Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Immigrants – Europe – Political activity'

Using a mixed methods approach and expanding on the literature on immigrants' transnational civic engagement, this research explores the paths and barriers to Mexican immigrant civic, economic, political, and social engagement in both immigrants' communities of origin in Mexico and communities of residence in Oregon, a relatively new destination for Mexican immigrants. The majority of the adult Mexican population only arrived to the state of Oregon over the last 15 years. Today Latinos represent the largest racial-ethnic minority, twelve percent of the state population, with Mexicans making up 90 percent of this Latino population. Most of the Mexican immigrants in Oregon come from rural communities in Mexico, have an indigenous background, experience low levels and literacy, and up to 90 percent of the adult Mexican population is undocumented (King et al., 2011). This research modifies Paasche and Fangen's framework to better capture the civic engagement of Mexican immigrants in Oregon who lack legal status in the US and who come from an indigenous background. The conventional wisdom is that immigrants are more engaged in their new communities the longer they have lived there, the more educated and well paid they are, and the better they speak English. Yet the majority of Mexican migrants in Oregon lack these attributes as well as legal status, but still appear to be strongly engaged in both Mexico and in the United States. Immigrants organize to pursue economic, political, and socio-cultural transnational goals in Mexico and in the U.S. Politicians, researchers, and activists in both Mexico and the United States have noted the growing importance of these migrant groups as bridges between the two nations (Rivera Salgado et al., 2005, p. 3). Transnational organizations provide immigrants with the opportunity to be civically involved with the development of their communities of origin, and at the same time also participate in social, economic and political issues in the United States. Civic participation by Mexican immigrants is of importance to Oregon's future because the majority of these immigrants have settled permanently in the United States with their families and have and will continue to affect public policy that will shape Oregon's future.

Being a politician has become a profession for many. With the development of the European Parliament (EP) into an influential institution at the European level, building a career in the EP has become an interesting option for politicians. This thesis studies the different career paths of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and explores how these career paths and MEPs’ ambitions have an impact on their participation in the legislative process and thereby the way they represent citizens. This thesis is based on three empirical research papers. The first paper identifies two career paths that MEPs might follow, in addition to the three others which are generally used, and links these to the activities of MEPs in parliament. I find that an MEP’s career path and ambitions are relevant in explaining certain legislative behaviour across member states and party groups. The second paper looks at the career ambitions of MEPs and finds that MEPs’ career paths are also the result of expressed ambitions by politicians themselves, despite their dependence on party leadership and the second-order nature of EP elections. MEPs looking to pursue a career in the EP are more actively involved in the parliament’s activities. This higher level of participation and acquired policy influence is rewarded when MEPs stand for re-election. The third paper looks at the group of MEPs who become lobbyists after their time in parliament. Building on what is known from Washington, this paper finds that being on a powerful committee, from a smaller political group and having a longer tenure make it more likely that an MEP becomes a lobbyist. The findings across the three papers support the idea that the career paths and ambitions of politicians provide an important explanation when trying to understand an MEP’s willingness to invest resources in the EP’s legislative process.

This thesis explores the meaning of "youth" and the political mobilisation of young people in key moments of crisis in Europe. Between 2005 and 2011, youth became critical for the consolidation of the authoritarian regime structures in Russia. I show that this process included the restructuring of the discourse about youth, the physical mobilisation of young people, and the isolation of oppositional youth. How valid are these findings for regime crises more generally? I answer this question through an analysis of the breakdown of the authoritarian Soviet Union during perestroika, the breakdown of unconsolidated democracy during the last years of the Weimar Republic, and the crisis of the democratic regime in France around 1968. The cross-regional and cross-temporal comparison of these episodes demonstrates that regimes lacking popular democratic support compensate for their insufficient legitimacy by trying to mobilise youth symbolically and politically. By developing a new method of textual analysis which combines qualitative content analysis and network analysis, the thesis offers a novel social science perspective on the meaning of youth in the four cases. My study shows how discursive structures about youth condition the possibility of political mobilisation of young people. The thesis makes three contributions to comparative politics. First, on an empirical level, my study offers new insights into social movements at moments of regime crisis in different political settings. Second, on a conceptual level, I refine our understanding of the symbolic significance of the terms "youth" and "generation" in moments when society is reorienting itself. I also examine the significance of "crisis" and argue that the term expresses openness and the possibility to remake the past and future. Third, on a methodological level, my thesis builds on the growing interest in textual analysis by developing a novel multi-level approach in three linguistic contexts, which offers insights into the structure of public discourse and the actors involved.

This thesis answers the question how and why do individuals specialise in different types of political participation? By examining the degree to which individuals concentrate their political activities within one type of political participation, or spread them out across many. This thesis complements previous research on rates of political participation; and adapts and extends existing theories of political participation to explain differences in the degree of specialisation between different groups in society and between countries. Using data from the European Social Survey, covering as many as 21 European countries, and applying a range of different statistical methods, I distinguish four types of political participation: voting, conventional and unconventional political participation and consumer politics. I show that in countries with higher levels of socio-economic development, more democratic experience, and an increased presence of mobilising agents, the degree to which individuals concentrate their political activities within one type of political participation is higher, regardless of the accessibility and responsiveness of their political institutions. This is partly due to the fact that these countries have a higher educated population and that higher educated individuals specialise more. Specialisation also varies along the lines of other socio-demographic divisions, such as those based on gender. Moreover, I show that in contexts in which political issues are salient, such as during an election year, individuals are more likely to engage in non-electoral types of political participation if they also vote. This implies that specialisation is reduced during times of country-wide political mobilisation. The final finding of my thesis is that non-Western immigrants tend to concentrate their political activities less within one type of political participation than the majority population in Western Europe. Western immigrants specialise quite differently, suggesting differences in the way in which they are mobilised. As well as providing an important contribution to the study of political participation, these findings are relevant to discussions regarding citizen engagement and representation.

The role of national parliaments in the European Union (EU) has gained prominence in the last decade among academics and practitioners alike in relation to the alleged democratic deficit of the EU. The existing literature has largely focused on the formal powers of national parliaments. However, the formally strongest parliaments are not necessarily the most active, and vice versa. This thesis argues that this divergence between formal rights and actual activity exists because not formal scrutiny powers, but public Euroscepticism, the presence of parties for which Europe is salient and which care deeply about Europe (‘issue entrepreneurs’) as well as internal party cohesion on the EU are the most important factors influencing activity. Public Euroscepticism leads to more debate and resolutions when issue entrepreneurs are present and when parties have a coherent position on Europe. Recent measures and future plans to further increase the formal powers of national parliaments might not lead to more activity and might thus not help to ameliorate the democratic deficit. Methodologically, this thesis relies on computer-assisted content analysis, multilevel models as well as elite interviews. Each of the three papers focuses on a different aspect of parliamentary activity. The first paper focuses on the ‘communication function’ of parliaments and presents an analysis of parliamentary debates in EU affairs. The second paper quantitatively analyses the determinants of parliamentary activity in the form of resolutions, relating to the government control or ‘scrutiny function’. The third paper investigates parliamentary scrutiny activity in-depth in a case study of the ‘Fiscal Compact’. The thesis argues that national parliaments should mostly concentrate on their communication function in EU affairs, while other functions might best be carried out by the European Parliament. It thus suggests that different parliamentary functions can best be fulfilled by different institutions in the EU multilevel system.

