ABSTRACT
The Introductory Chapter depicts the global and European context in which populism has become a pivotal political and societal trend capitalizing on the problems of disenchanted groups of people who have generated various forms of discontent against the flows of globalization appearing in the form of deindustrialization, poverty, human mobility, migration, refugees, heterogeneity, diversity, international trade, tourism and supranational unity (e.g. EU). This Chapter renders the ways in which the populist parties exploit past, nativism, heritage, culture, Islamophobia, and migrantphobia to mobilize the masses. In this regard, it draws a framework to address the public/popular discourses and dominant understandings of a homogeneous ‘European heritage’ and the ways in which they are mobilized by specific political actors to advance their agendas and to exclude groups such as minorities from a stronger inclusion into European society. Introducing the research question, the rationale of the research, the methodology, the importance of such a comparative study to reveal the changing nature of populism in Europe, and the scope of the study, this Chapter also the common tropes identified by the interlocutors interviewed in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Turkey such as anti-multiculturalism, Islamophobia, EUscepticism, different uses of the past and heritage, anti-globalism, anti-international trade, economic protectionism, unemployment, welfare, Ecologism etc.
