ABSTRACT
How has the experience of crisis, austerity, and precarity affected visions of Europe in the labour movement? The article answers this question through the analysis of interviews of representatives of organisations engaged in labour struggles in Italy and of documents published by the same organisations. The analysis shows that, although the crisis has challenged ‘critical Europeanism’ and radicalised vision of Europe, the border between calls for ‘another Europe’ and Eurosceptic claims seems resilient: Euro-criticism is in crisis, but has left more ground to a frustrated Euro-disenchantment than to Euro-scepticism. At the theoretical level, these findings contribute to the literature on strategic adaptation, pointing out that the reaction of movements to the closing of opportunities is far from automatic. Regarding the evolution of the Italian civil society, the shift towards Euroscepticism reflects the utter lack of hope towards the EU as a force of progress determined by a decade of austerity.
Introduction
While critical attitudes towards European integration have been at the core of an established strand of studies in the last two decades, recent waves of anti-austerity protest have seen a shift in progressive movements’ critical Europeanism. Especially, the mistrust of representative institutions has increased, also involving EU institutions, in particular in the countries that were most severely hit by the crisis. How does this reflect on the visions and practices of Europe in Italian labour struggles? Did ‘critical Europeanism’ survive the crisis? The goal of this article is to explore the visions of the EU, in the recent episodes of mobilisation related to labour in Italy, and to propose elements for its comparison with the relationship with Europe that Italian social movements had before the economic crisis.
Much scholarship has shown the centrality of labour as a contentious issue in both protest events (della Porta, Mosca, & Parks, 2012) and the public discourse on the economic crisis (Zamponi, 2017) in Italy in the last few years. This is partly rooted in the fact that the industrial-productive component of the economic crisis has been relatively more significant in Italy than in other countries (Ciocca, 2010; D’ippoliti & Roncaglia, 2011; Lucidi & Kleinknecht, 2009). The relevance of labour as a contentious issue in the Italian crisis is also confirmed by social movement research (della Porta et al., 2012; Zamponi & Vogiatzoglou, 2017).
How have visions of the EU been reshaped and reframed by activists of labour struggles in the last few years, in which such issues as precarity, austerity, and delocalisation, intimately connected to globalisation and to the ‘vertical transformation of democracy’ (Lavenex, 2013, p. 107), have been at the core of social movement action (Mattoni, 2016; Mattoni & Vogiatzoglou, 2014; Vogiatzoglou, 2015; Zamponi & Vogiatzoglou, 2017)? This article aims to answer this question through the analysis of qualitative interviews of representatives of organisations and groups involved in labour struggles in Italy, through the lenses of the extant literature on social movements and Euroscepticism.
What clearly emerges is that the experience of crisis, austerity, and precarity has strongly challenged the ‘critical Europeanism’ of the beginning of the Millennium and radicalised the activists’ vision of the EU. Trust in the EU and hopes in the possibility of it being reformed in a progressive fashion have dramatically declined, especially following the outcome of the Greek negotiations in 2015. According to the existing literature, this increasingly radical opposition to the EU tends to focus on socioeconomic and legitimacy-democracy issues, rather than taking on frames related to culture and sovereignty, which remain part of the right-wing domain. Nevertheless, this criticism rarely takes the form of an outright call to leave the EU. In this sense, the border between calls for ‘another Europe’ and Eurosceptic claims seems to be rather resilient: Euro-criticism is in crisis, but it seems to have left more ground to a frustrated Euro-disenchantment than to Euro-scepticism. Three factors seem to play a stronger role in this process: a long-lasting ideological trajectory of Europeanism in progressive milieus; the identification of sovereignism (that is, the claim of a comeback of full sovereignty for nation-states as a way for the people to take back control in politics, culture, and the economy vis-à-vis Europeanisation and globalisation) with right-wing politics, which is particularly strong in Italy especially after the emergence of Matteo Salvini’s League as a first-row political actor, and the scepticism of Italian activists towards the national government, rooted in a long history of distrust. This outcome suggests implications for the broader social movement field, in particular on the limits of strategic choices based on political opportunities. On the one hand, at the theoretical level, these findings contribute to the literature on strategic adaptation, pointing out that the reaction of movements to the closing of opportunities is far from automatic and is influenced, in this case, by three significant factors: long-lasting ideological trajectories, political polarisation, and the lack of credible strategic alternatives. On the other hand, regarding the empirical assessment of the evolution of the Italian civil society, these findings reveal a shift towards Euroscepticism, that, although hindered by the aforementioned factors, reflects the utter lack of hope towards the EU as a force of progress that a decade of austerity has determined.
Theoretical framework: Movements, Europe and opportunities
In the last two decades, critical attitudes towards European integration have been at the core of an established strand of studies. In particular, research has focused on Euroscepticism, which, according to the literature, ‘expresses the idea of contingent or qualified opposition, as well as incorporating outright and unqualified opposition to the process of European integration’ (Taggart, 1998, p. 366). A distinction is usually proposed between an utter rejection of the entire project of European political and economic integration (‘hard Euroscepticism’) and a contingent negative evaluation of European institutions and their policies (‘soft Euroscepticism’) (Taggart & Szczerbiak, 2004). More recently, scholars have proposed approaches to disentangle Euroscepticism, shedding light on its different components. So Pirro and van Kessel (2018) have pointed out the different articulation of socioeconomic, cultural, sovereignty, and legitimacy frames in Eurosceptic discourse, while several scholars have challenged the conceptualisation of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Euroscepticism, pointing out that ‘soft Euroscepticism is defined in such a broad manner that virtually every disagreement with any policy decision of the EU can be included’ (Kopecký & Mudde, 2002, p. 300). The problem of establishing a clear distinction between those that reject the EU, and those who are critical of it but aim at reforming it, is still open in the literature. Social movement scholars have pointed out that certain actors, especially progressive social movements, tend to propose a third and milder critical stance towards the EU, defined as ‘critical Europeanism’ (della Porta & Caiani, 2009; Koopmans, 2010; Koopmans, Erbe, & Meyer, 2010).