Defence date: 07 March 2022
Examining Board: Prof. Klarita Gërxhani (European University Institute); Prof. Marta Fraile (Spanish Scientific Research Institute); Prof. Maria Edström (University of Gothenburg); Prof. Fabrizio Gilardi (University of Zurich)
Women continue to be underrepresented in politics, even in countries with relatively high gender equality such as within the borders of Europe. A major contributor to this underrepresentation is that women have lower political ambition than men, i.e., women are less interested in and willing to become political candidates. Moreover, the political domain remains highly masculinised, undervaluing the issues that disproportionately impact women and undervaluing feminine leadership traits. Both men and women in politics are part of perpetuating the stereotypical and limited image of what politics is and what politicians should do. Women’s descriptive (numeric), symbolic and substantive political representation are therefore harmed by supply-side factors. In this thesis, supply-side refers to those factors that impact the choices of potential political candidates and actual political candidates in ways that limit the quantity and quality of women’s political representation. This thesis tests the potential impact of media discrimination against women on the supply-side of women’s political representation. Media discrimination in political news includes underreporting on women, using stereotypical gender portrayals, disproportionately criticising female politicians and objectifying women. While the literature gives reason to expect both politically activating and deactivating effects of discrimination exposure on women, there are extremely few studies testing potential media effects on men and women’s political ambition. Likewise, there are extremely few studies testing whether gendered campaign environments impact the way future candidates choose to behave within the political domain. Using data from two experimental studies and content analyses, this thesis highlights both the resilience of women in the face of media discrimination, and simultaneously the way media discrimination hinders progress towards putting femininity on an equal footing with masculinity in the political domain.

Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, this paper examines differences in entrepreneurial perceptions (fear of failure, opportunity perception, self-efficacy, public opinion) between CEE and non-CEE countries, before and after the 2008 recession, as well as the effects of these perceptions on entrepreneurial motivation and overall levels of activity. The results suggest that CEE countries have systematically more pessimistic outlooks in terms of fear of failure and opportunity perception, but no difference from non-CEE countries in self-efficacy and public opinion. Additionally, most of the difference in fear of failure and opportunity perception, along with an increase in necessity-motivated entrepreneurship, comes after the recession, suggesting less durability and resilience of optimistic entrepreneurial perceptions in CEE countries. Finally, there is evidence of a higher threshold for a perceived opportunity to become a business reality in these post-socialist CEE countries.

This doctoral dissertation seeks to investigate the reasons that lay behind the rise, success and decline of the Italian-run migrant workers� organisation FILEF during the 1970s in Melbourne by reviewing and discussing some significant historical events. It does so in light of the existing literature, archival data and a string of oral accounts gathered from former and current key FILEF members and collaborators. It is hereby offering a better understanding of an otherwise poorly researched area of the Italian-Australian left-wing grassroots organisations in post-war Australia. The thesis has been divided into two parts, including introduction and conclusion. Part One (Chapters 1-5) reviews the historical and political background (in both Italy and Australia) that favoured the establishment of FILEF in Australia, including Melbourne, in the early 1970s; Part Two (Chapters 6-9) presents an analysis of the historical development and socio-political role of FILEF Melbourne between 1972 and 1980. Chapter One reviews the theoretical context, the representation of the history of FILEF in previous publications, primary and secondary sources, the research strategy and methodology. Chapters Two and Three anchor the history of FILEF Melbourne to their respective background in Italy and Australia. That is, Chapter Two examines the post-war Italian emigration and its politicising by the Italian Left; Chapter Three focuses on the postwar emigration of Italians to Australia and outlines a profile of the Italian-Australian community. Chapter Four maps the route of the Italian-Australian Left in the 1950s and 1960s, that is from Italia Libera to the Lega Italo-Australiana. Chapter Five reviews the circumstances that led the establishment of the PCI in Australia respectively. Chapter Six examines the origins and grassroots activism of FILEF in Melbourne in the 1970s, especially by looking at three areas of activity: migrant press, migrant welfare and migrant politics. Chapter Seven researches the vulnerability of FILEF to the pressures of conservative quarters by recounting the �Italian communist move in� (1975) and the federal funding cut (1976) episodes. Chapter Eight, thoroughly revisits the Salemi case (1977), while Chapter Nine explores the effects of the case and Salemi�s deportation on FILEF towards the end of the 1970s.

