Citizens’ Activism for Reimagining and Reinventing Citizenship Countering Far-Right Populism

Abstract

This concluding chapter by Anna Krasteva/Aino Saarinen and Birte Siim sums up the book’s contribution to “critical citizenship studies” in the epoch of transition from globalization to mainstreaming of national populism, conceptualizing civic activism and solidarity movements as challengers to national citizenship, and reinvention of citizenships—contestatory, solidary, everyday, creative, and so on. The challenges are met by the practice of civic actors, pro-migrants, pro-Roma, pro-LGBT, and feminists in nine national case studies. A major contribution of the book is the analysis of the transformation of actors into activists and of vulnerable individuals into self-empowered actors claiming rights, focusing on innovative practices of inclusiveness as politics of solidarity and “acts of friendship”. Civic activism is mapped in the coordinated system of contestatory vs. solidary citizenship and their impact on both politics and policies.