Religious retrotopias and identity-based withdrawal in a Moving Europe – RetroMove

At a time when post-modern societies are facing a multifactorial crisis (decline of ideologies, growing inequalities, social tensions, loss of meaning, environmental crisis, identity withdrawal, etc.), retrotopias are increasingly being invested as resources of meaning. The RetroMove project aims to analyze this complex phenomenon by focusing on religious retrotopias in a Europe on the move (of populations and ideas). These specific retrotopias are mobilized mainly by the right and radical right, and consist in presenting Christian values, history and culture as an idealized horizon threatened by migratory movements. But, more surprisingly, the left is also appropriating this theme, even beyond Christian democratic movements. This link between religious retrotopias and identitarian withdrawal is at the root of religious nationalism.
RetroMove is ground-breaking in two main respects: it compares the appropriation of religious retrotopias by the right and the left, a study that has never been done before. While the social sciences have mainly focused on discourses and content of religious nationalism, the project focuses on actors – leaders, activists and migrants.
It aims to understand how, in secularized societies characterized by the eviction of religion from the political sphere, religious nationalism has become so successful that it is now a component of right-wing forces, particularly the radical right, and that it is now also appealing to the "left".
Combining an innovative approach and methodology, this project will provide a cartography of the reticular logics of religious nationalism, a prosopography of its actors and a discursive comparison of the forces that seize upon this rhetoric. It will provide an exceptional database for the religious sciences and the sociology-politics of activism and political parties, that can be exploited outside the field of religious nationalism.
For all those reasons, this project will be a great observatory of the political and religious recompositions within Europe.