European Nation-states Research Articles

Governing poverty and migration in European nation-states – keywords revisited

This article introduces a collaborative publication exploring the intricate interplay between poverty governance, migration control, and welfare provision. Adopting a ‘keywords’ approach, we investigate the terminology and concepts around which academic discussions revolve when addressing poverty and migration. Central to this examination is the figure of the ‘poor migrant’, whose experiences of inclusion and exclusion intersect along lines of race, gender, and legal status. Using an intersectional lens, the publication dissects key terms and concepts : Welfare State, Welfare Governance, Citizenship, Solidarity and Deservingness, Suspicion and Surveillance, Discipline, and Banishment. We thus aim to conceptualise and critically discuss the constant renegotiation of state power and the nation-state induced in ex/inclusionary aspects of welfare and migration policies and law. The contribution reveals how notions of belonging shape access to rights and services, particularly along racialized and classist lines. Moreover, it explores how migration policies exacerbate scrutiny and exclusion faced by non-citizen populations within contemporary welfare systems.

Governing poverty and migration in European nation-states – keywords revisited: Postscript

Taken together these essays reveal both synergies and contradictions between and within immigration and welfare policies. Several common themes emerge. Firstly, while access to the welfare state is an important signifier of membership, in practice claiming certain state benefits is accompanied by suspicion, surveillance and stigma. The good citizen is a worker citizen. Secondly, the importance of the welfare state in putting the nation into the nation-state: the normative national community imagined as the rightful subject of welfare states is racialised and classed. Thirdly, deservingness functions in both welfare states and immigration regimes to prioritise victimhood rather than rights and redistribution.

Social solidarity and deservingness

The notion of social solidarity involves formal and informal practices, with various levels of institutionalisation. It builds on normative assumptions and discourses of reciprocal expectations of mutual help, on (perceived) ideas of sameness or neediness in relation to, among other, class, ethnicity, and/or gender and on notions of deservingness that are entangled in such ideas. In this contribution, we discuss how the intersection between institutionalised social solidarity in European nation-states and notions of deservingness informs who is seen as worthy of being part of welfare arrangements. Where ideas of solidarity and deservingness intertwine with legal categorisations of belonging, the results are exclusionary policies that often restrict migrants’ access to national welfare policies, and hence meaningful societal participation. Furthermore, we discuss migrants’ experiences with expressions of solidarity beyond the national realm, exploring how ideas about migrants’ deservingness become linked to their economic usefulness within the European (integration) project.

The European response to Russian disinformation in the context of the war in Ukraine

AbstractDisinformation and propaganda directed at foreign countries is an important tool in Russia's geopolitical power ambitions, including its war against Ukraine. The European Union and individual nation states, both inside and outside the Union, have developed complex responses to this multifaceted phenomenon. This article focuses on just one of them: the EU embargo on the RT television channel. It will review media analyses of RT, some of the legal action taken against it, and analyse the background and rationale behind the EU's blocking regulation. It points out that, while international media law literature has examined the issue from the perspective of freedom of expression, the European Union has treated the channel as a political weapon. The article argues that democracies need to take decisive action to defend their structures, and that this may require unconventional measures in times of disruption to the international order.

On the Compatibility of the Democratic Rule of Law and the Self-Regulation of Meta: The Oversight Board as a Guardian of Freedom of Expression

