Mind-the-NEXUS · Theorizing the Drivers of the Asylum-Far Right Nexus in Rural Europe

Since 2015, mediatised episodes of protest and hostility towards refugees in rural areas in Europe have contributed to the perception of an alleged nexus between reception and the electoral success of far-right populist parties. However, despite the increasing interest of academic research, a patchy understanding of the factors and mechanisms driving the emergence of an asylum-far right nexus in rural areas persists. Whereas public opinion surveys emphasise the nationalistic orientation of rural Europe, research on policymaking has unravelled cases of welcoming and pragmatism.Mind-the-NEXUS will address this puzzle by leading the first systematic and comprehensive study of asylum politics in rural areas that in the last decade have been facing multiple challenges due to the arrival of different waves of refugees in times of reduction of public services (e.g., schools, hospitals etc.). It will do so by focusing on five European countries – France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK – where municipalities represent key actors in reception policy. By adopting an innovative cross-country/cross-locality research design, Mind-the-Nexus will deliver a new understanding of the rural politics of asylum centred on the notion of Rural Political Arena (RPA), intended as the multilevel relational sphere where reception and integration policies take shape. Mind-the-NEXUS will deeply innovate scholarly and policy-oriented debates by expanding our understanding of opposition to refugees and FR politicization in still under-researched rural area. Through a mixed-methods approach combining Large-N quantitative studies on a newly compiled database, qualitative research on no less than 60 rigorously selected RPAs, and the first comparative rural elites survey, Mind-the-NEXUS will generate a ‘gold mine’ of data and break new ground in theorizing the meso-level institutional and political factors and mechanisms driving the emergence of an asylum-FR nexus in rural Europe.