From polarized we/they public opinion on European Integration towards social representations of public dialogue

Social psychology has established that oppositional we/they categorization is central to dis/identification with European integration (Hewstone, 1986 Chryssochoou, 2000; Mummendey and Walduz, 2004). As Europe faces fresh uncertainties, e.g. Brexit, this article reveals the multi-positional features of public opinion formation. Drawing on meta-representational approaches it reveals how we/they categorization moves from oppositional forms towards diplomatic non-oppositional forms when citizens speak about the general public in ‘a public capacity’ (Dewey, 1927). Two interview-led studies in England, Ireland, Germany, Scotland and Sweden (n = 100) brought participants into dialogue with the ideals of European integration. Analysis reveals six dialogical positions on the general public – avant-garde, advocating, homesteading, distancing, segmenting and progressive. These rest on social representations of the public as having freedom from movement, freedom of movement and freedom through movement. Understanding the public’s multi-positional capacities and the interplay between self-world narratives and European integration narratives is one step towards de-polarization and public dialogue on Europe

Reification and the refugee: using a counterposing dialogical analysis to unlock a frozen category

Thousands of individuals each year seek refugee status and the question of who can be accepted requires politicians within democracies to seek a public mandate. Unlike other socio-political categories individuals cannot self-identify as refugee; the category must be bureaucratically conferred. Therefore sustained humanitarian public concern is vital to the acceptance of refugees. This article sets parameters on this public concern. It examines how public narratives reify the refugee category. Showing how this reification constrains the citizenship, integration and opportunities of individuals, now safe, yet continually categorized in everyday public discourse as refugee. Interviews, focus groups (Study 1) and ethnography (Study 2) were conducted in Sweden and the United Kingdom (N = 57). The article introduces a counterposing dialogical analysis where public positioning of refugees is counterposed against dialogue by “refugees” anticipating their positioning. The analysis uncovers an hegemonic social representation of humanitarianism indexing “the refugee” as the passive recipient of help framed by a public narrative diachronically frozen in the initial act of flight. Three objectifying reification processes stabilize the category. “Refugees” in turn employ counter-positional tactics of distancing, compensation and future-orientation. The limited success of these tactics suggest the need to scale up such tactics to collective-level communication strategies. Success of communication strategies requires questioning the underlying function humanitarian-talk serves in creating a sense of European identity. Together these strategies could re-work the temporal features of the refugee category facilitating a repositioning and enabling the emergence of post-refugee narratives

Multilateralism under Fire: How Public Narratives of Multilateralism and Ideals of a Border-Free World Repudiate the Populist Re-Bordering Narrative

How do global multilateral arrangements such as the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO), vital to post-pandemic recovery, connect to the public understanding of multilateralism? The Citizen Worldview Mapping Project (CWMP) conducted in England, Scotland and Sweden examines how the degree of migration–mobility interacts with worldviews. CWMP asked participants (N = 24) to rule the world using an online interactive world mapping tool. Citizens were first interviewed on their migration–mobility, then invited to draw or remove borders on the world to manage human mobility. Citizens then engaged in a dialogue with António Guterres’ 2018 address to the United Nations General Assembly on multilateralism. Dialogical analysis showed how, when empowered to rule the world, the majority of participants, irrespective of the degree of migration–mobility, expressed an ideal of a border-free world, even if they then went on to construct borders around the world. We understand this as a democratic dialogical ideal of a border-free world. Participants articulated rich narratives and social representations of international relations, yet did not have a formal understanding of the reified concept of multilateralism. Bridging this gap between the consensual sphere of the public’s ideals based on social representations of cooperation and conflict and the reified sphere containing political narratives of multilateralism is a key step to longer-term post-pandemic recovery. A first step will be further studies into how an ideal of a border-free world can reconfigure political resistance to xenophobic populist re-bordering

I'll never forget: remembering of past events within the Silent Generation as a challenge to the political mobilisations of nostalgia

The political mobilisation of nostalgia is increasingly preoccupying social and political psychologists. A key concern is with rising populism and the use of an imagined golden past to foster threat through anti-EU and anti-immigrant sentiment. This article introduces two key concepts, anemoia - imagining a past not experienced – and prolepsis – how the past influences actions in the present aligned to future goals – to argue that actual recall of past biographical events potentially counters the influence of nostalgic rhetoric designed to influence political decision-making. The focus of this article is a single Scottish case study, Rachel, a member of the Silent Generation of citizens aged over 75 years, who have a living memory of World War II and its aftermath. A dialogical analysis was carried out identifying key I-positions and chronotopic analysis of the dialogical self, relating to experienced extreme childhood poverty and deprivation, anti-Semitism and limited mobility. This demonstrated how living through a historic event and its repercussions, rather than imagining a past not experienced, mitigates against nostalgia. This raises the question of how much mobilisation of the events of a glorious past and anxieties about the future rely upon the unexamined silence of those who recall those same events

The transition of a Scottish Young Persons’s Centre — a dialogical analysis

This chapter follows the progress of the Young Person’s Centre (YPC), a training & guidance centre for young unemployed people, in it’s transition from a programme-centred service to a person-centred service. Sixteen months of participatory action research was carried out, involving interviews, observation and consultancy. Communication and social change are understood using a Bakhtinian dialogical analysis of the situated utterances of managers, staff and young people where YPC is presented as a multi-voiced organization. This involved the analysis of four levels of dialogue, the face-to-face dialogue of members, the internal dialogue of the dialogical self, the internal dialogism of words-in-use and finally the dialogue of the self, as social agent, with the public sphere. In conclusion the term ‘person-centred’ is understood as ‘symbolic capital’ where trading in this new conceptual currency has resulted in successful outcomes, but equally it is a currency which some members have access to and others do not

“A two-way process of accommodation” Public perceptions of integration along the migration-mobility continuum

Despite decades of policy and academic focus, integration remains a contested and opaque concept. Yet in recent years with its promise of social cohesion and shared citizenship, it has obtained a morally privileged status in contrast to the political disenchantment now attached to multiculturalism. This chapter presents a case study on public perceptions of integration among migrants and non migrants in two cities within the European Union, Edinburgh and Stockholm

Introducing four psychologies of unemployment and their implications for intervention

[About the book] This book addresses the links between unemployment, precariousness work and health risks from various scientific frames of reference as well as those of policy-makers. The authors range from major classics in the field to newcomers from several countries presenting their research results. The authors include also representatives of several international organizations. The anthology is of a multidisciplinary character and its articles evaluate the contributions of various projects, programmes and standard public services for persons at risk of labour market exclusion. It updates the research agenda, which is most topical during the financial crisis and economic restructuring of today

Young People's Views on Participation and Their Attitudes Towards the European Union : Building a Bridge Between Europe and its Citizens - Evidence Review Paper Three

This short evidence review was prepared to support the Building a Bridge project. It reviews young people's levels of trust and participation in political processes, as well as their attitudes towards the European Union