Europeanisation from below: Still time for another Europe? Introduction to the special issue of the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology

ABSTRACT

The focus of this special issue is on social movements' alternative visions and practices of ‘another Europe’. As trust in the European Union (EU) is dramatically falling amongst its citizens, research on alternative visions of Europe ‘from below’ appears all the more relevant in order to understand the potential for changes in EU politics, policies, and polity. The general question we want to address refers therefore to the ways in which the financial crisis and related political turmoil have affected the position of progressive social movements towards the Europeanisation process. In addressing the development of alternative visions of Europe, this special issue looks at anti-austerity protests, and related mobilisations in the period of 2011–2016. The various contributions assess the effects of the financial crisis on the multilevel governance of European countries and, therefore, on the ways in which social movements formulate claims, frames, and justifications about European institutions. This editorial introduces the main approaches to the Europeanisation of social movements, discusses how they might apply in times of crisis, and then presents the articles included in the special issue.

The focus of this special issue is on social movements' alternative visions and practices of ‘another Europe’. As trust in the European Union (EU) is dramatically falling amongst its citizens, research on alternative visions of Europe ‘from below’ appears all the more relevant in order to understand the potential for changes in EU politics, policies, and polity. The general question we want to address refers therefore to the ways in which the financial crisis and related political turmoil have affected the position of progressive social movements towards the Europeanisation process.

Social movement organisations linked to the so-called ‘left-libertarian’ movement family have long voiced increasingly critical positions about the EU, yet have at the same time promoted ‘another Europe’, and Europeanised their organisational networks and action strategies (della Porta & Caiani 2009). Like the labour movement during the development of the nation states, progressive social movements seemed destined to play a valuable role in pushing for a social and democratic Europe, legitimising the European polity (della Porta 2009b; Imig & Tarrow 2001; Marks & McAdam 1999; Tarrow 1995). At the beginning of the millennium cosmopolitan activists of the Global Justice Movement (GJM) had developed critical visions of Europe, also elaborating complex proposals for reforms of EU policies and politics. Research had indeed indicated that, while protest events still especially targeted national (or even local) institutions, a Europeanisation of contentious politics developed. In addition, even if few in numbers, protests targeting EU institutions (first of all European Social Forums and counter-summits during EU institutional activities) were particularly eventful in producing transnational organisational ties and cosmopolitan frames, with specific focus on the development of new visions of Europe.

Given the many challenges that the financial crisis and its repercussions posed to representative political institutions, including those of the EU, is this still a time in which ideas of another, more just and democratic, Europe can develop? The extent to which in the last decade critical Europeanism has ceded terrain to Euroscepticism, including within this alter-European vision, is a central question we seek to address in this special issue. The response to the question is not clear cut. While social movement studies, along with other areas of the social sciences, have assumed increasing Europeanisation, recent developments have certainly challenged this expectation. In particular, during the Great Regression, progressive social movements seem to have moved back to the national and local levels, engaging very little or not at all with the EU and questions of Europe more generally (Kaldor & Selchow 2012). At the same time, however, as we are also going to see in what follows, the very intensity of the challenge that European countries and their citizens need to address makes acting and thinking at European level all the more urgent for movement activists.

In addressing the development of alternative visions of Europe, this special issue looks at anti-austerity protests, and related mobilisations in the period of 2011–2016. The various contributions assess the effects of the financial crisis on the multilevel governance of European countries and, therefore, on the ways in which social movements formulate claims, frames, and justifications about European institutions. A cross-time comparison is constructed by building on information collected during previous research on the European Social Forums (ESF) between 2001 and 2006 (della Porta 2007; della Porta 2009a, 2009b; della Porta 2013, 2015; della Porta, Andretta, Mosca, & Reiter, 2006; della Porta & Mattoni 2014). The cross-time comparison helps identifying continuities in social movements' position on Europe, but also discontinuities, which are affected by the financial crisis, understood as a critical juncture.

