Alter- not pro-European: The question of Europe in transnational activist networks

This chapter investigates alter-European activists’ complicated relationship with “Europe”. The chapter starts by demonstrating that conflicting understandings of EU-Europe already feature in previous pan-European mobilisations, from the European Social Forums in the early 2000s to the anti-austerity mobilisations in the 2010s. Similar to these preceding movements, contemporary transnational activists have a variety of problems with (EU-)Europe, which remains, at times, curiously absent from their campaigns. Drawing on original ethnographic data conducted in collaboration with the transnational civil society network European Alternatives in the aftermath of the UK’s EU referendum in 2016, the chapter moves on to discuss six different alter-European actors’ perspectives on Europe: (1) migrant citizens, (2) feminists, (3) greens and socialists, (4) Afro-Europeans and de-colonial activists, (5) Central and Eastern European activists, and (6) Mediterranean activists. As their different perspectives and problems with (EU-)Europe illustrate, these contemporary transnational mobilisations are better understood as alter- rather than pro-European. More important than a common idea of European, here, is the convergence of different struggles in a common question for political agency beyond borders.