Discursive turns and critical junctures

The concluding chapter goes back to the theoretical debates presented in chapter 1, synthetizing the main empirical results of the various parts of our analysis as well as reflecting on the theoretical implications. From the theoretical point of view, the aim has been to analyze transformative events in order to trace their effects on the content and form of the debate in multiple public spheres. The research addressed discursive turns during a critical juncture that changed in the political debate. Empirically, the Charlie Hebdo controversy represented a most important moment in the assessment of collective understandings of citizenship, broadly understood as setting the boundaries of who is inside and who is outside. Opening up to future research in the field, the chapter speculates on the impact of the debate we have addressed in structuring the evolving debate over citizenship and citizenship rights.

The deliberative qualities of the debates from a comparative perspective

Chapter 4 discusses the deliberative qualities of the Charlie Hebdo debate in alternative public spheres. The chapter explains the way in which deliberation has been operationalized for qualitative analysis. It then focuses on the deliberative qualities of the Charlie Hebdo debate among the three main groups of public-sphere actors under examination (far-right, left-wing, and religious groups). There is substantial variation in the deliberative democratic qualities displayed within and across the three public spheres while there is limited variation across countries. In order to account for this phenomena, at the end of the chapter, we reflect on the nature of critical junctures specifically and differences in different public sphere actors’ dispositions toward deliberative and democratic norms.

Comparing mass media debates in the European public sphere

The aim of this chapter is to provide background information about the political context in which the debate on the Charlie Hebdo attacks developed within the different national arenas. Besides some general political trends developing at the European level (including the financial crisis and its political consequences), Chapter 2 presents the main dimensions of political opportunities and constraints that are susceptible to explain cross-national differences in collective actors’ claiming, framing, and justifying. In particular, it zooms in on two sets of dimensions that social movement studies have considered relevant: factors that can influence public debates over migration and ethnic relations in general—i.e., national citizenship regimes—and factors which pertain more specifically to debates about Muslims and Islam in the secular public sphere—i.e., the regime addressing Church–State relations. The chapter then presents a quantitative empirical analysis of political claims-making in France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom, during the first month following the 2015 attacks. Despite substantial cross-national differences in terms of discursive and political opportunities, the analysis of the content of the debate in the European public sphere shows that most of the mass media attention was devoted to the issues of security and freedom of expression (highly visible and non-divisive issues), which triggered much less political conflict than stories about Islam, discrimination, and migration.

Discursive turns and critical junctures

The introductory chapter presents the theoretical framework of the research, its empirical design and the content of the volume. Our analysis of the Charlie Hebdo attacks addresses in particular the claims, frames, and justifications that civil society actors introduce in multiple public spheres. We want to understand both the content and the forms of these interventions by considering the appropriation of existing discursive opportunities by collective actors, but also their embeddedness within strategies of resource mobilization. Locating our research within social movement studies, we point at the cultural dynamics during discursive critical junctures, showing the ways in which different actors address transformative events which challenge their visions. As a “transformative event” the attacks point at the capacity of action itself to produce contextual opportunities and organizational resources that are mobilized in the strategic interactions of various actors. In this chapter, we first reflect on the concept of transformative events as triggering critical junctures, defined as moments in which changes happen suddenly rather than incrementally (as well as subsequent choice points), and on the very conceptions of citizenship that are affected by them. We then move to a discussion of the forms that debates might take in the public sphere (referring in particular to the concept of deliberation). After that, we present our analytic model, followed by a justification of the research design and the methodological choices. The chapter ends with a presentation of the volume.