Analysing several movement organisations that can be seen as stemming from the same movement areas as the European Social Forums in the beginning of the millennium, we look in depth at how positions on Europe evolve. With the increasing competences of EU institutions, research on social movements and Europeanisation had indicated a move away from protest towards advocacy, understood as an adaptation of movements to EU structures. It has also provided evidence of a re-politicisation of EU issues through the selective use of unconventional, protest-oriented strategies among groups forming part of the GJM (della Porta 2009a; della Porta 2013: della Porta 2015). The ESF, the largest annual gathering and arena for debate for the GJM in Europe, expressed a criticism of representative institutions within a broader frame, where the EU in particular was stigmatised because of its neoliberalism and lack of democratic accountability. Trust in the EU among activists surveyed at various ESF meetings was indeed low, and dropped steadily from one forum to the next. Within this critical political vision, however, images of another Europe signalled hope in reformist efforts to make European institutions more democratic and accountable. The image of ‘another Europe’ (rather than ‘no Europe’) was often stressed in debates (della Porta & Caiani 2009).

Research on more recent ‘left-libertarian’ movements seems to indicate a shift in visions of, and practices oriented towards, ‘another Europe’. In particular, anti-austerity protestors targeted what they saw as an overlapping of economic and political elites, with the perceived collusion of EU institutions with business and industry groups at all levels of government. Research also indicates that in those countries that have been hit hardest by the economic crisis, and have experienced subsequent cuts in public expenditure and related increases in inequality, demonstrators have tended to have particularly low levels of trust in EU institutions (della Porta 2013). While the EU was certainly considered as responsible for the austerity policies imposed on European citizens, the massive protests have nevertheless addressed national governments.

This was also reflected in the development of mainly national networks for contentiousmobilisation. Also, as far as protest repertoires are concerned, counter-summits at European Councils have been replaced with occupations of public squares, that is at the local level, where protesters feel some headway may be made in terms of rebuilding democracy. The acampadas (camps) of what have come to be known as the ‘Indignados’ and ‘Occupy’ movements have been read as arenas for prefigurative politics, or spaces for building real democracies, as opposed to engaging with a system no longer capable of implementing democracy (della Porta 2015; della Porta, Fernandez, Kouki, & Mosca, 2016; Kaldor & Selchow 2012).

Focusing on social movements active in the years 2010s on issues such as labour rights, women’s rights, environmental protections, youth conditions, migrant rights, and self-determination, the research presented in this special issue covers the claims, frames, and justification of social movement organisations that are seen as an evolution of the ESF process. Building upon social movement studies, political discourses are analysed by looking at a) the claims, which are concrete demands for policy changes that progressive social movement organisations address to European institutions; b) the frames, as the dominant worldviews of Europe that guide the behaviour of social movement organisations (Caiani, della Porta & Wagemann, 2012; Snow & Benford 1988); and c) the ways in which claims and frames are linked at a normative level with reference to broader justifications of positions towards Europe that are used by social movement organisations (as defined in Boltanski & Thévenot 2006, 37). A basic distinction is usually made between visions oriented toward increased power for the EU (often framed within federalist projects) and those that call for reducing the power of the EU (often accompanied by demands for more national sovereignty). The reality is however much more nuanced, with harsh criticism often combined with the recognition of a need for international solutions to global problems.

The various contributions in the special issue single out the increasing criticism of existing EU institutions at the level of politics (with the democratic deficit perceived as increasing during the financial crisis); policy (seen as less and less driven by considerations of social justice and solidarity); and polity (with proposals to go ‘beyond Europe’). While federalist visions are less and less supported, a soft cosmopolitanism aims at combining different territorial levels, regaining control at the national but also local level, within mutualist conceptions. In fact, even within more critical visions of the EU and greater concerns for issues of national sovereignty, the progressive movements we look at still continue to call for another Europe. Cosmopolitan visions are articulated within a stress on solidarity among various national movements in Europe, as well as with forced migrants within European borders. At the same time, positions on the EU are becoming so divisive within the progressive Left that European perspectives are often not discussed. Faced with the politicisation of Europe by the radical right, the progressive social movements seem hesitant to voice their own critique, fearing it might be confused with the exclusive nationalist and xenophobic positions of their adversaries. Moreover, transnational protest campaigns, that are arenas for the development of cosmopolitan visions, are also made more difficult by the decline of funding opportunities for larger social movement organisations, with cuts in funding aggravated by the financial crisis.

Moving beyond the description of visions of Europe, the articles presented in this special issue aim at explaining the changes based on endogenous as well as exogenous processes. Nowadays, progressive movements seem to combine all of them, but in different balances than in past movements, with a return to domestication, but also the emergence of forms of solidarisation, that could be considered an additional path to Europeanisation.

