 2018). In order to elaborate upon the conditions of possibility of housing squats as urban/mobile commons, the presentation compares two sites located in Rome’s periphery. The first one is the former slaughterhouse Fiorucci, squatted in 2009 by the movement Blocchi Precari Metropolitani (BPM), and nowadays known as the housing squat Metropoliz_La Città Meticcia and the Museum of the Metropolitan Other and Elsewhere (MAAM) (Grazioli, 2017b). The second one is the former Leo Pharmaceutics industrial plant ex-Penicillina Leo that, since 2015, became a shanty-town populated by hundreds of people transitioning in the city and/or evicted from other informal settlements and housing squats.

 

Panel 6.8 Right to the city and mobilization for public services rights: The fight for the commons in Western and Eastern Europe (II)


In the decade following the peak of the Great Recession, the privatization and commodification of natural resources, urban space and public services has inspired social action, political mobilizations and protests in many cities around the world. In particular, in Southern Europe we are witnessing the rise and consolidations of various forms of urban mobilizations, under the claim of the “right to the city”. With the broad aim of constructing “cities for people and not for profit”, these grassroots groups (i.e. squatting movements, citizens’ committees, social center activists) mobilize on different issues: privatization of spaces and services, gentrification processes, pollution, and many others. Despite the specific claims at stake of each mobilization, what distinguishes the urban social movements is their double intention of voicing the effects of neo-liberal urbanization process, and also performing alternatives practices. By employing different tactics, these variety of citizen initiatives and grassroots groups put in place a radical alternative model of space organization that goes beyond the dichotomy public/private and affirm urban spaces as “urban commons”, namely resources belonging to the collectivity that cannot be inserted in the commodification and privatization process.
​Even though these types of practices are not a novelty, they are assuming an increasing importance. Indeed, the exacerbating effects of neoliberalism, deregulation dynamics and austerity politics are more and more unaffordable for an increasing part of urban dwellers. Therefore, the concept of “urban commons” is becoming crucial for the analysis of contemporary urban and social dynamics. Nevertheless, empirically and theoretically, the practices related to the urban commons are far way from being exhausted.

This panel welcomes proposals that include studies addressing and elaborating on the dynamics of urban activism, right to the city groups and mobilization for public space and public services rights, from a theoretical as well as empirical point of view. In particular, the panel encourages proposals for papers that can improve our understanding of social movements for the commons, and how space, public services and natural resources transformed into an arena for cultural, political and social conflicts in Western and Eastern Europe.
6.8b Right to the city and mobilization for public services rights: the fight for the commons in Western and Eastern Europe

Chairs: Chiara Milan

Discussants: Chiara Milan, Carlotta Caciagli

The myth of "right to the city" movements in local government politics? Some evidence from Poland
Izolda Bokszczanin
AbstractThe paper aims to present analyse of emergence, inexpected political success as well as recent spectacular defeat of ‘right to the city’ movements in contemporary local government politics in Poland. The democratic and liberal transformation in Poland on local level has been achieved in late 90. and in the following decade has fostered the emergence of local movements focused on protest and reform. The urban movements has been perceived in Poland as factor of change of local democracy and promotion of innovating methods of formulation of local policies, offering a kind of opportunity for ‘alternative modernization’. Polish development urban movements was influenced by both, an anti-urbanity tradition and unified patterns of transformation of local government system. Political, social and cultural determinants had impact for specific trajectory of development of Polish urban movements and limited their potential of launch alternative patterns of modernization. This model of modernization focused, on public debate and praxis of decommodification, postulating of institutional reform and formulation of visions of a “well-organized and inhabintants friendly city”. Urban movements entered on several Polish cities political scene with impetus in local elections in 2014, but suddenly have been seriously defeated in 2018, giving way to logic of traditional competition of political parties. The paper is primarily a product of research based on content analyses of development of urban movements, their social and political activities, in recent decade in the biggest Polish cities.