In particular, research on the Global Justice Movement (della Porta, 2007) has shown the prevalence, in European progressive social movement milieus, of the idea of ‘another Europe,’ that radically criticised EU policies and institutions, but did not refuse the idea of European integration as such, and instead brought forward experiments of Europeanisation from below (della Porta & Caiani, 2009). Furthermore, this research has pointed out that movement criticisms of the EU tend to focus on socioeconomic and legitimacy frames, coherent with what has been observed in the analysis of left-wing Euroscepticism (De Vries & Edwards, 2009; Hooghe, Marks, & Wilson, 2002; Pirro & van Kessel, 2018). The literature on social movements has often analysed Europeanisation as the process of adaptation of collective action to the European integration, focusing in particular on the practices put in place by movements to react to the emergence of a European polity (Andretta & Caiani, 2005; Tarrow, 1995), embedding the analysis of visions of the EU in such framework (della Porta & Caiani, 2009). Due to the decline of Europeanisation practices, vis-à-vis the heated debate on the EU that has taken place in the Italian movement landscape, this article mainly focuses on the former elements, analysing the visions of Europe proposed by actors in the context of the economic crisis. Still, two specific sections will be dedicated to the challenges of Europeanisation in practice, to present a comprehensive view of the issue.
The literature on the recent wave of anti-austerity protest shows a shift in progressive movements’ critical Europeanism. The mistrust of representative institutions has increased, also involving the EU, in particular in the countries that were most severely hit by the crisis (della Porta, 2013). Furthermore, the public debate on the crisis has been taking place mostly at the national level, with very low levels of visibility of the EU in the public sphere, including the countries that were most severely hit by the crisis and ensuing austerity policies, with the exception of Greece (Monza & Anduiza, 2016). In general, mobilisation has mainly taken place at the national level, with a decline in transnational counter-summits (Kaldor & Selchow, 2015), a rather diverse form of politicisation of the crisis in different countries (Zamponi & Bosi, 2016) and a re-emergence of national symbols and sovereignty claims (Gerbaudo, 2017), in a context of closure of political opportunities at the European level (della Porta & Parks, 2018). The labour movement, in particular, has often been analysed as a field of tensions around the European issue: while ‘official positions of most national unions, even those formerly hostile to at least elements of integration […] are today similarly positive’ has been observed, ‘rank-and-file attitudes are in many cases significantly different’ (Hyman, 2003; see also Hyman, 2010; Quaglia, 2011). Research has disproven cultural explanations of labour Euroscepticism, pointing out the it is not ‘driven by workers’ supposedly strong attachment to primordial values,’ but rather ‘socioeconomic terms dominated the general, and specific labour-related campaigns’ (Béthoux, Erne, & Golden, 2018, pp. 672–674). In the context of the crisis, unions have faced worse and worse opportunities in their European strategies, with strong elements of crisis of critical Europeanism (Erne, 2015; Golden, 2019).
The role of political opportunities in social movements has been analysed by a well-established literature (Koopmans, 1999; Meyer, 2004; Meyer & Minkoff, 2004; Tarrow, 1994). In the last two decades in particular, scholars have moved towards a more nuanced understanding of the role of political opportunities in shaping collective action, pointing out cases of movement consistency in spite of changing opportunities (Meyer, 2004), diverging interpretations of opportunities by movement actors (Hutter, 2014; Jasper, 2006; McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001) and the role of narratives in shaping these interpretations (de Moor & Wahlström, 2019). As McAdam, Tilly and Tarrow have observed: ‘No opportunity, however objectively open, will invite mobilization unless it is […] perceived as an opportunity’ (McAdam et al., 2001, p. 43). In the case analysed in this article, closing opportunities do indeed affect the movement, challenging the pre-existing framework of ‘critical Europeanism,’ but the development of this change into full-throated Euroscepticism is hindered by a series of factors. The scholarship has pointed out the resilience of ideological boundaries and identity-related factors in shaping the way movements react to opportunities and build their strategies (Polletta, 2006; Polletta & Jasper, 2001; Westby, 2002; Zamponi, 2018a), while issue ownership and the challenges it poses to actors has mainly been studied in the literature on political parties (Walgrave, Tresch, & Lefevere, 2015).
Case and methods: Labour struggles in times of austerity in Italy
This article is based on ten interviews with representatives (five men and five women, between 22 and 40 years old) of organisations engaged in labour struggles: two activists of mainstream trade unions (the confederation CGIL and its steelworkers’ union FIOM-CGIL), two activists of a grassroots union (ADL-COBAS), two activists of self-organised workers’ collectives (Deliverance Milano and Riders Union Bologna), two activists of radical political collectives focusing on labour (Camere del Lavoro Autonomio e Precario and Clash City Workers), and two activists of student organisations (Rete della Conoscenza and Unione degli Studenti). The rationale of the sampling strategy was to differentiate between types of organisations: mainstream trade unions, grassroots trade unions, radical political collectives focusing on labour, self-organised workers’ collectives, and student organisations.