Firstly, looking at social movement practices, how changing visions are connected to different paths of the Europeanisation of social movements becomes a point of analysis.. Research on the ESF had singled out a shift in the Europeanisation of social movements, going beyond extant paths of domestication and externalisation into one of transnationalisation. As for domestication—that is, protest that targets EU decisions, but runs at the national level—protest event analysis has repeatedly concluded that concerns about EU decisions have been mainly expressed at the national level, where elected political institutions are considered more accountable to the citizen-electors (Imig & Tarrow 2001). Claims often address specific EU decisions, framed as infringing national sovereignty, within a justification of European institutions that is resonant with inter-governmental conceptions of Europe. The low presence of protest at the European level has been explained by the political opportunities available at various territorial levels of government (della Porta & Kriesi 1999). Social movement studies have in fact stressed that protest grows when not only grievances, but also resources and opportunities are present—that is, when protesters believe their actions could have an impact upon decision makers. The fact that only a limited number of protests targeted the institutions of the EU could be explained by the undeniable deficit in representative democracy at that level. Besides the weak electoral accountability of EU representative political institutions, the difficulties in building a European public sphere has been emphasised. If research has pointed toward complex results, revealing an increasing Europeanisation of national public discourses (see Eder & Trenz 2003), the participation of civil society actors in the mass-media debate on Europe remains limited (della Porta and Caiani 2009; Imig & Tarrow 2001). While such paths of mobilisation might be seen as proof of the persistent relevance of the nation state as a target for protest, as well as of the permanent weakness of the EU institutions, national protests against EU-induced policies also indicate a potential for the transnationalisation of contentious politics and the emergence of a transnational public sphere. In fact, in the course of these campaigns, innovations developed both in the organisational structure and in the frames of the protest, with the development of European networks and European identities, as indicated by an analysis of the protest of dairy farmers against EU milk quotas in Italy in the mid-1990s (della Porta 2007).

If domestication emerged as a frequent path of Europeanisation of social movements, the EU institutions are also seen as an additional arena for the mobilisation of resources that may then be used at the national level. Through a path of externalisation (Chabanet 2002), national movement actors targeted the EU in order to put pressure on their own governments. In these cases, actors who feel weak at home try to mobilise allies at the transnational level: protest addresses EU institutions, pushing them to intervene in domestic governments. Claims by established transnational social movement organisations are addressed here, especially in areas in which EU institutions have larger competences. These claims are often framed as improvements within a general common destiny, providing a justification of Europeanisation within a regulatory vision of the EU institutions. Inclusion at EU level has always been selective, as only the organisations that adapt to the ‘rules of the game’ obtain routine—though usually informal— access to EU institutions (Ruzza 2004). However, changes in the European institutions have facilitated access to some movement organisations, having been granted increased participation in return for expertise and legitimacy (Parks 2015).

Research on the ESF has also singled out a third path of Europeanisation of protest, through transnationalisation, as the creation of EU-wide social movement organisations putting forward claims directly in front of EU institutions (della Porta & Caiani 2009). At the turn of the millennium, international summits were often accompanied by counter-summits and protest demonstrations that often received wider press coverage than the official agenda (della Porta 2007). Transnational mobilisations of this type have also targeted European institutions. The European Marches against unemployment, insecurity and, exclusion, addressing the EU summits in Amsterdam in 1997 and in Cologne in 1999 (Chabanet 2002; Balme & Chabanet 2002), played an important role in the emergence of the European wave of protest that became visible in the July 2001 anti-G8 demonstrations in Genoa (della Porta 2007). In Nice, Gothenburg, Barcelona, and Copenhagen, tens of thousands marched during EU summits to protest EU decisions. Since 2002, protesters have also met yearly in the ESF to debate Europeanisation and its limits. The European construction was at the core of the first ESF in Florence in November 2002, followed by a second one in Paris in 2003, a third in London in 2004, and a fourth in Athens in May 2006. The large success of the first European forum–with sixty thousand activists from all over Europe participating in three days of debate, and between five hundred thousand and one million activists in the closing march–was the result of networking among groups and individuals with different political and social backgrounds that continued in the following years (della Porta et al. 2006). Within the Social Forums, claims against neoliberal policies, framed in terms of a Europeanisation from below, often referred to justifications elaborated within federalist territorial visions.