The Korean Independence Movement was a four decades long endeavor from 1905 to 1945 by Koreans to liberate Korea from Japanese colonization. Korean immigrants in America played a vital role in the movement. They contributed money, organized patriotic activities in their communities to raise awareness and issued appeals for support to the U.S. government. Throughout the years, and from generation to generation, Korean immigrants remained loyal to Korea's cause for liberation. This study discusses how this intense patriotic involvement to their homeland affected Koreans immigrants' experiences in America, namely, how such intense overseas nationalism shaped their Americanization process. Korean immigrants have told about their experiences in the form of memoirs, short narratives, interviews and speeches. These provide many first-person perspectives from which to understand Korean immigrants' changing senses of community, patriotism and acculturation. Many of these sources have come available in the last twenty years, but academic scholars have left these source largely untouched. Historians of Korean immigrant history often discuss the political components of the K.I.M. Although recognizing the importance of the Korean Independence Movement to Korean immigrants, scholars have, nonetheless, said very little as to how this movement affected them socially. This study examines how America influenced historical developments culturally by shaping the attitudes of Korea's most politically active nationalists--the Korean immigrants in America. Furthermore, this study argues that Koreans in America utilized the K.I.M. for much more than Korean independence and that their motives evolved throughout the decades. The early immigrants used the K.I.M. as a means to establish a Korean community and establish social networks while the later activists, particularly after 1919, used their demonstrations to broadcast their distinct Asian identity as well as their assimilation and loyalty to America. More simply put, Korean patriotism and Korean immigrant "Americanization," are intimately connected.

The tenth-century German bishop was more than just a spiritual leader, he was also a territorial lord with secular power. These bishops also lived in an environment where violence was sometimes a way of life. His culture contained a social dynamic that saw violence as a tool for defending and maintaining honor and as a mechanism for dispute resolution. Therefore, some bishops behaved violently, either to defend their diocese from threats or to serve their own political intrigues. In some instances bishops were said to be more skilled in warfare than secular lords. However, while some clergy participated in warfare and violence, others sought to limit it through application of canon law and peacemaking. With some clergy participating in violence and others decreeing that it be banned, there were mixed messages regarding clerical violence in this era. The bishop's role in warfare and violence, especially in Germany, has only been partially addressed by modern scholars. This deficit is part of an overall shortage of medieval German military scholarship. Furthermore, the historiography on bishops in the central Middle Ages (c. 900-1200) has generally covered two narratives: the bishop as a territorial lord or his role as a church reformer. This leaves a gap in scholarship that describes how an individual bishop justified or rationalized clerical participation in violence and warfare, including his own. This paper addresses that need by reporting how one German bishop, Thietmar of Merseburg (b. 975, 1009-18), reflected on and portrayed clerical violence and warfare in his Chronicon. Thietmar's attitudes towards violence were as complex as the times in which he lived, and were influenced by his secularism and religiosity. When it came to his justifications for clerical violence and warfare, Thietmar was more concerned about the clergyman's ability to perform as a military leader, and whether or not the violent actions were justified on their own merits. While he sometimes conveyed unease with some acts of clerical violence, and at times was careful to note distinctions between secular and spiritual realms, nevertheless he did not criticize a member of the clergy for violence on the basis of his religious station nor spiritual beliefs. Indeed, Thietmar was a torn individual, struggling with his religious convictions while living in a world where violence was habitual, and where he saw it as his duty to protect his flock. In this regard Thietmar should be considered a realist.

