Borders and Fear: Insecurity, Gender and the Far Right in Europe

Abstract:

In this article I analyze how far right movements and parties in Europe are challenging European notions of open borders and the freedom of movement through active involvement in national and European politics. This involves a discussion around the de/rebordering of European space and the relationship between bordering processes and a politics of belonging in which the drawing of boundaries becomes a way of establishing inclusion/exclusion in response to a politics of fear, insecurity, and threat. Thereafter I address what distinguishes such a politics and how various far right movements and parties have emerged as structural and social–psychological responses to it as well as the reasons behind their affective (and electoral) success in Europe. In examining this, I stress the idea of ‘subjective deprivation’ in relation to the bordering of essentialist identities, highlighting the role of ‘emotional governance’ and ‘nativism’ as crucial for understanding the appeal of these movements. Finally I discuss how these bordering processes have come to rely on gendered notions of masculinity and on the occurrence of control and surveillance as members of the far right redefine national and European borders.