The financial crisis, and the ensuing social and political crises, seem to have slowed down or even inverted the trend towards transnationalisation, while declining trust in the EU also made externationalisation less central. Some moments of transnationalisation were certainly also visible throughout the 2010s. While collective action focused at the national levels, European protest events and campaigns included the global day of protest on October 15, 2011 and the ‘Blockupy Frankfurt’ protests starting in 2012, as well as the European strike/day of action called by the European Trade Union Confederation on November 14, 2012, the Brussels demonstration against the Spring meeting of the European Council in March 2013, and the ‘AlterSummit’ in Athens in June 2013 (Pianta & Gerbaudo 2016). Externalisation also continued to be present, as the use of EU petitions during campaigns against water privatisation has shown (della Porta 2020; della Porta & Parks 2015). Recent research on campaigns mobilised around specific EU policies has shown a combination of protest and advocacy tactics (Leiren & Parks 2014; see also Bieler 2011; Erne 2008; Parks 2015; Turnbull 2010). Notwithstandingattempts to address the EU within a path of externalisation as well as transnationalisation, the research collected in this special issues shows a return of the national level, with Europeanisation mainly taking paths of domestication. In particular, anti-austerity protests followed the different timing and intensity of the crisis, mobilising large masses of citizens in collective actions that immediately targeted their domestic level.

Based on the empirical research, we can however add to this a path of solidarisation. At the organisational level, networks remained active beyond national borders, at times developing cross-national ties around highly symbolic struggles. Several movement initiatives provided occasions for encounters among (very mobile) activists coming from different countries. This was reflected in the focus of our research: visions of Europe. The diagnostic frames became indeed more and more critical, given the perceived closure of political opportunities, with stigmatisation of a ‘Europe of the banks’, characterized by increasing neoliberal policies and declining protections for social, civil and political rights. This was also reflected in an increasing lack of transparency and democratic accountability as decisions moved towards EU financial institutions, as well as increasingly exclusive definitions of European citizens that would exclude not only migrants but also ethnic minorities. At the prognostic level, however, the solution was not located in a return to the national level, which was considered not only inadequate to address global problems, but also sharing the same type of neoliberal bias as the EU institutions. While there were difficulties in talking about Europe, the xenophobic Euroscepticism of the radical right was stigmatised. Calls for national sovereignty were limited, given the perceived necessity not to be confused with racist groups. Aiming to go beyond Europe, activists suggested the opening of borders as well as radical visions of municipal federalism, still pointing at the need to construct alternatives. Finally, the motivational frame still located Europe as a main terrain for progressive struggles. Meanwhile, the difficulties in mobilising transnationally were acknowledged, yet with persistent attempts to build coordination at EU level developed, both as informal exchanges between national networks, and in more formalised transnational campaigns.

While the progressive movements analysed still talk of another Europe, the hopes of transforming the EU’s politics, policies, and polities, are weakened given a closing down of political opportunities at the European level and declining resources to mobilise transnationally. Diminishing resources and opportunities can explain the challenges of Europeanisation to social movements, and can also explain the consideration of Europe as a terrain of struggles, and of frequent expression of reciprocal solidarity among those social movements. Research indicates a general decline in collective resources that can be mobilised for action at the EU level. Not only is access to EU institutions more and more selective, but even large non-government organisations (NGOs) are rarely able to organise public activities at the European level. While the ESF had been capable of connecting various networks, the crisis reduced the material and symbolic resources that can be devoted to coordinating activities. Comparing different social movements, we note that changing visions of Europe are linked to issue-specific resources available for protests at national and EU level. The presence of different positions, ranging from demands for ‘more Europe’ to demands for ‘more national sovereignty’, is in fact related to the specific availability of resources within organisational networks. In particular, organisations traditionally endowed with more material resources and channels of access to EU institutions express more trust in European integration. At the symbolic level, past critical Europeanism seems to be particularly resilient among the movement organisations that had invested more in the attempt to build another Europe. Even within a very critical assessment of the EU, given a lack of trust in national institutions, activists appeared to have maintained an interest in Europeanisation struggles. Eurosceptic positions therefore remained marginal, with critical Europeanism being kept alive not only by the perception of complex problems to be addressed by institutions beyond the nation states, but also by a deeply rooted international solidarity, that was fuelled by informal ties.

