New Realignment of Fears in France and Europe

  • Dídac Gutiérrez-Peris Viavoice París
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18543/ced-59-2018pp99-114
Keywords: realignment of fears, european openness, integration, multicultural backlash

Abstract

This article is based mostly on a study conducted throughout 2016 in France, Poland, the UK, Spain, Sweden and Germany with the think tank Demos and the Institute Notre Europe – Institut Jacques Delors, called ‘Nothing to fear but fear itself’. The paper focuses mainly on France and departs from the statement that we are living a sort of backlash against the ‘multiculturalist’ approach to integration. This, as shown throughout the paper, cannot always be linked to some of the new fears European societies are facing, but it is the necessary contextual starting point when analysing one of those new fears, namely the hardening of social attitudes on immigration and diversity. This paper points out three of the most common symptoms regarding the new alignment of fears in Europe. It suggests that Europe is not only witnessing a rise of fearful attitudes about terrorism or uncertainty, but also the rise of a society that shows signs of exhaustion regarding the values that used to be the bed stone of European openness. The three symptoms described are: i) growing support for authoritarian populist parties, ii) a low and failing trust in political institutions, iii) a hardening of social attitudes regarding immigration and diversity.

Received: 10 January 2018
Accepted: 9 May 2018
Published online: 31 October 2018

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Dídac Gutiérrez-Peris, Viavoice París

Dídac Gutiérrez-Peris is a lecturer at the Public Affairs School at Sciences Po Paris and works as Research Director at Viavoice, a polling institute focusing in France. He is also research associate at CIDOB with a focus on Europe. He has extensive experience in the field of European integration, in particular about opinion trends across Europe as well as post- Lisbon Treaty EU policy-making. Dídac holds an M.Phil from the University College London on the sociological construction of European identity, as well as a Master degree from the London School of Economics in Politics and Government in the European Union. He holds his Bachelor degree from Sciences Po Paris, where he specialised in Latin-America spending one year at the Institute of International Relations of the University of Brasilia. Among his most recent projects he has coordinated the French fieldwork of the multi-country study directed by the think tank in London Demos and the Institut Jacques Delors in Paris about the rising of fear in European political culture, as well as publishing several papers about French and European politics with specialised journals such as Política Exterior, Letras Libres, Beerderberg, Foreign Affairs and the European Parliament in Spain. Since 2014 he is part of the international team assisting the European Commission regarding pan-european institutional campaigns (2014-2019). He has been an op-ed columnist about European affairs for La Vanguardia (2006-2009), Passim (2009-2014) and Agenda Pública (2012-present). He contributes on a regular basis to international media such as RFI International, France24, Al Jazeera and the Clarín media group.

Published
2018-10-31
How to Cite
Gutiérrez-Peris, Dídac. 2018. “New Realignment of Fears in France and Europe”. Deusto Journal of European Studies, no. 59 (October), 99-114. https://doi.org/10.18543/ced-59-2018pp99-114.
Issue
No. 59 (2018): The European Crisis of Politics: Ethnoreligious Pluralism and the Rise of Radical Populism and Far-Right in Europe
Section
Monographic Articles

The author grants to the Publisher the distribution, public communication, and reproduction rights of her/his work subject of publication in Deusto Journal of European Studies (DJES), whichever the media may be, including the permission to include it in the databases where this Journal is indexed and in the institutional repository of the Universidad de Deusto.

Upon its publication, the content of any Issue of Deusto Journal of European Studies (DJES) can be accessed, read, downloaded, copies, and distributed freely for non-commercial purposes and in accordance with any applicable copyright legislation.

The content of Deusto Journal of European Studies (DJES) can be subsequently published in other media or journals, as long as the author clearly indicates in the first footnote that the work was published in Deusto Journal of European Studies (DJES) for the first time, indicating the Issue number, year, pages, and DOI (if applicable). Any other use of its content in any medium or format, now known or developed in the future, requires prior written permission of the copyright holder.

The content of the work published in Deusto Journal of European Studies (DJES) is each author's sole responsibility. The authors assume the responsibility of obtaining all the necessary licenses for the reproduction in their manuscripts of any text, material or illustration coming from another author, institution or publication. The liabilities that may arise from complaints for publishing plagiarised articles are the sole responsibility of the author.