“'Subaltern Victims’ or ‘Useful Resources”? Migrant Women in the Lega Nord Ideology and Politics"

Since the mid-2000s we have witnessed the emergence of a new phenomenon in several European countries: the mobilisation of issues of women’s rights and gender equality by populist radical right parties (PRR)1 in anti-immigration campaigns. Recent contributions have illustrated some aspects and contradictions of these phenomena, for instance in relation to the PRR parties’ embrace not only of women’s but also gay rights (Bracke 2011). Others have described the double standard applied to migrant men and women in the context of raising hostility towards the Muslim population, not only by PRR parties, but within the mainstream more generally; whereas Muslim men have been mostly described as representing a social and cultural danger to European societies as well as being inherently misogynist, Muslim women have been portrayed prevalently as victims to be rescued (Abu-Lughod 2013). Little however has been written on the gendered ideology and strategies of these parties, particularly when it comes to addressing the issue of migrant women. This chapter aims to address these gaps in the scholarly literature by focusing on the gendered dimensions of anti-immigration ideology, policy and politics in the case of the LN. In particular, we draw on the empirical findings of two research projects to analyse the instrumental mobilisation of women’s rights by the LN to stigmatise migrant, particularly Muslim, communities

Against Modern Football: Mobilising Protest Movements in Social Media

Recent debates in sociology consider how Internet communications might catalyse leaderless, open-ended, affective social movements that broaden support and bypass traditional institutional channels to create change. We extend this work into the field of leisure and lifestyle politics with an empirical study of Internet-mediated protest movement, Stand Against Modern Football. We explain how social media facilitate communications that transcend longstanding rivalries, and engender shared affective frames that unite diverse groups against corporate logics. In examining grassroots organisation, communication and protest actions that span online and urban locations, we discover sustained interconnectedness with traditional social movements, political parties, the media and the corporate targets of protests. Finally, we suggest that Internet-based social movements establish stable forms of organisation and leadership at these networked intersections in order to advance instrumental programmes of change

Dissonant alignments: the ethics and politics of researching state institutions

This article explores the ethical challenges of conducting fieldwork in state institutions. It critically engages with the chain of competing claims and multiple loyalties that confront social researchers, and addresses as the main question: how does working with people with whose goals one fundamentally disagrees shape the necessity of building collaborative alliances and trust