Besides internal resources, external opportunities also count. The upward scale shift at the beginning of the millennium had followed some opening up of opportunities in the EU, pushing social movements towards multilevel protests. While critical of existing policies and politics, many social movement organisations of the ESF interacted especially with some institutions within the EU (for example, the European Parliament, and some DGs in the European Commission), building upon the belief that representative institutions could be usefully reformed (della Porta 2007). More negative visions of existing EU institutions followed from a perceived closing down of multilevel political opportunities, defined as political characteristics that facilitated the channelling of social movement demands (della Porta and Diani 2020). In particular, the financial crisis, with the increasing power of the least democratically accountable institutions (such as the European Central Bank or Eco-Fin) represented a critical juncture that made EU institutions all the nearer to business and further from citizens (della Porta and Parks 2016). In addition, more recently the EU institutional failure in dealing with the so-called ‘refugees crisis’ has been perceived as further reducing the opportunities to create inclusive European institutions (della Porta et al. 2017). The financial crisis and especially its austerity response at the EU level, with the treatment of Greece epitomising the ever greater market-orientation of the EU and a corresponding decline in attention to a ‘Europe of the citizens’, have certainly frustrated hopes in the development of a social Europe. The promotion by the EU of a vision of the crisis as the responsibility of the weaker countries, and the imposition of neoliberal programmes oriented to the mantra of privatisation, liberalisation, and deregulation, have not only made for a great deal of suffering (a ‘social butchery’ leading to a humanitarian crisis) but also promoted competition between countries, through the unsustainable idea that all EU member-states had to build an export-oriented economy. In the same period, the treatment of the so-called ‘refugees crisis’ through what has been perceived as a strengthening of the external borders (making Europe more and more like a fortress) has also shown the lack of internal solidarity inside the EU borders, with the visible failure of the Dublin Treaty, and increasing fights over the allocation of migrants (della Porta 2018). Besides becoming more and more a ‘Europe of the market’ and a ‘fortress Europe’, the management of the Euro during the crisis increased the power of the most opaque institutions within the EU, reducing, rather than enhancing, the role not only of the European parliament, but also of the parliaments of the EU member states. It is precisely this power that calls for maintaining a critical focus on EU institutions as targets of contentious politics.

The perception of multilevel opportunities varies, however, by country and movement. Previous analyses have shown that the presence of multiple points of access or veto in the EU’s political opportunity structure impact differently upon social movements concerned with different issues (della Porta 2009a; Ruzza 2004). The same holds true with specific opportunities related at the EU level to the configuration of power attached to any single issue, which causes allies and enemies to shift: this involves the Directorates General in charge of the dossier, the political balances in the European Parliament, the procedure in place, the makeup of the Council, and opportunities for mobilisation in the member states (Parks 2015). Addressing different countries, the contributions collected in this volume reflect on the various combination of opportunities and constraints that social movement organisations have to face when mobilisations transnationally.

The articles in this special issue were developed within a comparative research project on Democracy in the EU and the Potential of a European Society (DEMOS), which is funded by the the Scuola Normale Superiore, where it is located. The research is based on multiple sources and methods. In order to build a parallel set of social movement organisations to those studied in 2001-2006 in previous research (della Porta 2007; della Porta 2009a, 2009b; della Porta et al. 2006), we selected groups that can be considered, at least in part, as spin-offs from the ESF. In particular, we singled out social movement areas active on labour, environment, gender, youth, migrants, and self-determination. The research covered Italy in depth, and developed some comparative perspectives on Spain, Germany, the UK, and Poland. This was done by consulting documents produced by groups and associations, and especially by interviewing key activists, who were oftentimes directly involved in the mobilisations, for several years and occupied a central role in their movement areas. We conducted a total of about seventy indepth interviews with activists, chosen by theoretically-driven sampling, and analysed the main documents by the social movement organisations under investigation. As previously mentioned, we compared our findings with similar research, in order to examine the evolution (or the similarities) in comparison previous waves of mobilisation, and in particular with the Global Justice Movement (della Porta 2007; della Porta 2009a, 2009b; della Porta et al. 2006; della Porta and Caiani 2009).

With its comparative perspective (both cross country and cross-movement), research presented in this volume complements recent attempts to analyse the development of contentious Europeanisation in specific movement areas—for example, Philip Ayoub and David Paternotte’s (2014) study on LGBT movements in Europe, or Jennifer Hadden’s (2015) analysis of the campaigns against climate change. Not only does this special issue look at social movements active on different topics (including labour, women, environment, and independentism) but also, rather than focusing only on transnational mobilisations (della Porta 2009a, 2009b; Parks 2015), it looks at the visions of Europe in social movements active at different geographical levels, from the local to the European. While the recent European elections and their consequences have made debates about the Europeanisation process extremely relevant, by addressing the little studied topic of Europeanisation from below, this special issue seeks to fill a gap not only in the social sciences, but also in the public discourses about the EU and the Europeanisation process.

