Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DRIVE (Determining multi-level led causes and testing intervention designs to reduce radicalisation, extremism and political violence in north-western Europe through social inclusion)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2021-12-31
In recent years, research on extreme identity politics and political violence in Europe has concentrated on trends of violent radical Islamism and far-right radicalisation among young men. This body of work has brought to light issues of identity, belonging, intergenerational change, alienation, marginalisation, inequality, masculinity, and miseducation. Findings highlight issues of space and place that worsen existing discriminatory discourses based on race, religious identity, socioeconomic class, and politics. Furthermore, far-right movements and violent Islamists not only have similar nesting grounds, but they may also feed off one another’s rhetoric and activism in specific local urban regions. However, there are considerable differences in understanding the connection between these various forms of local extremism, as no study has yet to analyse the synergies or reciprocity between Islamist and radical right extremism in a comparative European setting. Furthermore, there is no clear understanding of the interaction between individual and structural factors that considers the psychological circumstances affecting already vulnerable people. There is also a fundamental lack of understanding of the larger issues of social inclusion that influence the urban radicalisation experience. It is a major concern for all vulnerable people when it comes to radicalization because concerns about personal and political identity, as well as intergenerational change, influence the courses individuals can pursue. DRIVE will produce a range of policy-oriented research findings to better understand how social inclusion affects radicalisation for far-right and Islamist organisations in various sections of North-Western Europe, the project’s targeted groups and geographical focus. The results of this project will be used to help implement European-wide policy changes that focus on social inclusion in de-radicalization efforts. Thus, the need to better understand the processes of radicalisation, given the concerns about social exclusion and the significance of public mental health care, is a defining feature of the Drive project. Understanding and countering violent radicalisation on an empirical basis is still the exception rather than the rule. Most studies on radicalisation are based on theoretical and speculative approaches and are not driven by empirical and evidence-based methods. As a four-country European-wide data-driven research project, DRIVE will be one of the leading research projects in the field. It will give real data with a solid foundation in the methods of the social sciences and a focus on public mental health.
The primary goals of the project’s first year were to build the research instruments and fine-tune them throughout the piloting phase. The piloting took place in late 2021 and continued in earnest, with the fieldwork proper commencing in three of the four countries by January 2022. The importance of being fully prepared is enhanced due to the need to ensure quality data collection concerning 640 respondents across the four countries. This will become the largest dataset concerning issues of extremism and radicalisation among those in the milieus of far right and Islamist extremism anywhere in Europe, with significant impacts on theoretical, conceptual, and policy-level outcomes. Another fundamental goal was to guarantee that the background research, social media, and website elements were operational, with active social media accounts and several professional blogs that have been written and published, which we continue to promote via our platforms. The main goal of the first year was to begin fieldwork at the tail end to obtain a head start knowing that the majority of 2022 would be spent on fieldwork, that is, data collection and analysis, with dissemination workshops in late 2022. Due to the slight delay in the fieldwork, we will hold these workshops in September and, later, December. Nonetheless, our goal is to keep collecting data until we reach the predetermined target of 640 responders. if we think that the fieldwork in some of the countries might be pushed back, we will take the necessary steps, such as distributing resources from other parts of the consortium to help with the fieldwork process.
The bulk of the research on radicalisation can be said to be primarily divided into accounts that examine radicalisation as either a “process” (which asks the question “how” and is concerned with transition points or pathways) or a “root-cause” (which asks the question “why” and relates to outcomes). Most accounts analysing radicalisation as a “process” have focused on either macro or socio-micro factors, whereas the majority of accounts viewing radicalisation through the lens of “root causes” tend to focus on single explanations or limit their scope to a narrow range of causes. The growing currency in the field of explaining violent radicalisation in terms of “push” and “pull” factors is equally reductive and ambiguous. To date, there is a notable absence of a comprehensive, coherent, and integrated theoretical framework of violent radicalization that appreciably accommodates its multi-faceted, interconnected, and multi-layered reality and includes a public mental health promotion focus. DRIVE will therefore develop an integrated theoretical framework that views violent radicalisation as a complex and multidimensional process, one that requires a fine-grained analysis of the interaction between structural motivations, enabling factors, and individual incentives. DRIVE will produce explanatory analysis through the deployment of a multi-methodological approach to gathering data, which includes qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys, and visual documentation. By analysing the role of gender at the level of the enabling factor in the radicalisation process, this research will explore wider questions by discussing the role of mothers in identifying risks of radicalisation or, controversially, the topic of “ISIS Brides” with young females. DRIVE also explores the importance of women in far-right groups and how gender plays out in these movements more specifically.
DRIVE will therefore be one of the few research projects able to provide empirically supported recommendations for policy development. Given that DRIVE’s strategy looks to combine complex and integrated theory with empirical data, it will address the challenges inherent in multilevel causality. Even though the causes of radicalisation are found at distinct levels and dimensions, multi-level policy solutions—preventive, risk reduction, rehabilitation, wellbeing, and resilience-building—are sometimes applied in a way that mismatches the solution-problem dyad formulation, inadvertently ignoring the different logics governing each policy instrument. The tendency has been, for example, to tackle the symptoms of radicalisation using preventive tools instead of using preventive instruments to target its causes. DRIVE will mitigate the prevalent practise of recommending misplaced policy instruments by easing the translation of research findings into specific outputs that target causes and not indicators. DRIVE will therefore produce evidence-led research outputs that touch upon the concerns of several policy areas: P/CVE, community engagement, public mental health promotion, social integration, and interfaith relations.
DRIVE will therefore be one of the few research projects able to provide empirically supported recommendations for policy development. Given that DRIVE’s strategy looks to combine complex and integrated theory with empirical data, it will address the challenges inherent in multilevel causality. Even though the causes of radicalisation are found at distinct levels and dimensions, multi-level policy solutions—preventive, risk reduction, rehabilitation, wellbeing, and resilience-building—are sometimes applied in a way that mismatches the solution-problem dyad formulation, inadvertently ignoring the different logics governing each policy instrument. The tendency has been, for example, to tackle the symptoms of radicalisation using preventive tools instead of using preventive instruments to target its causes. DRIVE will mitigate the prevalent practise of recommending misplaced policy instruments by easing the translation of research findings into specific outputs that target causes and not indicators. DRIVE will therefore produce evidence-led research outputs that touch upon the concerns of several policy areas: P/CVE, community engagement, public mental health promotion, social integration, and interfaith relations.