Right-Wing Extremism and Gender: Political Socialisation and Processes of Radicalisation in Rural Area. A Case Study.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Ursula Birsl
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 260066309

An analysis from 1993 has provided evidence that xenophobic violence surfaces disproportionately in rural areas. National security authorities, civil society initiatives and political protagonists all noticed that right-wing extremist groups use the countryside as an area of retreat. Current research on right-wing extremism indicates a great disparity between rural and urban areas: while the development of democratic culture is stronger in urban areas, the advance of right-wing extremism is more prominent in the countryside. Recently, research looks at the conditions of the political context in which right-wing extremist attitudes develop and radicalize. What remains even more understudied is the way in which (young) women are involved in the far-right milieu. Over the last two decades, gender studies have asked how women and girls participate in the milieu and how they were individually socialized. Socialization in this context is defined as the access to the far-right and/or violent groups. Further studies addressed the issue of the constitution and the significance of gender relations in this political entity. The integration of these studies and their findings into the general research on the extreme-right has so far been slow. Especially when it comes to the role of the socio-cultural and political context in the process of entering and radicalizing, the integration of the gender perspective has been neglected. This project seeks to close this gap while focusing on the following research question: Which structures of opportunity in rural areas can facilitate processes of far-right radicalization of young women and men? To answer this question the project focuses on a case study located in the hessian rural district Lahn-Dill. Methodologically, the project employs the tools of participant observation, group discussion and expert interviews. We also produce a nationwide data collection of events based on media reports to examine the structure of the rural-urban disparity when it comes to far-right and contemptuous offences and violent crimes. The forms of participation for women and men in these crimes will be reconstructed. For this aspect a pre-structured press review from the Berlin project Respectabel is available. Through this data collection we are able to integrate the finding of the case study into a bigger framework.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants