Introduction

This juncture in history finds Europe in an uncertain and unstable position. There are several reasons for this: a zombie echo of the Cold War in the annexation of part of Ukraine by Russia; the long shadow of the Israel-Palestine conflict; the worst economic depression since the 1930s (following the international banking crisis of 2008); and the ever-widening income and wealth gaps between rich and poor. Geopolitical and economic power is shifting, resulting in a reactionary retrenchment of national identities. Thus, definitions of citizenship — who is inscribed at the centre and who at the margins — are presently being subjected to ideological pressures from a resurgent xenophobia in many quarters. The UK Independence Party, the Jobbik Party in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) in Germany and Marine Le Penn’s Front Nationale in France, for example, all rely on anti-immigration rhetoric to fuel their growing popularity. Rising anti-Semitism is driving significant numbers of France’s Jewish population to emigrate to Israel (Beaumont, 2015), and jihadist Islamism is proving attractive to many young European Muslims, perhaps searching for identity between the conservatism of their parents and the Islamophobia of their neighbourhoods. The grander ‘realpolitik’ — that Europe has consumed far more than its fair share of global resources for several hundred years, that its place in the world order is no longer secure — is not a message any of the self-preservationist political classes wish to bear to their electorates. Instead, the cultivation of fear and hatred for the ‘other’ — migrants, diasporic communities, ethnic minorities, and the ‘feckless’ poor and disabled — has become an easier (and more convenient) narrative to sell.