The article examines the role of Meta in relation to the principles of the democratic Rechtsstaat. The perspective focuses on the importance of the human right to freedom of expression in a global network society, where Internet intermediaries, through their self-regulation and content moderation, have a crucial impact on the realisation of freedom of expression and, by extension, on democratic processes. Because of their influence, their self-regulatory systems can be seen as independent systems of norms, governed by fundamentally different principles from those of European nation-states committed to democracy, human rights and the rule of law – especially in the context of the European Union. This is of particular importance for public debate and the free expression of opinions, which are fundamental values in democratic societies. Social media both enables and, in some cases, limits the exercise of fundamental and human rights. They also share, or to some extent have even taken over, the institutional role of traditional media in society. The article takes a legal-theoretical approach to the subject matter, as it addresses the role of public debate in the digital environment as part of the legitimacy of the legal order itself. In this respect, the article analyses the relationship between Facebook and the public sphere, which is essential for democracy, and the role of the state in promoting freedom of expression in the online environment. The theoretical framework is based on Kaarlo Tuori's theory of the levels of law and the concept of democratic Rechtsstaat. Against this framework, Facebook/Meta is examined in a European context, which includes both the European Union and Council of Europe law. Most focus is put on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Through this framework, the role and position of the Oversight Board at the interface of human rights implementation and Meta's self-regulation will also be examined. Given the emphasis in the ECtHR's jurisprudence on the positive obligations imposed on the state, the article concludes that a more effective horizontal impact of fundamental and human rights is needed. This is supported by the conclusion that Facebook may not be considered as a well-suited public sphere for democracy.

Introduction to the Special Multilingual Issue: European Perceptions and Care of Former Military Members from the Perspective of European Nation States

Introduction to the Special Multilingual Issue: European Perceptions and Care of Former Military Members from the Perspective of European Nation States

Third War of Independence? The Anti-Colonial Dynamics of Ukraine’s Politics of Memory after 2014 on the Example of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kyiv

The article discusses the transformation of Ukraine from a peripheral colony to a European nation-state. It examines changes in the interpretation of UkrainianRussian relations in historiography, public perceptions, and museum exhibitions related to the ongoing war. It demonstrates that since 24 February 2022, Ukraine’s politics of memory has exclusively followed a continuously expanding anti-colonial perspective. The article highlights a shift in Ukrainian society’s view of its past, with growing interest in the country’s history and a move away from the Soviet perspective. Museums are crucial in shaping these narrative changes and fostering Ukrainian national identity. The article also explores societal transformations since 1991, showing an increased identification with the state and a gradual distancing from Russia. This is accompanied by a westward turn in geopolitical orientation and a desire to join the European Union. The National Museum of History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kyiv serves as an example of these processes, reflecting a nuanced portrayal of the war and of its human dimension. The museum’s commitment can be seen as a pillar of a nation-state building project, with symbolic identification shifting from the East to the West, towards the EU and NATO.

“Right-Peopling” the State: Nationalism, Historical Legacies, and Ethnic Cleansing in Europe, 1886-2020

Many European nation-states were historically homogenized through violent ethnic cleansing. Despite its historical importance, we lack systematic evidence of the conditions under which groups where targeted with cleansing and how it impacted states’ ethnic demography. Rising nationalism in the nineteenth century threatened multi-ethnic states with “right-sizing” through secessionism and irredentism. States therefore frequently turned to brutal “right-peopling”, in particular where cross-border minorities and those with a history of political independence increased the risk of territorial losses. We test this argument with new spatial, time-variant data on ethnic geography and ethnic cleansing from 1886 to the present. We find that minorities that politically dominated another state and those that have lost political independence were most at risk of ethnic cleansing, especially in times of interstate war. At the macro-level, our results show that ethnic cleansing increased European states’ ethnic homogeneity almost as much as border change. Both produced today’s nation-states by aligning states and ethnic nations.

The neoliberal welfare state and its discontents. Slow violence against irregular migrants in Norway

ABSTRACT Welfare rights in Norway, as in other European nation-states, are increasingly used as techniques of control and management of irregular migration. Proliferation of borders is generated by dispersal of welfare rights, establishing structural differentiations. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with irregular migrants in Norway, we argue that the neoliberal welfare state produces precarious subject positions in three mundane ways: (a) through demarcation and diversification of rights; (b) through governmentality of time and temporality, such as the imposition of waiting; and (c) through access or lack of access to services in the welfare state, including what we call digital borders. Exploring the bordering structures of the welfare state we analyse the complex relation between technologies of government and its effect on everyday life of irregular migrants and we understand this relation as slow violence. This slow violence operates and is legitimized through the legal, policy and neoliberal welfare structures of the state. We show that the welfare state’s implication in migration management is legitimated by the Norwegian state’s principles of universalism and egalitarianism. Simultaneously, the seeping of migration management into welfare state principles and practices as well as the neoliberalization of the welfare state dwindle egalitarianism as a principle and value.

On Historical Relationship between Parliamentary and Humanitarian Diplomacy

The paper analyzes approaches to defining parliamentary and humanitarian venues of diplomatic cooperation. It is shown that institutionalized inter-parliamentary cooperation began to develop in the last quarter of the 19th century, while examples of the influence of parliamentarians on the foreign policy process in their nation-states can be traced back even earlier, at least since the time of the Great French Revolution. It has been revealed that the early forms of parliamentarian influence on foreign policy were based on humanistic arguments and appealed to a sense of humanity. The humanistic orientation of the emerging parliamentary diplomacy in the last third of the 19th century is explained by focusing on factors such as the development of the media and the growing influence of public opinion on the domestic and foreign policies of European nation-states. The similarity of the initial organizational forms of parliamentary and humanitarian diplomacy illustrates the example of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Both types of diplomatic interaction emerged via multilateral conferences. The final section of the paper is devoted to an analysis of the origins of Russian parliamentary and humanitarian diplomacy. It is shown that Russia played an active role in the development of these forms of diplomatic interaction. The paper concludes by arguing that a thorough definition of parliamentary diplomacy is only possible when both the actor and organizational dimensions of parliamentary diplomacy are taken into account. It argues further that the more or less common paths of development of parliamentary and humanitarian diplomacy result in their thematic affinity. The third conclusion is that the parliamentary methods accepted by diplomatic agents profoundly affected the development of cooperation between nation-states during the 20th century.

From toxic industries to green extractivism: rural environmental struggles, multinational corporations and Ireland’s postcolonial ecological regime

ABSTRACT This article articulates the historical entanglement of Ireland’s big tech ecosystem with earlier forms of economic development and state-sanctioned polluting practices, particularly focusing on strategies for attracting multinational companies since the 1960s. The outsourcing of polluting multinational industries to Ireland’s rural regions has a long history, one tied into fault-lines of the country’s postcolonial condition and developmental economy in the 1970s and 1980s. During this era of economic liberalisation, Ireland’s environmental politics were frequently organised against the outsourcing of toxic chemical, pharmaceutical, and technological industries to rural Ireland. Ireland’s position as a western European nation-state undoubtedly means that wealth accumulated via these industries merits complicity in the global supply chains sustaining “green” extractivism in the Global South. But rural Ireland also bears an uneven share of responsibility for these industries, whose destructive externalities are often imposed on these places through large-scale infrastructures. Historical struggles for environmental justice in these rural sites foreground access to land, livelihoods, health, and cultures of place. Contributing to recent debates on the colonial endurances of contemporary “green” development, we argue that these rural movements should be a starting point for a “just” transition attuned to anti-imperialist goals in Ireland.

Religious Diversity, Islam, and Integration in Western Europe—Dissecting Symbolic, Social, and Institutional Boundary Dynamics

Religious diversity and, in particular, the presence of Islam is often perceived as a threat to national solidarity and social cohesion across Western Europe. Reviewing and synthesizing compartmentalized research literature on religion and immigrant integration, this article scrutinizes symbolic, social, and institutional boundary processes and their underlying micro-level mechanisms. First, it showcases the relative brightness of religiously coded symbolic boundaries that is sustained by anti-Muslim prejudices among the majority as well as by the intergenerational transmission of Muslim religiosity. Second, it discusses whether and how religious differences translate into social boundaries, through both discrimination and religiously based (self-)segregation on the labor market, in education, and in social networks. Third, it traces how interactive sequences of Muslims’ claims for recognition and public policy responses have led to institutional boundary shifts under the influence of constitutional law and European human rights and anti-discrimination directives. The article concludes by discussing scenarios of how macro-level processes of symbolic, social, and institutional boundary transformation interrelate, thus raising broader questions on religious diversity and integration in Western European nation-states.