For what regards mainstream trade unions, I have selected CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro/Italian General Labour Confederation), the largest trade union confederation in the country, once linked to the Communist and Socialist Parties, now politically independent but generally informed by a centre-left/reformist worldview. I have chosen to focus both on the confederation level and on the CGIL’s steelworkers union FIOM (Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici/Metal Workers’ and Employees’ Federation), which in the last few years has been the vanguard of the struggle for bargaining rights. Regarding grassroots unions, I have chosen to focus on ADL-COBAS (Associazione Difesa Lavoratori–Comitati di Base/Worker’s Defence Association–Grassroots Committees), an organisation rooted in particular in the North-East of the country and politically linked to the area of post-autonomous squatted social centres, which in the last few years has been active in particular in the contentious field of logistics and has also participated in some of the first experiences of organisation of gig economy workers. Furthermore, I have included in the sample two labour-centred political networks rooted in two different sectors of the Italian radical left milieu, that represent two significant experiences of social movement unionism: CLAP (Camere del Lavoro Autonomo e Precario/Chambers of Autonomous and Precarious Labour), a network born in 2013 and now represented in three Italian cities (Rome, Padua, and Turin), politically part of the area of post-autonomous social centres; and Clash City Workers, a network born in 2009 and now represented in several Italian cities, rooted in the Marxist-Leninist strand of Italian radical movements.
Processes of labour flexibilisation and precarisation have been taking place in Europe for at least two decades. The introduction of online platforms in the labour market in the last few years has reshaped and accelerated these processes, giving birth to the so-called ‘gig economy,’ a system in which working activities ‘imply completing a series of tasks through online platforms’ (De Stefano, 2016, p. 1). In this organisation of labour, ‘those who work in it carry out a series of ‘gigs,’ i.e. one off jobs, in order to create an income’ and ‘they are to be paid for a particular task or tasks, rather than receive a guaranteed income’ (Sargeant, 2017). Labour becomes an on-demand service that can be easily accessed through an app. Thanks to digital technologies, platforms can function as databases that allow for the supply of work to meet the demand for it, while making a profit out of this process and exploiting to the highest level the flexibility of a ‘pay-as-you-go’ workforce. Human work becomes less and less visible as such and risk is passed on from the company to the worker (De Stefano, 2018). Among these workers, food delivery couriers are the most visible. Young adults riding bicycles while carrying big boxes marked by the logos of companies like Foodora, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Glovo, and so on, are today a common sight in most European cities. Several episodes of collective action have been taking place in Italy in this sector since 2016 (Chesta, Zamponi, & Caciagli, 2019; Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2017a, 2017b). For these reasons, I have included in the sample two of these collectives: Deliverance Milano and Riders Union Bologna.
Finally, in the last few years the Italian student movements have increasingly focused on labour, after the exhaustion of the ‘anti-Gelmini’ cycle between 2008 and 2011 (Caruso, Giorgi, Mattoni, & Piazza, 2010; Zamponi & Fernández González, 2017), that took place in the context of a broader wave of mobilisation in response to the neoliberal transformation of the university that has characterised a wide set of European and non-European countries (Brooks, 2016; Cini & Guzmán-Concha, 2017). After the implementation of the new school reform passed by parliament under the centre-left government led by Matteo Renzi in 2015, Italian students have been increasingly focusing their protest on the so-called ‘school-work alternation,’ a system that forces high school students to spend a part of their school hours in unpaid internships in companies. This innovation has been strongly criticised by student organisations because of the lack of oversight, of recognition of student’s rights and of coherence between study and work that, in their analysis, makes ‘school-work alternation’ a traineeship in exploitation. Building on the anti-precarity struggles of previous years (Zamponi & Fernández González, 2017), in theautumn of 2017 students demonstrated dressed as factory workers and organised ‘school-work alternation strikes,’ pointing out the increasing nexus between knowledge and labour. Following this convergence between student and labour struggles, I have included in my analysis the Unione degli Studenti (Students’ Union), the largest school students’ organisation in the country, founded in 1994 and at the vanguard of the struggle against ‘school-work alternation,’ and the Rete della Conoscenza (Network of Knowledge), the umbrella organisation that brings together the Unione degli Studenti and its university students’ counterpart Link-Coordinamento Universitario.
On average, the duration of each interview was about one hour. At the outset of each interview, the nature and purpose of the study were explained, and respondents were given the opportunity to ask questions about the research. Interviews proceeded focusing on a series of topics: context and organisation; issues and goals; actions and initiatives; visions of Europe; youth and political participation. Furthermore, the interviews were supplemented with documentary sources, in particular in the cases of formal trade union organisations, whose platforms provide a comprehensive view of their positions on the issues analysed in the article.
