Citizens of Nowhere, unite? 

Europe might seem like a continent pulling itself apart: ten years of economic and political crisis have pitted North versus South, East versus West, citizens versus institutions. And yet those years have also revealed a hidden vitality of citizens acting across borders, opening-up spaces of alternative political sympathies, understandings and organisation: from Amazon workers coordinating strikes to refugee welcome initiatives, from new municipalism to solidarity with Greece in the eurocrisis. How should we understand and interpret this emergent civic transnationalism, how do we relate it to more established forms of social cohesion, and, crucially, how does it relate to the sphere of formal institutionalised politics? This seminar will draw on the speaker's own experiences of activism across the continent to address these questions.

Niccolo Milanese is a founding director of European Alternatives, a transnational civil society organisation promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state since 2007. He has been involved in many civic initiatives across Europe and the Southern Mediterranean, and is co-author (with Lorenzo Marsili) of ‘Citizens of Nowhere: How Europe can be saved from itself’ (Zed books London May 2018). He was educated at St John’s College Cambridge, and at EHESS, Paris. He is a researcher at Centre d'Etudes Sociologiques et Politiques Raymond Aron (CESPRA) at EHESS Paris.

Please email: european.studies@sant.ox.ac.uk in order to register your attendance.