Decolonizing the “state of nature” in political thought

The study of coloniality as a “social imaginary” (Charles Taylor) from the perspective of decoloniality invites European scholars, to “think again”, to interrogate their own traditions, including their modern political philosophical tradition. In this article, I will discuss a powerful modern political imaginary, namely the democratic narrative of the “social contract”. Such narratives or “imaginations of our origin” (Ursprungsphantasien: Philip Manow) give us answers to the enigma of our social and political existence: what does it mean to live in this political community? What does it give us, ask from us? In the modern narrative of the “social contract”, we are told that, to be a good citizen, we have/had to leave the “state of nature” (status naturalis), a state often described as a state of disorder, conflict, and war, and accept the status of citizenship (status civilis) and a powerful state as guarantee of peace and the rule of law. In this article, I will firstly give some examples of the use of this narrative in very diverse contexts: 1) in the context of the European religious civil wars in the 16th and 17th centuries (birth of the modern liberal political philosophy), 2) in the context of the transition of European nation-states to the European Union after WWII, 3) in the context of the transition of Apartheid South Africa to a non-racial democracy. Secondly, I will concentrate on one of the first philosophers who introduced the state of nature/civil state narrative, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), to discover that his political imagination is deeply influenced by the colonial experience in the “New World”, especially the meeting with the indigenous Indians in America. In several aspects, they are in Hobbes’ imagination the incarnation of the life in the “state of nature”. This raises the question, how the idea of a democratic social contract can be reformulated, without Eurocentric and racist premises, and without simply reversing the Hobbesian narrative: since the “colonizer” is the root of our conflict and controversies, to expel him will restore a durable peace.

Charles Tilly’s Elegant Theories About the Origins of European Nation-States, Social Movements, Contentious Politics, and Democracy

The oeuvre of Charles Tilly provides a helpful model of how to conduct social science. Nevertheless, most readers are familiar only with a subset of his works. Consequently, Tilly’s contributions are often understood as being limited to a few hypotheses or statements, often cited out of context or in an over-simplified manner. This article aims to provide a more extensive overview of Tilly’s work and its continued relevance. It introduces some of his key concepts, such as state formation, superior stories, relational realism, trust networks, categorical inequality, contentious politics, and democratization. This article makes a case for a broader application of these concepts in social sciences research, theorizing, and contemporary political analyses.

The REED typology: understanding market-orientation and instrumental values in cultural policy across Europe

ABSTRACT This article develops a typology of cultural policy in 30 European nation-states, based on the centrality of “neoliberal” market-based rationalities in subsidised cultural fields. This Resistant, Emergent, Established, and Dominant (REED) typology is based on two measures of marketisation, market-orientation and instrumental values, which are found in European “cultural policy assemblages” (networked systems of cultural policies, cultural policymaking bodies, cultural organisations, and cultural intermediaries). We show that all cultural policy assemblages in European nation-states are marketised to some degree, suggesting that Europe is “post-marketised”. Further, we find a heterogenous range of marketised practices, showing different instantiations of marketisation across nation-states. REED offers a new prism to conceptualise Europe’s subsidised cultural fields. Grounded in actual policy orientations, it overcomes limitations of earlier typologies and, crucially, it provides both a descriptive modelling of the contemporary European cultural field and an analytical methodology for comparing nation-states relative to marketisation.

Dynamic multilingualism of refugee families meets monolingual language policy in German ECE institutions

ABSTRACT Studies on Family Language Policy state that the shape of family multilingualism is embedded in diverse conditions within and outside the family, like historical, social and political factors, which influence family language practices. In this regard, the monolingual orientation of early childhood education (ECE) institutions in many European nation states is in tension with dynamic family multilingualism, thereby constituting a potentially conflict-prone relationship. In this article, we would like to illustrate this with regard to language policy in ECE institutions in Germany, drawing on empirical data from a new teaching research project on Family Language Policy of multilingual, (newly) migrated and/or refugee families. Our analyses reveal that parents are aware of selection in education based on language as well as a hierarchical language order. Family language practices are shaped against the background of the prevailing language policy in ECE institutions.