Euro-criticism and Euro-disenchantment
Criticism of the EU is unanimous, combining a specific criticism of its policies in response to the economic crisis with a broader one of its own nature as an instrument of the deployment of neoliberal globalisation. The economic crisis is read and interpreted as something that unveiled the internal contradiction of the European integration process. Trade unions, in particular, reiterate the traditional criticism of the absence of a social Europe, in terms of regulation, as a counterpart to the market Europe:
Now there is only the common market, but there is no common legal framework. (IL6)
There are those who got rich from the crisis. Think about Germany and Italy or Greece: they have gone through the crisis differently, some getting richer and redistributing this wealth and going far beyond the stability pacts. […] Lacking an axis of the stronger countries with a common proposal, everyone tried to respond on their own. The real tragedy of Greece is that it was left alone, the real drama of Greece were the others. (IL6)
The crisis is a crisis of capitalism, and it is a crisis that was imported from the marvellous and shining Anglo-Saxon capitalism. What we have been insisting on is the structural (and also revealing) nature of the crisis. As Marx says, crises are the maximal expression of the latent contradictions that exist and are also a mechanism of overcoming them. The fundamental thing to bring out, and this is Marx too, is that the fundamental nature of the crises of capitalism is being crises of overproduction. […] The hallucinating thing is that they have to depict an imported structural crisis as a problem of PIIGS being too much spendthrift. We have remarked that the original nature of this crisis is of a private debt crisis, and that there is a structural problem of people who have to indebt themselves to maintain a lifestyle with a roof on their head, this is revealing the absurdity of the economic system. (IL5)
The attempt is to go beyond the austerity versus growth theatre and see how they both belong to a common capitalist strategy whose fundamental objective is to make the popular classes, the workers, pay for the crisis. Clearly with differences, depending on which parts of the bourgeoisie and more or less co-opted parts of the proletariat pay these costs. So in Italy there is a more national, smaller bourgeoisie, which still has interests in public investments, public spending, et cetera, and instead a bourgeoisie that has more interests to engage with the European framework and to withstand international competition. In all this, there are mechanisms of competition, also of conflict with other capitals, like the German one, but with a solidarity. Our accent is more on the underlying solidarity behind the appearance. […] This does not mean not supporting the particular battle of a particular people, in the case of Greece for example. The battle on the Greek debt is at the same time the battle of Greece against Europe but it is also the battle of the European popular classes against the European capital. For this reason, regardless of whether we think Tsipras is a reformist, the first goal is to give him maximum solidarity, and before saying that the Greek comrades are backward, the goal is to build something that is at least a hundredth of that stuff there. (IL5)
This is particularly true among young activists, who grew up in a context of deep Europeanisation and do not question it, but at the same time do not share the hope towards the EU as a space of emancipation and progress that was widespread, even among Euro-critical activists, before the crisis. The labour-education nexus, from this point of view, is a paradigmatic example. In 2000, the Lisbon strategy promised a transition to a ‘knowledge-based economy,’ featuring an emancipatory and progressive role for education in labour, while instead contemporary students face the experience of exploitation, precarity, and competition directly inside their educational path. This disenchantment is made clear by a student union representative:
Our analysis of the European Union is ass-covering [as in: ambiguous in order to protect them from criticism]. In the sense that there are some objectives on which Europe is based, in relation to the knowledge society, et cetera, therefore also Europe2020, with the objectives on reducing the early school dropout, the increase in the number of graduates, et cetera., which are clearly positive. But in reality […], there is an approach that we criticise. There is a construction of the knowledge society that is extremely opposed to how we imagined it, there is the distortion of the concept of lifelong learning as an accumulation of capacity for expendable titles and in some ways a tendency to follow the German model in the recommendations that are made, particularly in our country, both on the dual system and on the next level of mini-jobs, et cetera. In this sense it clearly depends, the evaluation is very controversial. Clearly positive all the reflection on Erasmus, everything we want in this sense, but then in structural terms the node is, yes, more and more education, but in a way that instead is always more closely associated with the labour market. (IL2)
Our analysis on Europe is in progress, because many elements have changed over the years. Whereas until a few years ago it was still possible to think of Europe as a space for transformation of politics, this is much more complex to think, even in light of the most recent events. I refer, for example, to what happened with Greece. Europe as a space for transformation has certainly narrowed in our perspective, with all the difficulties that come with it, because if there are no spaces for transforming the European treaties, the ways in which international relations are meant; then, what do you do? On the other hand, we do not even intend to take positions like those you hear these days, also with respect to the exit from the euro, a topic on which a political force like the Five Star Movement is also withdrawing their initial proposals. And so it remains a big question, to which we are responding mainly on the level of mobilisation, looking at what movements exist in the European space, what connections we can find, faced with to years that have been significant also for mobilisations, in Spain, as much as in France on the Loi Travail. (IL7)
The (limited) growth of sovereignism and the lack of faith in the nation-state
This increasing Euro-criticism and the growing disillusionment towards the European integration process rarely translate into support for sovereignism and the proposal of quitting the EU. These positions do emerge, and more strongly than they used to, but they still tend to be rather few and isolated.
Among trade union organisations, the USB (Unione Sindacale di Base, the largest grassroots union confederation in Italy) has a radical anti-EU stance, as testified by their official platform, that officially defines the EU as the ‘European imperialist pole’ (ILD1: 8) and the European integration process as ‘a new season of colonisation’ (ILD1: 39). From their point of view, the EU treaties are a cage that constrains governments, closing any space for collective bargaining. For this reason, in 2017, the USB, together with a galaxy of small communist groups, launched the Eurostop campaign, which is now the only significant anti-EU actor in the Italian left. Their analysis is well summarised in the first paragraph of their founding document:
Eurostop is fighting to leave the Euro and break up the EU and NATO, an indispensable step to overthrow austerity policies and liberal globalization that have destroyed decades of social rights and achievements in Europe and now threaten democracy and antifascist constitutions. The rupture is also necessary to stop the permanent war policy unleashed by the US and their main allies. Breaking up with these institutions is necessary because they have demonstrated concretely and consistently over time not to be reformable in a positive way for the social rights of labour, of peoples and for democracy itself. Those who recognise that the EU today is unacceptable, but propose to reform the treaties, forget that Article 48 of Maastricht requires unanimity to change them. So, breaking up is the only viable way. (ILD2: 1)
