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Although the media are ascribed much power in discussions about far-right politics, to date the communicative dimension of extreme right mobilization received little rigorous scholarly attention. To address this gap, this paper addresses the media practices of the extreme right, offering an empirical study of two emerging social movement organizations of this area: CasaPound Italia in Italy and Les Identitaires in France. Rather than treating them as incidental beneficiaries of media populism, the paper disentangles the various ways in which these groups interact with the mass media, discussing the forms and meaning of their activism in relation to extreme right political culture, and differentiating between inward-oriented and outward-oriented media practices. Based on ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with far-right militants, the paper shows that media practices not only try to respond to the demands of the media environment in which the groups are embedded, but also seek to reinforce the groups' internal organization and hierarchy, building collective symbolic imagery, and ensuring ideological consistency among activists and sympathizers. In so doing, the paper offers initial insight on how protest movements of the extreme right consolidate their profile and become recognizable in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France and Italy – like all the countries of the European Union – the proportion of higher education graduates in the working population has continued to increase. At the same time, the number of jobs requiring this level of education has not grown as quickly. In France and Italy, this has meant a decrease in the proportion of tertiary graduates who occupy managerial positions, and a growing share of these graduates hold jobs as middle and low ranking employees. Several studies have investigated the phenomenon of professional downgrading, focusing on its structural determinants and socio-economic implications at the national level and examining international differences. Nevertheless, only a few studies explore disparities in over-education and compare nations at the regional level. By addressing the need for a spatial approach to this subject, which is so far lacking in the scientific literature, this paper examines the downgrading of higher education graduates in Italy and France at the regional level and discusses the real occupational returns for high levels of education. Using data from the Italian and French censuses, the findings of this analysis show significant sub-regional heterogeneities regarding access to managerial positions for graduates according to the territorial unit observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature concerning conspiracy and conspiracy theories is particularly huge, especially if considering political and social sciences. However, many works revealed some weaknesses, such as the importance of assumptions and generalisations in political sciences studies or the neglected/exaggerated role of conspiracy in many historical works. So, it appeared that new political history could bring a significant and lightning contribution, taking into account the various dimensions and the complexity of the topic as well as the role of the context. The proposal of the paper, based on the empirical study of postwar Italy and France, could be summed up in three points. The first would be to consider the political nature of conspiracy and conspiracy theory, and to narrow the scope of the study to well-defined political groups. The second, not to take for granted pre-existing interpretations and narratives on this topic. The last, to pay major attention to the complex interactions of the representations, events, propaganda and political cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationships between the migratory policies of the EU countries with more experience of immigration and their national political cultures. It focuses on France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It then looks at Italy, a relatively new country of immigration, which, with 3,000,000 legal immigrants, has become the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean basin. In its final part it highlights the incipient process of 'communitarisation' of the immigration policies of EU countries in the last decade. This process, which has already entailed a significant convergence of their migratory policies, is expected to continue after the recent enlargement of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]