The 3-year project ‘Geographies of Populism’ in Europe focuses on populism in Europe and the importance of its spatiality. The project argues that “the people”, as the center of populist ideology, need to be understood in connection to the space they act in. The aim of this project is to analyze how populist parties construct “the people” through places and spaces and how they operate through local, national and transnational scales.

Many studies on populism have so far been about “the people”, not about “the people in their spaces”. Space is usually conceived as a mere container for “the people” instead of being constitutive of them. Geographies of populism, on the contrary, aims to develop a theoretical understanding of the populist conceptualization of geographical divides such as ‘the nation’ vs. ‘the transnational’, ‘the countryside’ vs. ‘the urban’, or ‘the North’ vs. ‘the South’. Besides the importance of the space in which the relations between people are shaped, the project also highlights the importance of the relation between scales (local, national, transnational) in the formation of both ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’.

The project interconnects political geography and discourse theory to challenge the homogenizing way in which populism has been used as an umbrella term to group diverse forms of popular political discontent, and instead it offers a nuanced account of the spatial and discursive strategies of diverse populist politics. The methodology includes qualitative research including interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and discourse analysis, together with data mining techniques in virtual spaces. These complementary methods are used to address the following subprojects:

Spatial Metaphors and Geographical Imaginaries explores the ways in which populist parties use spatial metaphors and geographical imaginations.
 
Spatialities of Populism analyzes the ways in which material and virtual spaces shape different populisms, and what kind of spatial strategies populist parties deploy.
 
Transnational Populism addresses how do populist parties generate transnational alliances and connect spaces and practices beyond local and national scales.
 

The project includes four countries that function as case studies representing Northern (Denmark and the UK) and Southern Europe (Spain and France). Each of the four countries includes political parties presenting different variations of populism.

 

MEMBERS:

Óscar García Agustín – PI
Óscar García Agustín is an Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Learning at Aalborg University and is a director of DEMOS group. In addition, he is a PI of the 3-year international research project Geographies of Populism in Europe. Agustín has published six monographies within the areas of populism, social movements and discourse theory.
 

Dr. Paolo Cossarini – Ph.D.
Paolo Cossarini is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University (Denmark). He has previously worked at the School of International Studies, University of Trento (Italy), and at Loughborough University (UK). His has published on populism and nationalism, Italian and Spanish politics, protest movements, and civil society organizations. He is co-editor of “Populism and Passions. Democratic Legitimacy after Austerity” (2019), and co-editor of “The impact of Populism on European Institutions and Civil Society. Discourses, Practices, and Policies” (2021).

Dr. Lazaros Karaliotas – Co-I 

The advisory board:

Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore) is an expert in collective action and movement parties.

Yannis Stavrakakis (Aristotle Univeristy of Thessaloniki) is an expert on discourse theory and populism.

Lasse Thomassen (Queen Mary University of London) is an expert on discourse theory and populism.

David Featherstone (University of Glasgow) is an expert on political geography and transnational connections.