Justifications in the debate on citizenship

Chapter 8 is devoted to an analysis of the justifications used by the different actors in debating the Charlie Hebdo attacks. In particular, it looks at the ways in which participants in the public debates use justifications for their claims, which become all the more relevant in “critical moments.” Referring to the “imperative to justify,” the chapter analyzes the moral principles referred to in the everyday debate. Among religious organizations, justifications refer to communitarian versus cosmopolitan views, freedom entering in tension with offenses against religion (blasphemy), and liberty with claims about security. Ecumenical arguments are also countered by claims about the superiority of one’s own religion. With regard to the justifications in the radical right, the Charlie Hebdo attacks gave more leverage to a justification based to a certain extent on civic values—such as defending freedom—but strongly bridged within justifications coming from the traditional world of worthiness. In general, the left addresses the Charlie Hebdo attacks with some difficulty, with tensions between a traditionally inclusive position toward migrants and minorities and the defense of freedom—which is perceived as a collective, rather than individual, right.

Religious organizations

Chapter 7 addresses the discourses by religious groups, including Christian (both Catholic and Protestant), Jewish, and Muslim actors. An important but often neglected part of those debates took place between mainstream actors and religious organizations but also among religious organizations themselves. These debates were embedded within distinct frameworks of institutional and political opportunities, especially concerning the place of religion in society and the importance of religion in understanding national identity that differed greatly among the countries under study. These factors, in turn, influenced the recognition of religious actors as legitimate partners in the public debates as well as the attention paid to their views and the frames used for their understanding (from the French laïcité to the British multiculturalist model). In all cases, however, religious organizations sought to mobilize available resources and take into account discursive opportunities to reach audiences within and outside their respective religious spheres, and to express their views on a variety of issues ranging from radicalism to peaceful coexistence, from inter-religious affairs to national identity, from Islamophobia and anti-Semitism to integration.

Multiculturalism backlash and anti-establishment politics

Chapter 6 focuses on a collective actor that has played a crucial role in migration and identity politics across Europe, at least since the early 1990s: the contemporary far right. Relying on frame analysis of web portals, social media pages, blogs, and websites of far-right collective actors in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we investigate the narrative they constructed on Charlie Hebdo and uncover the patterns of interaction existing between them and other actors, within and across national settings. The empirical analysis shows that the European far right effectively mobilized as a collective actor in the shadow of the January attacks. On the one hand, the Charlie Hebdo juncture brought forth issues that are deeply intertwined with far-right politics, and highly embedded in their agendas. On the other, the far right recognized itself in the collective struggle of opposing multiculturalism and Islamization, and of representing the will of the people against corrupt political elites, at the national and transnational levels.

The evolution of the debate

Chapter 3 introduces time into the picture, exploring how and to what extent a discursive critical juncture triggered by the Charlie Hebdo attacks changed the nature of public discourse, the tone used to address the different dimensions of conflict embedded in the controversy, and the way in which political actors engaged in the debate. By looking at public debates over time, the chapter addresses the potential of critical junctures to change actors’ perspectives on contentious issues and to transform interactions among collective actors. The analysis focuses on three main characteristics of public debates: the type of actors that have access to the public sphere, the issues that they discuss, and the deliberative quality of the debate. The findings indicate that the critical juncture condensed but also neutralized public debates, in that it increased attention but also reduced political conflict over the issues associated with Charlie Hebdo—at least in the mass-media public sphere. In addition, the debate, which hardly met minimum standards of democratic deliberation, further deteriorated during the critical juncture.

Left-wing movements facing dilemmas

Chapter 5 compares the debates that took place among left-wing groups and those engaged in civil-rights advocacy after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It argues that the attacks had a serious impact on reemphasizing differences inside left-wing public spheres, particularly on unsettled issues with religion and freedom of expression. These tensions refer to racism and the protection of religious minorities as major issues of social inequalities to be addressed on the left. While we observed a consensus on the stigmatization of racist or state violence, the means to tackle it varied according to the position of the actors in the field, in terms of ideological embeddedness and access to the public sphere, institutional recognition, and social capital. We first map these consensual topics across the different movements in Europe, and across national contexts. We then present the internal tensions in the left-wing sphere concerning diversity and pluralism in current democracies.