These are positions far away from ours. […] Our idea is that the European Union is the minimum common space and we need European-level struggles, a European minimum wage, a European basic income. We need to be able to build a minimum level of rights across the continent. What is the difference between a European Central Bank in the hands of European capitalists and an Italian central bank in the hands of Italian capitalists? I do not know what is better, given what Italian capitalism is. (IL9)
We will never be sovereignist, […] we are pro-European and not only, we are internationalists. We do not believe that going back to national sovereignty can lead anywhere. (IL10)
The debate on ‘Italexit’ is not limited to grassroots unions, but takes place also inside mainstream trade unions. In fact, among the three largest trade union confederations in Italy, the Catholic CISL unambiguously calls the EU a ‘rampart,’ a ‘political necessity of our time,’ and urges member states to ‘complete the economic Union and march towards the federal political Union’ (ILD6). Meanwhile, the centrist UIL calls for an autonomous EU budget (ILD7), but the discussion inside social-democratic CGIL is more heated. The two documents between which members were called to choose in the last national convention of the CGIL, between 2018 and 2019, show significantly different positions on the EU. The document proposed by the large majority of the members of the national committee of the confederation reiterates the traditional Euro-critical approach that has historically characterised the CGIL, although with visible traces of the radicalisation that has been addressed in the previous section:
It is necessary to reconcile the economic Europe and the social Europe for a new sustainable and inclusive model of integration, by strengthening the democratic legitimacy of the European institutions and by correcting current imbalances by putting the European Parliament, the only body elected by citizens, at the heart of the decision-making process. There are some choices that must be made, also in the light of the new threats caused by protectionism and trade wars, to make this model prevail: new instruments of economic policy to increase investment for job creation (Eurobond), […]cancellation of the Fiscal Compact and subtraction from the calculated deficit of the expenses destined to revitalize the economy with infrastructural, productive and social investments; homogenization of policies, starting from fiscal ones, with the aim of speeding up interventions, avoiding downward competition among countries, the practice of relocations, combating tax evasion and fraud and encouraging protocols for traceability of spending; reforming the economic institutions starting from the European Central Bank, so that they also acquire the goal of full and good employment […]; reconstructing a common framework of labour rights (European Rights Charter) which foresees the progressive harmonization of economic, regulatory and social protection treatments and introduces minimum wage protection, strengthens collective bargaining, to eliminate social and contractual competition through the application the laws and contracts of the country in which the workers perform their activities, if more favourable, regardless of the state in which the enterprise is located. (ILD3: 3)
These policies are organically embedded in the EU, built on commodities and currency, on the competition between blocks, on the attempt to mediate and integrate the various imperialist interests that comprise it. It is the Europe of masters and bankers, of bombing and barbed wire. This Europe cannot be reformed: it must be opposed, like any sovereign and nationalist withdrawal, useful only to reproduce new class subordinations. The only Europe we want is that of workers. The CGIL must therefore organize the largest mobilization, in Italy and in the continent, for overturning these policies and institutions: for a unilateral withdrawal from the fiscal compact and all the treaties that impose austerity; to repeal the obligation to balance the budget from the Constitutions; for the cancellation of the debt; against delocalization and layoffs; to build European disputes and coordination between workers of the same companies in different countries. (ILD4: 3–4)
This fear of a comeback of nationalism in a context of increasingly strong Euro-criticism is often voiced by activists. A national representative of FIOM, in her interview, explicitly denounced this risk, acknowledging the responsibilities of the labour movement in not having effectively contrasted austerity at the European level and, thus, in leaving a political void for a nationalistic and xenophobic interpretation of working-class resentment:
For us, it depends on the balance of power. The dominant rhetoric is that of the return to the nation-state, and the union is the first point in which the inequalities emerging from such a model have been evident. You saw it first there, on jobs, in society. So it is clear that a certain delay, a certain responsibility belongs also to the union, in not having been able to clearly take positions on some issues. And it continues to bear this responsibility, because it should do much more, the union should bring millions of workers across Europe in the streets, against austerity and the dismantling of collective bargaining. Because you are in a context where collective bargaining in Greece is impeded by international institutions, because there are the Commission, the ECB and the International Monetary Fund that tell you that you cannot start negotiations. On this you need a more authoritative voice alongside the workers, so that the only one ringing in their ears is not the one saying that the migratory flows are coming to steal your job. […] There are no positions against Europe inside the union, at least inside the union that I belong to, part of the confederal ones. […] The national state is the past, we must try to organise something else. On the other hand, the workers’ movement has always been internationalist, those of small local interest are temporary retreats. I am absolutely convinced that the answer is elsewhere. (IL6)
my first enemies. And I am not only talking about the League, the fascists, and so on, they are enemies, there is no doubt. I am referring also those who present themselves as the radical wing of a part of the movements and bring forward a populist, sovereignist, very hetero-normative, male chauvinist, white discourse, and at the international level also a criminal discourse, because these are the same people that would like to ally with Assad, so we’re talking about monsters. For me it is a very serious problem, and we must be equally determined not to leave any doubt, any ambiguity with respect to this. (IL8)
It seems to me, however, that at European level there is also to discuss anew the role of Europe, and the Democratic Party takes on a role in this debate, so I cannot see a substantial difference between the European and the national debate. There is consonance, on our issues. […] So somehow it's a bit of a palliative to ask the question ‘it's more the fault of the national government or it's more the fault of Europe’, at the moment when the principles are the same. (IL2)
The new element of globalisation is that the control of the institutions of politics was no longer in the national state but at the top level, where there was no counter-power that could govern globalisation, and therefore exercise democratic control. The crisis was caused by an economic process, and the fact that there was no democratic level of governance in front of this economic process, of course, meant that there was not even space to stop this process. Today the nation-states, however they may reverse the course, have blunt weapons. A process of consolidation of the European Union could be important, but it is not on the horizon, indeed. […] Faced with globalisation, a higher level of government would be needed, but to do this we need a horizontal democratic level, so not in an intergovernmental way between nation-states but with greater powers of the European Parliament. Instead we paradoxically have a return of power to the Council, where politics is guided by elements of fear and protection. (IL4)