Suite à la montée de l’immigration en Belgique, le rôle que joue la vie associative des personnes issues de l’immigration au sein de l’espace politique a pris une place croissante dans les débats à la fois publics et scientifiques. Selon Fennema et Tillie (1999 ;2001), une vie associative ethnique florissante constituerait une condition importante pour le développement de la participation politique des membres d’une population ethnique. Si cette hypothèse a été mise à l’épreuve, avec des succès mitigés, dans différents contextes européens et nord-américains, elle ne l’a été que rarement dans une ville telle que Bruxelles, dont certaines caractéristiques sont pourtant susceptibles d’éclairer le débat. L’objectif principal de cette thèse est dès lors d’analyser la situation à Bruxelles, en prenant en considération différentes populations issues de l’immigration et d’éclaircir le rôle que jouent les associations de migrants sur l’intégration politique de ces derniers.

Ce travail s’articule autour de deux questionnements de recherche. Le premier a pour objectif d’apporter des éléments nouveaux quant aux théories existantes portant sur la participation politique et l’engagement civique (capital social) des populations ethniques minoritaires. Il s’agit d’examiner, d’une part, la nature de la relation entre participation associative et politique et, d’autre part, certains processus explicatifs sous-jacents. Le second questionnement vise à fournir de nouvelles informations à propos de différentes populations d’origine étrangère dont la vie associative et politique aura été investiguée. Celles qui ont été choisies dans le cadre de cette thèse relèvent des immigrations, hors Union européenne, les plus nombreuses à Bruxelles. Il s’agit, en l’occurrence, des populations d’origine marocaine, turque et congolaise.

A partir de données quantitatives récoltées en 2009 auprès d’échantillons représentatifs de personnes issues de l’immigration marocaine, turque et congolaise à Bruxelles ainsi que d’un groupe contrôle non-issu de l’immigration, cette thèse apporte des éléments originaux à la fois au niveau théorique et empirique.

D’abord, nous avons pu confirmer le fait que le capital social est un facteur essentiel favorisant le développement de la participation politique, à la fois au niveau agrégé et individuel. De plus, nos résultats montrent également, en particulier au niveau individuel, que le capital social ethnique est un facteur plus important que le capital social multiethnique pour expliquer la participation politique des personnes issues de l’immigration. Contrairement à ce qui est parfois admis, le regroupement communautaire ne pousserait pas à l’institutionnalisation du repli ethnique mais, au contraire, lorsqu’il est organisé sous une forme associative, constituerait un tremplin vers la participation à la vie démocratique du pays d’accueil, offrant ainsi des opportunités civiques remarquables aux personnes qui en font partie.

Ensuite, malgré le large consensus au plan théorique qui existe à propos du rôle médiateur des confiances sociale et politique pour expliquer la relation entre le capital social et la participation politique, nos résultats sont loin d’étayer cette hypothèse :l’accumulation du capital social ne permet pas d’expliquer l’effet mobilisateur des associations bénévoles. Les aspects "non-normatifs" du capital social, tels que l’accès aux informations (politiques) ou aux compétences civiques, par exemple, pourraient être de meilleurs prédicteurs du comportement politique. De plus, pour les personnes issues de l’immigration, peu importe leur origine, leur participation associative est négativement associée à la confiance politique qui, elle, montre un lien négatif avec la participation politique. Cette constatation jette un nouvel éclairage quant au débat relatif aux causes et conséquences des faibles niveaux de confiance politique et étaye les études montrant que la confiance politique n’est pas systématiquement associée à une plus grande participation politique. En l’occurrence, un faible niveau de confiance pourrait augmenter la participation politique dans certaines situations à travers une nouvelle génération dite de "citoyens critiques".

Enfin, bien que nos résultats aient mis en évidence de nombreuses similitudes entre les populations étudiées, nous avons identifié diverses particularités liées aux origines nationales en interaction avec le contexte institutionnel et politique bruxellois, rejoignant ainsi la littérature liée à l’impact des structures d’opportunités politiques ainsi qu’aux spécificités des groupes de migrants pris en considération.
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Ce travail vise à approfondir certains aspects de l’expérience des francs-maçons et laïques italiens qui ont été exilés en Belgique, suite à la persécution opérée contre eux par la dictature de Mussolini.