The contributions

In her contribution, titled ‘Beyond Europe. Alternative visions of Europe in Italian self-managed spaces’, Chiara Milan analyses the extent to which the multiple crises that the EU endured in the last decade, and in particular the social and economic crises starting in 2008, shaped the ways social movement actors active in the Italian counter-cultural scene view Europe and the process of European integration. The evolution of the Europeanisation of progressive social movements since the end of the Global Justice Movement of the 2000s is addressed by drawing on qualitative interviews with representatives of progressive grassroots groups engaged in self-managed spaces across Italy. Far from the enthusiasm for the possibilities to build ‘another Europe’ that characterised the Global Justice Movement, the analysis shows that in the second decade of the 2000s, grassroots groups faced the challenge of responding to widespread Euroscepticism and the plummeting trust of citizens towards the EU. Italian social movement organisations active in the counter-cultural scene appear in fact to lean towards Euro-critical positions, although still referring to the European sphere as the main field of political intervention. In their discourses and practices, they do not call into question their country’s EU membership nor their connections with movements all over Europe. Yet, they criticise the undemocratic and non-transparent nature of the EU institutions and elites, as well as the policies adopted to handle the migration crisis, and the imposition of punitive austerity policies. Neither pro nor anti-EU, they propose an alternative vision of Europe in which local, autonomous communities assume central importance, and direct democracy practices stand at the basis of a new model of political and social organisation.

Reference to Europeanisation as multilevel governance assumes a specific meaning when addressed within the centre-periphery cleavage. Looking at ‘Europe in the procés: European (dis-)integration and Catalan secessionism’, Martin Portos assesses Europe as an essentially contested project, in relation to its boundaries, its institutions, and its functional scope. In a context characterised by the detachment of key functions from the state, by legal pluralism, and by complex, overlapping transnational regimes, the article sheds light on the possibilities for plurinational accommodation in the evolving European order. Focusing on secessionist mobilisation as a major challenge to territorial integrity and the state, based on twelve interviews with activists, it explores how this plays out within the national and supranational order. Specifically, it analyses how the discourses and frames around European institutions and (dis-)integration are built and evolved in the Catalan secessionist movement. In spite of strong variation in terms of secessionist milieus, pessimistic narratives about the EU predominate, with a progressive estrangement between secessionists and European institutions, that in turn has important implications for the prospects of a compromise solution.

The positions towards Europeanisation seem less critical instead in the environmental movements, which traditionally found channels of access to EU institutions, even if hopes were often frustrated by the realisation of the much stronger power of the influence of economic interests. In ‘Between ecological democracy and democratic ecology: disenchantment and alternative visions of Europe among the Italian environmental archipelago’, Niccolò Bertuzzi suggests that, even if the EU is often positively described when speaking of environmental issues, numerous criticisms are voiced at the level of polity, policy, and politics. Based on nineteen semi-structured interviews with key Italian activists and the analysis of materials produced by groups and associations, the article deals with the different visions of Europe within the Italian environmental archipelago. The author notes a widespread disenchantment with the Europeanisation process, and situates Europe as a specific political issue. Beyond this general pattern, a clear dichotomy emerges. On the one hand, there are institutional NGOs conduct lobbying activities according to different multilevel political opportunities. Their attempt is to reform the current structure of the EU, involving a partial normalisation of the more innovative perspectives about ‘another Europe’ advanced by the Global Justice Movement in the past. On the other hand, local grass-roots groups propose to go ‘beyond Europe’, critically considering the current geographical borders of the continent and its political institutions: they normally do so using contentious forms of action in a domestic dimension, even if sometimes accompanied by more institutional paths. The article addresses these two contrasting perspectives on crucial nodes, such as (territorial and food) sovereignty, the local/national/European dimension of mobilisations, and the dialectic between lobbying and protest. Two different democratic paradigms are thereby identified: a) democratic ecology, which stresses a conception of ecology as subordinated to, or at least unthinkable outside, (Western) representative democracy; and b) ecological democracy, which presents a conception of democracy as effective only if based on ecological perspectives, and which for this reason is critical towards the EU and the ‘Frankfurt-Brussels consensus’.