‘Pro’ versus ‘anti’-EU: A frustrating dichotomy
The polarisation of the debate on the EU, especially after the Greek debt negotiations and the Brexit referendum, as we have seen, is producing limited but existing outcomes in the Italian labour movement landscape. As the previous section has shown, the vast majority of actors are not adhering to the ‘Italexit’ project, notwithstanding the visible process of radicalisation of Euro-criticism. Their refusal of sovereignism does not mean however that they side with Euro-enthusiasts: actually, many activists and their organisations tend to refuse the dichotomy between leaving the EU and remaining in it. They find it frustrating and misleading, and prefer to struggle on their issues, trying to escape the ‘Italexit’ trap. This feeling was well expressed by a student union (Rete della Conoscenza) representative:
There is a stiffening in the public debate on Europe, compared to a few years ago, when we were all for ‘Hurray for the other Europe’, ‘we shall build a different Europe.’ Today, however, there is certainly a lack of centrality of the idea that changing Europe has consequences on your government. […] On the other hand, there are also different social conditions, so the discussion ‘Europe yes, Europe no’ becomes very easy to address, while a discussion about actual responsibilities and somehow real prospects is much less easy. Surely Europe as it is does not work; on the other hand, the radical positions of the ‘no’ to Europe are more supported by xenophobic positions, which would restore a climate of full rivalry between the states, rather than a real alternative solution from the point of view of international governance. […] In general the issue is the one of needs, not so much the institutions, so obviously this debate is a bit a palliative, the point is how to better respond to the needs and how to build decision-making spaces that are useful to respond to needs. (IL2)
Absolutely recognising the fact that the European Union is a liberal construction, and pointing out how, within the EU, it is a construction of the dominant and entrepreneurial classes of the same states, which then maybe hide behind the European Union; inside of that framework, the states are much more royal than the king: on taxation, on the constitutionalisation of the budget balance, on the fiscal compact. We must attack the construction of the European Union as it is, but we must not take that as the main battle. If we put Italy against the European Union, the lira against the euro, sic et simpliciter, many people would realise the risks it poses with respect to their material living conditions. […] This does not mean that we have to remain by force: for me, if Tsipras had said ‘let’s leave’, we would have had to support him, but most people know very well that this does not solve their problems. Using this as a flag is likely to frighten the people first, and then to absolve the internal ruling classes. We like the position of Mélenchon, the so-called Plan B. (IL5)
The need for Europeanisation in practice
Notwithstanding the criticism of the EU as it is, the necessity of organising at the transnational level is extremely clear to activists involved in labour struggles, for many different reasons, that go from the fact that often opponents tend to be big multinational corporations, and thus there is the need to directly address them at the transnational level, to the fact that Europeanisation and globalisation produced a significant level of competition among countries on offering companies the lowest possible level of workers’ salaries and rights. Transnational action seems like the only response to this process. The latter element is particularly stressed by a representative of the steelworkers’ union FIOM:
It goes without saying that on this you should find a response at European level, because it is no longer stuff that you can manage as a single country, that you manage it in a competitive manner with others. To give you an example, in all of Eastern Europe there is the whole topic of low wages, with even different positions among European trade unions, among those who say to you ‘But if I increase wages, I am not competitive anymore and I do not delocalise activities anymore’ and those who say ‘it is not possible that one of my workers costs 30 per cent of what a German worker costs when we are 50 kilometres away from one factory to another.’ You can’t deal with the issue of relocations only by going to complain to the European Parliament because they move production from one country to another. The issue would be to go towards a convergence to the top of wages, taxation … . (IL6)
The ability of politics to influence the choices of companies is increasingly weak. Often because the company is not based here, it has no connection with the territory. […] In the case of a large brand, the prime minister has not even managed to summon the CEO, who is in America and has completely ignored what was happening here. Local contacts kept saying that they did not decide, end of discussion. (IL4)
They were not executive officers, but only administrators, in companies that are multinational, that are managed abroad. This says a lot on the refusal to take responsibility by the company at the local level, because they tell you: ‘We have no power, we are not your opponents. They are in Germany, go to Germany.’ Germany in the case of Foodora, for Deliveroo they are in Britain, for Glovo in Spain. (IL1)
In our debate immediately emerged the need to speak with Milan and Turin, with the Belgians […], with the French … There are collectives all over Europe, they are multiplying, we are the latest to the party. (IL3)
The challenging practices of Europeanisation
The accounts of the attempts to build a transnational organisation at the European level that representatives of collectives participating in labour struggles in Italy gave in the interviews converge in pointing out a central element: they do not work. All the activists were proud to share their experiences in Europe-wide networks, but at the same time they did not hide their disappointment in the lack of efficacy of these networks. What a union activist told me in an interview on the European union confederation works in a similar way also for movement networks:
The European trade union played a role in the phase of construction of Europe, in terms of dialogue and consultation with the European institutions. But I have to say in the individual disputes it has not yet succeeded in playing its role. […] Surely there are experiences of European or transnational coordination. But they did not work, because they cannot build elements of solidarity. (IL4)
The European trade union has responsibilities, because in fact the national unions have not yet accepted even in small parts of their activities to make a minimum transfer of sovereignty, so the European trade union is the sum of many unions: you put together 28 countries, with more organisations in each country, it goes without saying that then, when you find a mediation, it risks to be a bit of a copy–paste of the Commission or Parliament, in which you find a mediation on positions but it is complicated to give a political autonomy to those institutions. And this cannot be renounced at this stage, in order to have a perspective of convergence of wages, of rights, the idea of a European industry contract. The real issue is that you have countries that have standards of a certain type, linked to a social dialogue of a certain type, and they say ‘I do not want to discuss with you, because for me it clearly means taking a step back’. (IL6)