En effet, les premières associations qui ont été poursuivies légalement par le dictateur italien ont été les associations maçonniques et celles de la Libre Pensée. Jusqu’au il y a quelques années, l’historiographie ne pouvait pas analyser davantage les conséquences de cet exil, faute d’accès aux archives de ces associations.

À présent, il nous a été possible d’étudier cette documentation qui nous a permis de démontrer que certains francs-maçons et libres-penseurs italiens, qui ont pris la décision de quitter leur pays afin suite aux persécutions de la dictature, avaient été des exilés politiques et avaient trouvé asile dans certains pays européens grâce aux réseaux maçonniques et laïques qui y existaient déjà depuis la fin du XIXe siècle. La Belgique a été l’un de ces pays d’accueil, mais en outre elle avait été le pays où ces réseaux étaient nés et s’étaient le plus efficacement développés.

C’est cette généalogie des réseaux maçonniques et laïques qui nous a permis d’expliquer pour quelles raisons, même si la Belgique n’a pas été le principal pays d’accueil des exilés maçons et laïques italiens, un certain nombre d’entre eux y sont passés ou s’y sont installés avec l’aide de la Franc-maçonnerie et de la Libre pensée belges, pendant leur exil./

The aim of my research project is to investigate further into the experience of the Italian free-masons and free-thinkers who had to go on exile as a consequence of their persecution by the Mussolini dictatorship. As a matter of fact, the first associations to be persecuted by the Italian dictator were the free-mason and free-thinkers associations, but till few years ago, the contemporary historiography hadn’t really focused on the consequences of these actions because of the limited access to the Archives of these associations.

It was only at the beginning of this century that these documents were found and have been left at the disposal of the researchers.

The study of part of these documents allows me to demonstrate that these free-masons and free-thinkers who had taken the decision to leave their country, in order not to accept the dictatorship, were political emigrants and

that they found asylum in some European countries thanks to the free-mason and free-thinker networks that they had established since the end of 19th century. Belgium was one of these countries, but more importantly the one

where the relation networks concerned were born and developed.

This fact allows us to explain the reason why a lot of Italian free-masons and free-thinkers passed in Belgium or some of them lived. Even if Belgium wasn't the country to which the most of these people exiled.

Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Defence date: 28 May 2010
Examining Board: Andrew Geddes (University of Sheffield);Donatella Della Porta (EUI) (Supervisor); Virginie Guiraudon (CNRS) (Co-supervisor); Anna Triandafyllidou (Democritus University of Thrace)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This study examines the impact of European integration in immigration issues on Greek immigration policy. Contrary to widely held claims that immigration policies in Europe become more and more restrictive - the well-known debate on 'Fortress Europe' - Greek legislation on entry, residence and rights of third-country nationals has undergone gradual liberalising developments. This paradox drove my inquiry into the factors, institutions and processes that may explain liberalising immigration policy change for a period of fifteen years (1990 - 2005). Greece, similarly to the rest of southern European 'new' immigration countries, is often charged with the implicit or explicit assumption that its recent turn into a host country for immigrants makes her receptive to the restrictive influence of EU policies on immigration. Is that so? What impact, if any, has cooperation on immigration issues at the EU level had on Greek immigration policy developments and why? What form has it taken, under what conditions, and what mechanisms have been at work? In search for answers, my research combines a qualitative single-country case-study with the comparative method. The lens of analysis is put on Greek immigration policy making and change across domestic institutions and policy areas. Rules and regulations on entry and residence of third-country nationals for employment purposes and family reunification are process-traced and compared across the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. At a second stage the same policy area is compared to other fellow areas, namely student immigration, ethnic immigration, and citizenship. The study draws on a variety of primary sources, including parliamentary debates, administrative documents, Court rulings and EU documentation. Policy developments taking place in other EU member-states are also kept in sight on the basis of the available secondary literature. Greek immigration policy has relied on institutional and policy continuities to a greater extent than one might imagine when thinking of 'new' immigration countries. The latter are far from a 'tabula rasa' in migration issues and their previous rules, regulations, and domestic institutional legacies should be taken into consideration in order to understand their immigration policies at present. A series of Greek restrictive regulations and practices concerning immigration controls had been rooted before 'Fortress Europe' was developed. At the same time, however, Greece lacked a regulatory framework for immigrant settlement - including attention at immigrant integration. This provided for incompatibilities with the developing set of common EU norms on the rights of legally resident third-country nationals, which caused significant EU pressures for national policy change. The on-going process of integration in immigration issues at the EU level affected the timing and the direction of domestic policy-making but the extent and degree of this effect across policy areas and domestic institutions have been differential. Greek participation in the common EU immigration policy alone cannot account for all European effects on national immigration policy. Nevertheless, it has been the most powerful institutional framework to induce or facilitate liberalising changes in the Greek immigration legislation in the last two decades. These findings support a reconsideration of the nature, policy dynamics and limitations of 'Fortress Europe', and they invite for further research in the rest of the EU member states.

