Citizens Activism and Solidarity Movement in Contemporary Europe: Contending with Populism

The introduction by Birte Siim, Anna Krasteva and Aino Saarinen situate the book within the scholarly literature and European research. It is inspired by the challenges to understand the new forms of national populism linked to globalization, European integration, migration and multi-culturality/multiculturalism. The transformation of the political landscape, deconstruction of welfare states and growth of exclusive nationalisms across Europe following the immigration and ‘refugee crisis’ presents a challenge to counterforces and solidarity movements to combat othering and exclusion. Hate speech and hate acts flourish, even in regimes which have previously been characterized as tolerant and inclusive. The aim is to make counterforces to Right-wing populism in civil society visible and reflect critically on concepts such as citizenship; democracy; social movements; conflicts and cooperation around race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class.