We have always chosen Europe as a minimum horizon. We are victims of European policies, and thus that is the level on which we need to organise. At the same time all the attempts of organisation and reassembling at the European level—for example I think of the Transnational Social Strike network, and other networks, have not worked. There is nothing to do. They did not work because there are still national and political specificities: what the social safety nets in the various countries provide creates significant differences on the claims that can be made. We feel ridiculous when we claim a basic income and others say: ‘What do we care, we have it.’ So, these networks did not work, even if the attempts were made. (IL8)
Clearly we participate in Blockupy, in the counter-G20 summit, all these activities. The UdS1 is inside the Obessu, which is the international platform of school students’ unions at the European level, and then we started to build up a network of contacts, mainly on the issue of free education. So we started to have relationship with the LSE students who have done this kind of battle, who were also at our summer camp. We did a seminar on this two years ago in our camp, with the young people of Syriza, these from the LSE and French and Danish activists. It is clearly more complex at the international level to have a network of direct contacts, because there is not a hybrid organisation like us. […] We have done a particular choice, both in being independent from parties and social organisations, and in having the ambition to build movement action, while at the international level the dichotomy between movement collectives, that are more political, and student unions, is still strong. But we try to participate in all the events. (IL2)
Together with them [the workers of Turin], a worker from Milan went to Berlin and met other workers in a European assembly. It was organised by the Berlin Migrant Strikers, that is the network of Italian workers living in Berlin, linked to the experience of the Transnational Social Strike, that were also among the most active political references in the mobilisations in Hamburg [the anti-G20 protest of July 2017]. They organised this assembly: it was a first moment of dialogue, we self-narrated a bit. […] We are connected, but it is hard to coordinate, first because there are not common claims yet, well, there are common claims but a common platform has not been built yet. There are difficulties to communicate and those related to the specific phases: when the French pushed for action, in Italy we were working on workers’ assemblies, etc. […] The work of transnational connection is in a germinal phase, there is the will to coordinate, but there are structural difficulties. (IL1)
November 17 works at times, we continue to keep it as a key date but internationally the Obessu publishes call to action but does not organise actions, only very small things. There is a culture of mobilisation on November 17, but we have not managed to build it as a truly international date. The subject of transnational European mobilisation is in a phase of withdrawal. (IL2)
Among them [workers in Turin] there was a will to emulate what had happened abroad. In the meantime, the first things had been done in France and in Britain and there was the first judicial decision on Uber, stating that drivers were not managers but para-subordinate employees, to whom a certain level of protection should be granted. We went on from there, we studied, we collected the contracts, we prepared files, we mapped the situation, the workers’ conditions, the players in the sector … . (IL1)
Furthermore, the city-based nature of food delivery workers’ struggles, as we have already seen, brings back some analysis and practices that strongly resemble the ‘think globally, act locally’ slogan of the GJM, or the Zapatistas’ idea of challenging neoliberal globalisation through insurgency in their local communities. Here is how an activist for Riders Union Bologna argued for the possibility to directly challenge multinational corporation at the local level:
Everyone is aware that power is not in the vicinity, but they are just as aware, and this is the beautiful thing, that power can be addressed also in the peripheries. That you do not need the impact of international mobilization to start negotiating, because these platforms have their local nodes. Surely if they closed Bologna they would not have some kind of damage in terms of profits […]. Then it is also true that the structural weakness of these platforms is that they depend a lot on public opinion. They are always on the stage. They are perpetually under evaluation. They have internal ranking processes, they treat the workforce in a slave-like way, and so on, but at the same time they are liable to be damaged by the public. The consumer can affect the organisation of work, paradoxically, if he supported the riders’ battles. So basically you understand that even from a single city if you want, if you press, you can get not only that the political institutions intervene, which is the first thing we are able to do, but also you can put pressure on individual platforms. (IL3)
It seems to me more interesting, paradoxically, always, on a global level, to act on public opinion. That is, the world day of struggle at McDonald's was more interesting in terms of pressure on public opinion rather than in terms of the united struggle within the company. The fact that we strike at the same time all over the world the same day does not give more strength to the workers inside that company. But it builds an element of visibility, because it goes on the news. (IL4)
Discussion and conclusions
The picture that emerges is rather clear: the experience of organising in a context of crisis, austerity and precarity has produced a visible radicalisation of the criticism towards the European Union in this movement sector. The ‘critical Europeanism’ of the GJM is severely threatened by the resistance of the EU institutions to any attempt of reform. What has been modified, in particular, is the hope in the possibility of change. What all the analyses of grassroots visions of Europe conducted before the crisis illustrate, in fact, is that Italian social movements were already radically critical of the European Union before the great recession, but they perceived the existence of a path to significantly change it: ‘Europe is not rejected—far from it: there are constant appeals to the construction of a Europe of rights, a social Europe, a Europe from below’ (della Porta & Caiani, 2009, p. 158). Indeed, the ‘Europeanisation from below’ discourse was based not only on the Europeanist ethos of progressive cultures, that made movements ‘look at the EU as a community of values’ (Andretta & Caiani, 2005, p. 297), but also on the premise that EU institutions and member states would seize the opportunity for reform: ‘social movements criticise the market-led process of Europeanisation and ask the EU to defend a social and democratic model, but their building of a truly European public sphere located in the civil society networks maybe is what European institutions need more to overcome their democratic deficit and start to conceive relational mechanisms with their European ‘demos’’ (Andretta & Caiani, 2005, p. 298). This opportunity was wasted. The management of the crisis has crushed the hopes for change of progressive activists. In particular, the 2015 negotiation with the Greek government has proven to be a critical juncture, narrowing the ground for any proposal of ‘another Europe’ in the context of the existing EU institutions. Claims to ‘break up’ the EU have then spread in the movements. The handling of the economic crisis by EU-institutions and their impermeability to any significant proposal of change has frustrated the hopes of those who believed that ‘another Europe is possible,’ to quote a famous motto of the European Social Forum. Critical Europeanism is in crisis, because a progressive and democratic reform of the existing EU is not considered by several actors as a realistic outcome. In particular, there is a visible disenchantment towards the European project and the hopes of progress that tended to go together with it ten years ago. There is an increasing disillusionment with the Europeanisation process, that does not fascinate and attract activists as it used, and with its potential reformability.