Are all immigrants in the United States willing and able to integrate successfully within a liberal democratic polity? This research question guides the three papers included in the present dissertation. To explore this question I designed and implemented a multi-city survey in the United States (the American Cities Survey) which contains representative immigrant, black, white, Latino and Asian samples drawn independently for each locality. Based on the findings of the American Cities Survey, which include multiple attitudinal, cultural background and political behavior measures at the individual level, along with socioeconomic and demographic measures in six distinct local institutional environments, I argue that all voting eligible immigrants and immigrant communities-regardless of their native origin and their ancestral religious affiliation-- are willing and able to integrate politically so long as political institutions and contexts (especially local ones) provide them with the same exposure to the political system and institutions, and opportunities to participate in politics as the ones provided to all other citizens. I thereby challenge both the academic and popular perceptions that certain immigrant groups have anti-democratic and anti-liberal attitudes due to their shared cultural characteristics (i.e. religious affiliation or political socialization in a non-democratic polity) that persist even after migrating to a liberal democratic polity and are passed on to the second generation. I discover that the notion that Latinos vote less than similarly situated blacks and whites has persisted overtime for two reasons: first, simply because a greater proportion of Latinos have settled in localities where institutions tend to inhibit political competition and depress turnout, biasing representative national samples; second, because the smallest geographical unit one can study with existing survey and Census (CPS) data does not allow for exploration of political behavior at the individual level beyond the state. This is problematic for studying groups like Latinos, because 50 percent of their population is concentrated in three states and less than ten cities. I find that the results found at the national level are not replicable at the local level and Latino political participation varies by city. In localities where institutions provide incentives for political party competition the probability of a citizen of Latino origin voting is equal to that of blacks and whites of similar age, income and education. In other words, the evidence presented here suggests that the correlation found at the national level between Latino immigrant group membership and apolitical attitudes and behavior is of a contingent, perhaps even spurious nature, artifice of geographical concentration of members of this group in local institutional environments that depress political activity. The theoretical framework and findings of this dissertation reveal that immigrant political attitudes and behavior towards the host country's political system is shaped mostly by individual experiences with this system, and not by prior or inherited cultural or religious beliefs from their (or their ancestor's) country of origin.

