Both roads lead to Rome: activist commitment and the identity-structure nexus in CasaPound

ABSTRACT

The primacy of networks vs. identities divides research on activism. Analyzing activist commitment in CasaPound, a movement organization of the far right in contemporary Italy, this paper advances a sequential multipath theory of activist commitment. In the recruitment phase either networks or identities suffice for movement entry. During the follow-up phase of integration, networks and identities reinforce each other: each is a necessary but no longer a sufficient condition. In the final phase, commitment is solidified by affective ties and emotional investments. To make this argument, our theory introduces a typology that differentiates between coming home and finding home.

KEYWORDS:

• Far right
• activism
• mobilization
• recruitment
• commitment
• Italian politics

Acknowledgments

For their critical comments and suggestions, the authors are grateful to Fedor Dokshin, Frédéric Vairel, participants in the 2018-19 Sociology Ph.D. research practicum at the University of Toronto, and the anonymous reviewers for Social Movement Studies. They also thank the activists who agreed to be interviewed for this study. Sébastien Parker acknowledges funding for research from the University of Ottawa and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. By commitment, we mean activism that is taxing of both time and effort rather than activism that is short-lived, sporadic, risk-free, or requiring little energy (Klandermans, 2007, p. 360). Because of the investment of effort required, unlike Downton and Wehr (1997) our definition of commitment thus involves more than persistence.

2. As Hunt and Benford (2007, p. 444) write, ‘fundamentally, collective identities are talked into existence’. Our definition thus merges conceptions of identity as: (1) the sameness among members of a group that ‘is expected to manifest itself in solidarity, in shared dispositions or consciousness, or in collective action’; and (2) a contingent product of social interaction – especially dialogue (cf. Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, pp. 7-8).

3. During our research in 2016, leaders forwarded figures of 5,000 to 6,000 active members (which does not include sympathizers and online contributors). During the same year, however, there were unsubstantiated claims by leadership stating that membership had doubled (with recent claims as high as 20,000). According to Froio et al. (2020), current registered membership may be close to 10,000 but the figure ‘could not be verified’.

4. At Piazza Navona in Rome in 2008 a protest against the Gelmini educational reform escalated into violence between activists from CasaPound and the far left. At Casale San Nicola (a suburb on the outskirts of Rome) in 2015 an anti-refugee protest by members of CasaPound led to a violent clash with police.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sébastien Parker

Sébastien Parker is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He is the recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His work broadly considers structural forces of change and continuity in liberal democracies, with a focus on public politics and political attitudes.

John Veugelers

John Veugelers is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He has written widely on the far right, immigration politics, social movements, and voluntary associations in Canada, France, and Italy. He is author of Empire’s Legacy: Roots of a Far-Right Affinity in Contemporary France (Oxford University Press, 2020).