Beyond Euroscepticism: radical left and right ‘visions of Europe’ across party and protest arenas

This article makes a case for reassessing what counts as pro- or anti-European identity. Over the past decade, the rise of radical right mobilisations has prompted many progressive social movement organisations and parties within the EU to anchor their activism in a defence of ‘Europe’ and in resistance to nationalist retrenchment - even while maintaining strong critiques of specific EU policies. At the same time, actors on the radical right also and increasingly claim a European identity, though one rooted in a markedly different and exclusionary understanding of what ‘Europe’ represents. The present study bridges party politics Europeanisation literature with work from the field of social movement studies to find a common conceptual framework that can capture the competing visions of this European identity. We construct a multi-level (across actor type, including political parties, social movements and individual activists), cross-country comparative case study that draws on focus groups, semi-structured interviews, party manifestos, movement campaign documents as well as online and offline publications to show how visions of Europe across party politics and the protest arena are symbolically constructed and utilised in response to the evolving dynamics of European politics and across political, cultural and economic dimensions.