Illiberalism and Peripheralization: The East and South of the European Union

Call for Papers for a Journal Special Issue

Within Europe as elsewhere, illiberal movements are everywhere. Yet they have, on the whole, had greater success in the Eastern and the Southern periphery than in the Northwestern core. What can be learned from studying illiberalism in the East and the South of Europe, not only as a reflection of distinct national, “Eastern European,” or “Mediterranean” characteristics, but also of the general conditions of peripherality and the processes that produce it?  

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A Generative Approach to Peripherality 

A common approach to peripheralization is to interpret it in static geographic terms: One area of the “world system” is its core, another is its periphery, with the peripheral areas of Europe often discussed as a “semi-periphery” in between the core, identified with the Global North, and the periphery, identified as the Global South. 

This static approach can be insufficient for at least three reasons.  

• First, there are iterative peripheralizations and not just one global core-periphery distinction. Within each core and within each periphery there are typically another, nestling core-periphery relations. The North-South relation functions as a core-periphery relation not only within Europe but also within countries like Spain and Italy. A similar West-to-East progression of peripherality functions within Poland, Slovakia, or Hungary. (On the other side, within the Northwestern core, there are peripheries also, and these also may be addressed by and support illiberal movements.) 

• Second, the semi-periphery is not literally in-between the core and periphery. An increasing number of scholars have referred to Central and Eastern Europe, and less frequently to parts of Southern Europe, as a “semi-periphery.” This terminology can be productive, but only as long as we remember that the EU as a whole is firmly a part of the Atlantic core of a capitalist world system. The overwhelming, brutal system of exploitation and extraction processes within this system benefits the EU as a whole, including its Southern and Eastern peripheries.  Peripheralization within the EU resembles in important ways peripheralization on the global scale, e.g. in terms of the core West’s expropriation of local assets and of cheap labor in and from the periphery. Nevertheless, the condition of millions in the Global South is qualitatively different from that of people in the South and East of Europe. The EU periphery is the periphery of the global core, but it is not the core of the global periphery (except as part of the Global North itself). 

• Third, core and periphery in the EU today are no longer necessarily separated spatially. People moving from the periphery to the core have had their life affected by the spatial core-periphery relation, but they experience these relations within the core space. The conditions of placedness relating geographic core-periphery relations and migration (Kalmar 2023; Lewicki 2023a) need to be explored further, and will be explored in this volume. 

These three considerations drive home the point that peripherality is not a static binary or trinary contrast. It is the result of an ongoing historical process: peripheralization. It is for this reason that the volume is entitled “Illiberalism and Peripheralization” rather than “Illiberalism and Peripherality.” 

Illiberalism as a Response to Peripheralization 

“Illiberalism” is a term not without controversy; nor are the alternatives, “populism,” “right-wing nationalism,” “electoral authoritarianism,” “reactionary democracy,” and many others. We are speaking of political regimes that undermine but do not formally destroy democratic institutions, checks and balances, and elections. They claim to defend the interests of the ethnically and racially defined “nation.” They oppose migration, especially by people of color from outside Europe, although in the Northwest of Europe migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe have also experienced rejection and have, arguably, been racialized as the Other (Kalmar 2022; 2023; Lewicki 2023a; 2023b; Panagiotidis and Petersen 2024; Varriale 2021). 

Illiberal discourses target not only the racialized migrant but also, in ways that pervert progressive and liberal uses of these terms, “globalization,” “financial capital,” and even “neoliberalism.” Illiberals purport to speak for working and middle-class people and the rural countryside. In fact, they do find support among some within such groups (for the necessary nuance, however, see Mondon and Winter 2019). However, there are also segments of high and mid-level capital that significantly support illiberalism. The typical illiberal government expresses a class alliance between elements of capital and elements of labor; an alliance that has been studied especially in Hungary (Fabry 2019; Gagyi 2016; Scheiring and Szombati 2020) but deserves more attention elsewhere. 

In general, illiberalism is a protest against what its supporters see as insufficient privilege – often a loss of class and racial privilege – within the prevailing system of racial capitalism. This protest is articulated from a position of partial privilege, rather than exclusion from privilege. Illiberal movements do not wish to destroy the system of privilege but to preserve it, and to secure and improve their own standing within it.  