Ethnonationalism in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and India’s Security Concerns in Northeast India

It is well known that ‘nation’ or nation-states are the most important organizing principles of governance, which are adopted by many states across the globe. Soon after the end of the Second World War, all the post-colonial countries followed the European model of the nation-state as a modern way of governance, which promotes cultural and political uniformity. In this context, the article has examined the effectiveness of the European nation-state model, which is adopted in post-colonial South Asian states, and in this regard, it has taken the case study of Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The study shows that, even if Bangladesh is one of the least heterogeneous states among all South Asian countries, it is still grappling with the crisis of ethnic conflicts and violation of minority rights, and insurgency in the state. As a result, it has not only brought tensions within Bangladesh but also, it is causing security concerns too in the neighboring state of India by pushing the migration of ethnic minorities and population-made victims out of it. Like other South Asian countries, Bangladesh is also facing the crisis of ethnonationalism, which is undermining the ethos of multiculturalism and the process of nation-state building.

Hidden Dialogicality among Eritrean Refugees in the Civic Integration Process in The Netherlands

In the debate about the integration of refugees in European nation-states, several scholars have recently noted a so-called ‘agency paradox’ (Klaver et al., 2018), which draws a contrast between, on the one hand, the initiative and inventiveness of refugees during their flight and, on the other hand, an allegedly lethargic attitude upon arrival in a new country. In this paper, we will unpack this paradox in a critical analysis of civic integration in the Netherlands. We shall write ‘against integration’ (cf. Rytter, 2019) by recovering the muted voices of a group of Eritrean refugees whose future depends on the obligation to complete civic integration exams. Using Dialogical Self Theory (DST), we will demonstrate that a seemingly passive attitude among migrants must not be interpreted as a lack of agency. Instead, we will show that their agency is silenced and subordinated by the integration process, but that they are simultaneously involved in a hidden dialogue with the new society in order to negotiate a future in which their multiple identifications as both Eritrean and Dutch are recognized. By facilitating the recovery and recognition of the muted voices of Eritrean refugees, Dialogical Self Theory contributes to their empowerment.

From Silence to Silencing? Contradictions and Tensions in Language Revitalization

Abstract Language revitalization is imbued with tensions, and while it often is emancipatory, reclaiming a language can be a painful, silencing experience. Processes of colonization have led to epistemological absences (Santos 2012), which may be conceptualized as manifestations of silence. Understanding how and why silences come about and linger today is important for overcoming challenges those engaging in language reclamation may face. Therefore, paying attention to silences and emotional aspects of revitalization processes is important. In order to explore the inherent tensions of revitalization processes, I investigate lived experiences of language reclamation, focusing on emotions and silences in revitalization processes of Sámi in Northern Norway. European nation states colonized not only in the global South, but also ‘at home’. Thus, the South, in the form of silenced and marginalized populations, also exists in the global North (Santos 2012). Drawing on perspectives from Southern Theory and Gordon’s (2017) sociology of haunting, I investigate silences, emotions and tensions in language reclamation to shed light on how our colonial past may re-emerge in processes of language reclamation.

European Border and Coast Guard standing corps. The establishment of a European border police

In the European Union, borders are largely communitised. With the creation of the European Border and Coast Guard standing corps, their Europeanisation has reached its temporary climax in the expansion of the Frontex mandate decided in 2019. This standing corps of 10,000 Frontex border guards (until 2027) is to be used for border controls, repatriations and work against human trafficking. For the first time, the European agency not only receives extensive resources, but also executive powers at the external borders of the European Union. The creation of the standing corps marks a paradigm shift in the European Union – it means the de facto establishment of a European border police. This border police is uniformed, armed, and has genuine border police tasks and executive powers previously reserved for the bodies of European nation states. Theoretically, this milestone of deepening Europeanisation can be classified as the result of supplementary institutionalisation. How the standing corps is formed, with which discourses and symbols the establishment of the border police is accompanied, and why it can be understood as supplementary institutionalisation, is the subject of this contribution.