Projekt

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The project team takes up the question of how new, promising approaches can be identified at local scales vis-à-vis the longstanding challenges for Europe to establish cross-border cooperation and social cohesion, particularly regarding the social fields of migrant rights, housing, and care work. This project will contribute to debates on urban social movements, civic engagement and municipal politics, intersectional studies, European studies, and social theory. The researchers intend to identify "best practices" as well as their potential for reviving a democratic Europe "from below". The project team conducts ten qualitative case studies in European cities (two each in Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark). The team focusses on two aspects: how political initiatives by civil society organizations and municipalities enact citizenship and solidarity at local scales and how these local initiatives develop intersectional strategies and networks beyond borders in connecting different social fields and places. The researchers plan to study local initiatives' discursive references, online environments, and socio-spatial relations by trian-gulating three qualitative methods: frame analysis, digital ethnography, and global ethnography. Regarding the dissemination of their research, the team will pursue a multifaceted approach of communicating with academia, political stakeholders, and the broader public, including interactive formats such as a website, a monthly podcast, and an atlas, as well as collaborative approaches such as urban citizen labs and transurban network labs. An external advisory board supports the quality control of the research results and their dissemination among the academic community.

• Dr. Helge Schwiertz

  Universität Hamburg
  Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
  Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften
  Soziologie
  Hamburg
  

• Dr. Mojca Pajnik

  Peace Institute
  Institute for Contemporary Social and
  Political Studies
  Ljubljana
  Slowenien
  

• Prof. Dr. Martin Jorgensen

  Aalborg University
  Department of Culture and Learning
  Aalborg
  Dänemark
  

• Prof. Dr. Donatella Della Porta

  Scuola Normale Superiore
  Faculty of Political and Social Sciences
  Florence
  Italien
  

• Dr. Sarah Schilliger

  Universität Bern
  Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Geschlechter-
  forschung (IZFG)
  Bern
  Schweiz
  

• Negotiating Borders through a Politics of Scale: Municipalities and Urban Civil Society Initiatives in the Contested Field of Migration

• The transversal political logic of populism: framing the refugee crisis in Slovenian parliamentary debates

• Städtische Care-Infrastrukturen zwischen Küche, Kinderspielplatz und Kita