Nevertheless, Euro-scepticism and calls to leave the EU are still limited to a small minority of social movement actors. Although some organisations have taken a clear stance in favour of breaking up the EU, and the issue of ‘Italexit’ is entering the debate (especially in trade unions), most activists express a deep frustration with the dichotomy between leaving and remaining, stating their preference for issues that they consider to be less divisive, more pragmatically achievable and more urgent. Radicalising criticism of the EU without finding a solution to it seems to create a sense of frustration with the issue of Europe in several activists, who feel powerless in an ever more polarised public debate. A similar dynamic of frustration can be seen regarding the practices of Europeanisation, which activists still find necessary but consider as difficult to pursue given the long trajectory of failure that characterises them.
Throughout the analysis, three elements seem to stop the transition from Euro-disenchantment to Euro-scepticism. Firstly, long-standing ideological trajectories make activists wary of everything that might be qualified as ‘nationalism.’ Rejecting the EU, from their point of view, is a metonymy for rejecting international class solidarity and defection to nationalism: ‘We are internationalists’ (IL10); ‘the workers’ movement has always been internationalist’ (IL6); ‘any sovereign and nationalist withdrawal [is] useful only to reproduce new class subordinations’ (ILD4); sovereignists are ‘my first enemies’ (IL8). Although simplified, this reading of the relationship between class and nation may seem, it is well rooted in a significant part of the Italian leftist political culture. This may lead to identify these actors with the ‘consistent champions of their claims, regardless of the strategic environment,’ different from the ‘strategic respondents to opportunities’ in movement coalitions according to Meyer (2004), but this explanation is far from sufficient, given that we are referring to a wide spectrum of actors from across the movement. Ideological barriers do matter, but they seem to do so in combination with other factors.
The second element hindering the shift towards Euroscepticism seems to be the ownership of the anti-EU struggle claimed by the radical right and, in particular, by Matteo Salvini’s League in the last few years. Although ‘the League's positions regarding European integration have always been ambiguous,’ Salvini’s nativist and business-friendly strand of radical-right populism (Ivaldi, Lanzone, & Woods, 2017) is the first significant case of hard Euroscepticism in Italian politics. The interviews have been conducted in the months of Salvini’s electoral explosion, that brought the League from the 6.15 per cent of votes in 2014 to the 17.37 per cent in 2018, and the 34.26 per cent in 2019. For activists, the idea of being identified with an issue the League clearly owns is unbearable: ‘the radical positions of the ‘no’ to Europe are more supported by xenophobic positions’ (IL2). The identification between Euroscepticism and nationalism is strengthened by the issue ownership the League claims on ‘Italexit.’ As the literature has shown in the case of sub-state nationalism (Erk, 2010), there is a strong path-dependency in the left-right orientation of nationalism, that tends to change only in the case of critical junctures.
Thirdly, these elements seem to be strengthened by the traditional distrust of governmental institutions that has characterised Italy for decades and that has been radicalised during the crisis. The transition from Euro-disenchantment to Euro-scepticism requires faith in the Italian nation-state. Activists seem to be even more sceptical of the nation-state, and Italy in general, than of the EU: ‘Today the nation-states, however they may reverse the course, have blunt weapons’ (IL4); ‘The national state is the past, we must try to organise something else’ (IL6); ‘What is the difference between a European Central Bank in the hands of European capitalists and an Italian central bank in the hands of Italian capitalists? I do not know what is better, given what Italian capitalism is’ (IL9). The deep-rooted distrust of national institutions that has characterised Italy for a significant part of its unified history and that has been increasing after the crisis of the early 1990s (Ginsborg, 1998; Newell, 2010) seems to play a role in this process. Strategic adaptation seems to require a certain level of credibility of the proposed alternative, now lacking in this case.
These findings have implications both for the academic debate on movements and opportunities and for the public debate on labour Euroscepticism. On the one hand, pre-existing cultural and ideological barriers can hinder the strategic adaptation of social movement activists to political opportunities, as suggested by the literature, but the phenomenon is far less straightforward that expected, and it involves also the interaction with other actors (in this case, the radical right) and the credibility of alternative strategic paths (in this case, a renewed sovereignty of the Italian nation-state). Further research will be needed on the interaction between such factors in shaping strategic adaptation. The findings of this article suggest that the analysis of the role of political opportunities in strategic adaptation should take into account relational and contextual factors. On the other hand, the crisis of critical Europeanism should be taken seriously. Although the resilience of left-wing opposition to Euroscepticism has stopped the Italian labour movement from going towards a full-throated call for the ‘Italexit’ option, Euro-disenchantment seems to be here to stay, as the result of a decade of austerity. And counting on the permanent strength in the future of the factors hindering its transition to Euroscepticism seems far from a safe bet.
Note
The school student union that together with the university student union Link-Coordinamento Universitario forms the Rete della Conoscenza.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).