Geographic Focus 

The articles will all have a focus on one or more regions of the European Union. Within the EU, what we are looking for are papers that discuss the topic of illiberalism and peripherality by reference to both Eastern and Southern Europe. However, papers focusing on one specific region or country are welcome if they explicitly utilize insights or analyses applicable across the EU. For example, a theoretical insight garnered from the literature (or the researcher’s ongoing work) on Italy could be applied to understanding illiberalism in Poland. 

We recognize that countries and regions beyond the borders of the EU can also be profitably thought of as peripheries to the core regions of the EU. These include Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet Union to the East, and North Africa and the Middle East to the South. Nevertheless, illiberalism and peripheralization have sufficient distinctive characteristics within the European Union to justify pragmatically the exclusive focus of this Special Issue on peripheralization within the EU. Nevertheless, comparisons between areas within and without the EU (for example, with Turkey, the US, or Argentina) may be relevant, as long as they are made primarily to enhance our goal of understanding of the relationship between illiberalism and peripheralization specifically within the EU. 

Possible Topics 

From the above, it follows that some of the topics for this volume may include, with region-specific examples as necessary: 

• Peripheralization, racialization, and class formation 

• Nesting core-periphery relations 

• Peripheralization of migrants and of their home countries/regions 

• Illiberal class alliances in the periphery 

• Peripherality and threatened White privilege 

• Comparative responses to peripheralization in the East and the South of the EU 

• Comparative studies of peripheralization in the EU and elsewhere  

Other topics could be relevant and considered as such. 

Venues 

We will submit the Special Issue proposal to a prestigious journal with a reasonably fast publication track record. Please contact i.kalmar@utoronto.ca if you have questions or suggestions about the specific venue. 

Deadline for Abstracts

If you are interested in participating on this project, then please email an abstract of 300 to 400 words to the organizer at i.kalmar@utoronto.ca, and add any notes that you wish.  

By submitting your abstract, you agree to abide by the following deadlines: 

• Abstract to be submitted: August 30, 2024 

• Editor’s decision: September 30, 2024 

• Special Issue proposal submission: by December 31, 2024 (but hopefully much earlier) 

• First round of paper submissions: two and a half months after publisher’s acceptance 

• Editor’s response: One month after your first submission 

• Second round of (revised) submissions: Two months after the editor’s response 

• Submission to publisher: Within two weeks of all revised versions being submitted. 

Please do not send an abstract if you do not expect to be able to keep to these deadlines. 

Acceptance and Rejection of Proposals 

We might reject a submission for reasons that do not necessarily have to do with its content; for example, because it does not fit well with the other abstracts, or because we want to ensure diversity among the presenters. We would prefer to have a roughly equal number of papers by people specializing in the East and the South of the continent. We therefore ask you in advance not to be disappointed if we reject your proposal! We would still be looking forward to keeping you on our list of people to keep in touch about the topic. 

To download this CfP in pdf format:

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References 

Fabry, Adam. 2019. The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism. New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 

Gagyi, Agnes. 2016. “‘Coloniality of Power’ in East Central Europe: External Penetration as Internal Force in Post-Socialist Hungarian Politics.” Journal of World-Systems Research 22 (2): 349–72. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.626. 

Kalmar, Ivan. 2022. White But Not Quite: Central Europe’s Illiberal Revolt. Bristol: Bristol University Press. 

———. 2023. “Race, Racialisation, and the East of the European Union: An Introduction.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49 (6): 1465–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2154909. 

Lewicki, Aleksandra. 2023a. “East–West Inequalities and the Ambiguous Racialisation of ‘Eastern Europeans.’” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49 (6): 1481–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2154910. 

———. 2023b. “When, How, and in Relation to Whom Is ‘Race’ at Play in Invocations of ‘Eastern Europe’?” Cultural Sociology, December, 17499755231206866. https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231206866. 

Mondon, Aurelien, and Aaron Winter. 2019. “Whiteness, Populism and the Racialisation of the Working Class in the United Kingdom and the United States.” Identities 26 (5): 510–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2018.1552440. 

Panagiotidis, Jannis, and Hans-Christian Petersen. 2024. Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland. Geschichte und Gegenwart. Weinheim: Juventa. 

Scheiring, Gábor, and Kristóf Szombati. 2020. “From Neoliberal Disembedding to Authoritarian Re-Embedding: The Making of Illiberal Hegemony in Hungary.” International Sociology 35 (6): 721–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580920930591. 

Varriale, Simone. 2021. “The Coloniality of Distinction: Class, Race and Whiteness among Post-Crisis Italian Migrants.” The Sociological Review 69 (2): 296–313. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120963483.