Abstract
The successive crises experienced recently (financial crisis in 2008, refugees in 2015 and the current crisis resulting from COVID) have led to surges in discrimination, racism and lack of solidarity between groups. However, these same crises have inspired important manifestations of solidarity with a significant social impact (improving people’s lives) for many groups and in very different areas. This article focuses on two solidarity initiatives (interreligious language pairs and a cooperative) that contribute to overcoming inequalities and the social exclusion of the most vulnerable groups, to explore whether religious plurality and the interreligious dialogue present in these initiatives are a favourable element for solidarity.
Highlights
An increase in lack of solidarity, hate speech discourse and discrimination against certain groups (Habermas 1999) often occurs after a crisis
SOLIDUS researchers developed 64 case studies of solidarity initiatives distributed among 12 European countries and different social areas
In order to explore the relationship between religious plurality and the motivations for solidarity, we have focused in this paper on a selection within the Spanish context
Summary
An increase in lack of solidarity, hate speech discourse and discrimination against certain groups (Habermas 1999) often occurs after a crisis (for instance, the financial crisis of 2008, the humanitarian crisis of refugees that began in 2015 or the current consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic). According to the Pew Research Center survey for Western Europe, for example, only 57% of respondents in Italy would accept a Jewish family member and 43% would accept a Muslim member (Pew Research Center 2018). This negative attitude increases when the ideology of the respondent approaches the right or the extreme right. In recent years we have witnessed support for populist or extreme right-wing parties that maintain a robust anti-immigration discourse in Europe, with enormous social, economic and political consequences (European Commission 2019). In Spain, the appearance of the extreme-right party VOX, which entered in the Spanish parliament in 2019, officially requested removing from the Penal Code the mention of “racist and anti-Semitic motives” in the definition of hate crimes
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