The right to the Commons. A struggle for State recognition?
Iolanda Bianchi
AbstractIn post-Marxist literature on Urban Commons, the relationship that these have with the (local) State seems to be under-analysed or approached through an over-determined negative view of the role of the State. However, some scholars suggest that Urban Commons may also strategically use the support of the (local) State for their survival. The paper aims to delve into the relationship between the (local) State and Urban Commons to understand how and to what extent Urban Commons can be supported by the (local) State. The analysis is set in the urban context of Barcelona and compares two case studies of Urban Commons developed by two different social groups: an informal settlement developed by irregular sub-Sahara immigrants that had been excluded from the formal labour and housing markets- the Puigcerdà Urban Commons; and a community centre developed by residents that had been deprived of their right to public spaces and facilities in the neighbourhood – the Can Batllò Urban Commons. The analysis is an interpretative-qualitative study of the two cases that uses different methods: direct observations, interviews with social and political actors/stakeholders, and document analysis. The paper shows that the (local) State can support Urban Commons through different public actions. However, the (local) State seems to support only those Commons to whom it recognises the right to exist, those developed by “well-known” social groups, as these are not perceived as a threat, as the case of the Can Batllò Urban Commons. The paper concludes reflecting on the (local) State’s role and its power to determine the Urban Commons right to exist as well as on the necessity for the latter to struggle for this right that means also struggling for the State recognition.

Whose Right to the City? The Class Dimension of Urban Struggles in Zagreb and Belgrade
Danijela Dolenec, Karlo Kralj, Ana Balković
AbstractThe city is the primary site of conflict in capitalism, exposing its logic of commodification, while at the same time generating space for mobilizing towards its alternatives (Harvey 2008, Brenner et al. 2012), not least in Central Eastern Europe (Jacobsson 2015) An important part of the post-2008 mobilization has revolved around fighting evictions, affirming the right to housing and affordable living costs. However, this broad umbrella of “housing struggles” encompasses urban conflicts that mobilize a wide array different types of groups. Going beyond overarching notions of post-2008 movements, we aim to understand “differences of integration into crisis processes” (Gagyi, 2017:74), with a particular focus on post-socialist space. Fundamentally in this paper we pose the question whether it is possible to link various types of struggles over urban space to class dynamics. We reject Kerbo’s (1982) distinction between movements of crisis versus movements of affluence, following the argument that urban struggles often embody anti-capitalist struggle as well as post-materialist demands for increased citizen participation (Dolenec et al. 2017). In order to answer the question, we analyse newly collected PEA data for Zagreb and Belgrade, capital cities functioning within post-socialist political economies which have been hit hard by post-2008 austerity policies. Though in Yugoslavia both cities grew within a socialist developmental logic which aimed to equalise life conditions across class boundaries, this urbanisation philosophy was rejected in the 1990s in favour of “desolidarisation” (Brenner 2000). Compared to their Western counterparts, in post-socialist cities the demolition of the social in favour of the market has been met with fewer obstacles, resulting in far-reaching transformations of how the city is used and experienced (Dolenec, Doolan and Tomašević 2017). Relying on PEA data for the period 2000 - 2017 enables us to capture time periods before and after the onset of the economic crisis, and determine whether any change in trends is observable. More importantly, this dataset enables us to distinguish between protest demands focusing on the housing crisis and those focusing on urban planning more broadly. Starting from this distinction, we analyse the organizers, the social groups protesting, the framing of demands, and other aspects of the protest events with the aim of establishing whether discernible class patterns of mobilization among them exist.

LULUs movements in multilevel struggles
Niccolò Bertuzzi, Donatella Della Porta, Gianni Piazza, Giuliana Sorci
AbstractTerritorial or LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Use) movements are regaining more and more media visibility and centrality in public discourse in Italy and elsewhere.While addressing local issues, they develop a complex multi-level strategy, addressing local, but also national and European targets. A comparative analysis of LULUs struggles in the Italian case allows in particular to assess processes of scale shifts, both upwards and downwards in a context characterized by an economic and social crisis that had also strong political repercussions. Developing upon the political process approach in social movement studies, but bridging it with approaches in policy analysis, we aim at explaining the ways in which opportunities are framed at various levels (local, national and European) along the different steps of the policy process. Specific questions refers to: a) the assessment of Europe as a potential ally, target and space of struggle in a situation of declining processes of Europeanization within social movements, given the perceived closing of opportunities at EU level; b) the potential for appropriation of opportunities as the Five Star Movement - a party that has supported in the past several LULUs movements - took power at local and national level in Italy. The research is based on a cross-case analysis of four among the best known LULU movements: 1) the No TAV, against the construction of the high-speed railway line in Val di Susa in Piedmont; 2) the No MUOS, contrary to the US Navy geo-satellite communication system at Niscemi in Sicily; 3) the No TAP, against the construction of the Trans-Adriatic Gas pipeline in San Foca-Melendugno in Apulia; 4) the No Large Ships (Grandi Navi), adverse to the transit of cruise ships in the Venetian lagoon. The paper is based both on previous research already published and on recent research materials, consisting mainly of interviews with key-informants and analysis of local and national documents and press.