Oscar Mazzoleni, Cecilia Biancalana, Grégoire Yerly (University of Lausanne) & Christian Lamour, Paul Carls (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research)
SNF Project, Division 1 - Contract no: 10001CL_182857 - Fr. 430.434.- / 48 months (2019-2023)
FNR Luxembourg Project, INTER/SNF - Contract no: 19/12618900 – Euro 294.000 / 48 months (2019-2023)
The Right-Wing Populist Discourse in European Cross-Border Areas.
A comparison between Switzerland and Luxembourg
(CROSS-POP)
The goal of this research project is to focus on the right-wing populist discourse (RPD) in European cross-border regions. RPD has increasingly interested scholars in political science and political communication, but mainly at the state- national scale. A limited number of studies on discourse produced by right-wing populist actors in the borderland regions of Europe have been published. As one of the tenets of right-wing populist parties is state re-bordering, we consider that RPD and its mass-mediated representation at this spatial scale deserves specific research attention. The project will be structured around the three following research questions: 1) Is there a RPD which is specific to European border regions characterized by cross-border economic interdependence? 2) Is there a convergence of RPD at the scale of European cross-border regions? 3) Do the mass media located in Europe borderlands promote right-wing populism? Trying to fill the gap in the above-mentioned issues and questions, this project follows a comparative approach focusing on four different case studies where successful right-wing populist parties have arisen in the last two decades. Three of them directly involve Switzerland and its neighbouring French and Italian regions: the areas centred on Geneva, Basel and Ticino. The fourth one involves Luxembourg and the nearby French region. This research takes place in a broader European context in which mass media and right-wing populist parties embedded in specific state-bounded territories are prone to produce discourse on the European integration process at different spatial scales. Some broader aspects of bordering and rebordering processes, in connection with populism, can also be focused in the CROSS-POP project to better approach the situation in the cross-border regions of Europe.
The project is jointly supported by the SNF (Division 1) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund as part of the Lead-Agency programme.