Similarly complex, between hope and disillusionment, are the relations between the Italian women’s movement and Europe, which Daniela Chironi analyses in ‘A fragile shield for protecting civil rights: The EU in the eye of Italian gender movements’. The article analyses the visions of Europe widespread within the feminist and LGBTQI movements in Italy during the global economic, financial, and democratic crises. Re-emerging in recent years to protest against (Catholic-driven) social and political conservatism, gender movements have become a fundamental component of the anti-austerity struggles in the country. Though often overlooked by movement scholars, they have expressed a profound renewal of previous feminist and LGBTQI movements’ features. In the attempt to fill some of the gaps in current literature, the article explores the ways in which feminist and LGBTQI collectives frame Europe, the claims they address to the European institutions, and the actions they put in place at the continental level. To this end, the author examines qualitative data coming from eleven semi-structured interviews with activists engaged in gender struggles in Florence and Bologna. Challenging expectations of growing and linear Europeanisation, attention is devoted to contextual factors to explain widespread discontent with European policies and mistrust towards European institutions. While the combination of growing economic inequality with a strong legitimacy crisis of representation contributes to radicalising activists’ criticisms towards the EU, the closing down of opportunities at the domestic level prevents the dismissal of the alter-European project.

As Lorenzo Zamponi shows in his contribution, ‘From Euro-criticism to Euro-disenchantment: strategies and ideologies of Europe in labour struggles in Italy in times of crisis’, growing criticism of the EU process also emerges in the workers’ movement, once considered as quite supportive of the process of Europeanisation. While critical attitudes towards European integration have been at the core of an established strand of studies in the last two decades, recent waves of anti-austerity protest in fact see a shift in progressive movements’ critical Europeanism. Especially, the mistrust of representative institutions has increased, also involving EU institutions, in particular in the countries that were most severely hit by the crisis. The article addresses the ways in which the experience of crisis, austerity and precarity has affected the visions and practices of Europe in the Italian labour movement. Referring in particular to ten in-depth interviews, the empirical analysis shows that, although the experience of crisis, austerity and precarity has strongly challenged ‘critical Europeanism’ and radicalised the activists’ vision of the EU, the border between calls for ‘another Europe’ and Eurosceptic claims seeming to be rather resilient. Euro-criticism is in crisis, but it seems to have left more ground to a frustrated Euro-disenchantment than to Euroscepticism. While a progressive and democratic reform of the existing EU is not considered a realistic outcome by several actors, calls to leave the EU nonetheless remain rare, given the distrust of the national government and the association of Euroscepticism with the political Right. The implications of these findings at the theoretical level are twofold: on the one hand, with regards to strategies, the closing down of political opportunities at the EU level seems to trigger the choice of domestication by movement actors. On the other hand, ideologies seem to be very resilient to change in the opportunity structure, or to shape the set of possible strategic choices for actors, establishing clear boundaries that cannot be easily crossed.

Besides analysing the visions of Europe by the specific social movements, this special issue also aims at understanding their implications in terms of paths towards Europeanisation, with focus on specific attempts at transnationalisation. An attempt at transnationalisation is addressed by Donatella della Porta in ‘Beyond Europe: Blockupy as a political moment’. The European Central Bank has been the main target of a protest campaign that developed through mass protests in Frankfurt, converging under the label of ‘Blockupy’. In this article, Blockupy is analysed as a political moment in (at least) two meanings of the term. Firstly, it reflects a specific time and space in the evolution of the Great Recession (and of the Great Regression). Secondly, it emerges from the attempt to trigger a turning point, bringing radical protests and frames at the heart of neoliberal Europe. Based on information from in-depth interviews and documents, the article is structured around the three main concepts of resource mobilisation, protest performances, and action framing, with particular attention paid to continuities and innovation vis-à-vis the ESF. From the point of view of the mobilisation of resources, within a very loose ‘mosaic of struggles’, transnationalisation is mainly embedded in informal ties and conjunctural occasions. In terms of action, while choosing EU symbolic targets, the protest remains mainly national. From the point of view of the framing, there is some continuity with the discourse of the Social Forum, but also with innovations. While Europe is seen as a space of power which, additionally, is in deep crisis, with the emergence of authoritarian and racist trends, the activists stress a need for solidarity among the various anti-austerity struggles going on in various countries.