Defence date: 4 November 2014
Examining Board: Professor Donatella della Porta EUI/Supervisor; Professor Didier Eribon, University of Amiens, External Supervisor; Professor Verta Taylor, University of California-Santa Barbara; Professor Olivier Roy, EUI.
Queer festivals make up a part of the legacy of queer activism, as it has developed in North America and Europe from the late 80s onwards. Their political discourse is based on a confrontational style of address, while their content is largely inspired by poststructuralist views of identities as a tool through which power operates (Butler, 1990). However, the 'constant deconstruction of identities… undermine[s] the claims to strength and unity of their own rights movement' (Jasper et al., forthcoming: 29). The anti-identity paradox (Jasper et al., forthcoming; or the 'queer dilemma', Gamson, 1995) entails the failure to avoid the construction of a new identity, built precisely on the same discourse it attempts to deconstruct. Thus, the following puzzle emerges: If we assume that queer politics are based on this 'anti-identity' paradox, on which kind of identity, then, can they mobilize? In other words, given that the identity they attempt to build leads to their selfdestruction, how can queer politics, over time, strengthen and spread across Europe?

Defence date: 29 October 1990
Supervisor: S. Lukes (supervisor) ; K. Eder (co-supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 3 February 2006
Examining board: Michael Keating (EUI, supervisor) ; Donatella della Porta (EUI) ; Ramón Máiz (University of Santiago de Compostela) ; Lieven de Winter (University of Louvain la Neuve)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 1 June 2015
Examining Board: Professor Federico Romero, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Ángela Cenarro, Universidad de Zaragoza (External supervisor); Professor Lucy Riall, European University Institute; Professor Sven Reichardt, Universität Konstanz.
2016 recipient of the Ivano Tognarini Prize in Contemporary History.
This dissertation explores, from a transnational viewpoint, the historical relationship between war veterans and fascism in interwar Europe. Until now, historians have been roughly divided between those who assume that 'brutalization' (George L. Mosse) led veterans to join fascist movements, and those who stress that most ex-soldiers of the Great War became committed pacifists and internationalists. This dissertation overcomes the inconclusive debates surrounding the 'brutalization' thesis, by proposing a new theoretical and methodological approach, and offering a wider perspective on the history of both fascism and veteran movements. Drawing on a wide range of archival and published sources in five different languages, this work focuses on the interrelated processes of fascistization and transnationalization of veteran politics in interwar Europe. Firstly, it explains the connection between Italian Fascism and war veterans as the result of a process of symbolic appropriation of the notion of the 'veteran'. Then, it demonstrates that the cross-border circulation of the stereotype of the 'fascist veteran', and the diffusion of the 'myth of the fascist veterans', originating in the March on Rome, were crucial factors in the transnationalization of fascism and the fascistization of veteran politics in the 1920s. Furthermore, in the 1930s, networks of fascist veterans point to the existence of a transnational fascism, while new wars in Ethiopia and Spain strengthened the symbolic connection between veterans and fascism. Finally, the dissertation demonstrates that by 1939-1940, the fascist model of veteran politics was transferred into the new Spanish and French dictatorships. It is not 'brutalization', therefore, but rather a combination of mythical constructs, transfers, political communication, encounters, and networks within a transnational space that explain the relationship between veterans and fascism. Thus, this dissertation offers new insights into the essential ties between fascism and war and contributes to the theorization and conceptualization of transnational fascism.

Defence date: 11 June 1998
Supervisor: Prof. Bernhard Giesen, Universität Giessen ; Co-Supervisor: Prof. Laurence Fontaine, European University Institute
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
Why are national identities imagined in one way rather than in another? The book analyses national imaginations as an on-going reconstruction process in a political and social context in which several imaginations of the nation struggle to impose their conception. Focusing on a fundamental element of any collective identity, namely the «Other», the book looks at the reconstruction of national identities by actors in political debates on immigration in the late 1980s and 1990s, particularly associations and political clubs which were in favour of and against the presence of immigrant minorities in their respective countries. Thus, the book investigates different ways of imagining the same nation in two old European nation-states, namely France and Denmark, which differ with regard to their nation-building processes, their Second World War history, their memory of colonialism and their experience of immigration. It is thus possible to illustrate that existing ideas of the nation and memories of historical events shape the way in which the nation could be re-imagined in the 1980s and 1990s.