A cold and gray September 2017 afternoon in Bristol (the principal city of England’s greater southwest region) and the 80 attendees of the Gays Against Sharia march shuffled their underwhelming way through the city center’s peripheral streets, on a route configured by the authorities to ensure the least possible inconvenience to the city’s throngs of weekend shoppers. Organized by former English Defence League (EDL) activist Tommy English (aka Thomas Cook) under the joint banners of the fledgling micro-movements Gays Against Sharia and British and Immigrants United Against Terrorism , the march sought to build on the momentum established by the much larger, and more eventful, demonstration in Manchester in the wake of the Islamist terror attack in the same city (killing 22 people). The Manchester demo had in fact also been organized by Tommy English under the same Gays Against Sharia banner, but looked set for a pitifully low attendance until organizationally hijacked by Tommy Robinson Footnote 1 (aka Stephen Lennon), now leader of UK Against Hate and Pegida UK. As the Gays Against Sharia branding of the Manchester demo progressively succumbed to the more forceful banner of Tommy Robinson’s UK Against Hate, the demonstration ultimately became a catalyst for re-uniting many of the (largely violent) activists and leaders associated with the now dissolved EDL. Estimated as being attended by up to 2000 people, the Manchester demonstration evidenced the still potent force of extreme nationalist protest , at the same time as its descent into violence and chaos gave ample voice to its unruly masculinist energies.

For the Bristol event, no doubt mindful of the chaos in Manchester, and aware of the scheduled presence of a number of “celebrity” figures from the anti-Islamic radical right in the UK,Footnote 2 the police: deployed some 250 officers; enacted special powers banning face coverings, masks, banners, and flags “that might incite hatred”; and barricaded the attendees into the grandeur of Queen Square for collective address on the threats presented by the “Evil and Hateful Ideology of Sharia Law”. Attendees were promised representation on topics such as female genital mutilation, homophobia within Islam, and the perils of Sharia Law. With hindsight, the police needn’t have worried. The counter-demonstration, organized by Bristol Stand Up To Racism , and supported by diversity and anti-fascist groups, local politicians, and a coalition of unions, had little to get its teeth into with a mere 80 marchers on the rally. Undoubtedly, the Gays Against Sharia organizers would have felt bitterly disappointed with the pitifully low turnout, and for an event so clearly seeking to work the political capital of potentially fruitful conflations of sexual cosmopolitanism , liberalism, and anti-Islamic politics . If the Bristol march represented something of an acid test of how much grassroots traction had been secured through the deployment of sexual cosmopolitanism as a recruiting sergeant for a radical anti-Islamic politics , then it would appear as though recruitment had not been going particularly well. For the anti-Islamic political entrepreneurs who would seek to build alliances between sexual minorities and the broader interests of the radical and extreme right, the Bristol march appears suggestive that such alliances remain tenuous, at least in the context of organized street-level political action in the UK.

In that same year, the long Italian summer had been marked by a series of incidents that had served to bring the linkages of nationalism, gender, and sexuality to the forefront of public debate. Two principal events drew the attention of media and public alike. On the night of 26 August 2017, a group of young men, identified by the victims as North-African, attacked two Polish tourists (a heterosexual couple) on a Rimini beach, one of the most popular destinations on the Adriatic coast for young tourists and revelers alike. What at first appeared a friendly approach from the group quickly turned into a violent and sexual assault, with the man being knocked unconscious and the woman repeatedly raped. After attacking the Polish couple, the group of young men would continue their night of violence under the influence of alcohol and drugs, heading to Miramare , on the border with Rimini, where they sexually abused a transsexual of Peruvian origin.

Changing scene to Florence , a regional city attracting millions of tourists every year, in addition to thousands of overseas students (particularly from the USA), the night of 7 September saw two 21-year-old American students sexually assaulted. Approached outside a club in central Florence by two on duty carabinieri Footnote 3 patrolling the area after receiving a call from the owner of the premises, journalistic reports account for how the two women were raped by the two carabinieri in the lift and on the stairs of the women’s place of residence. CCTV footage showed that the two carabinieri used their police vehicle to take the American students home, an illegal act according to Italian law.

The two cases elicited quite different responses from both public opinion and the media. The rape in Rimini was treated from the outset as a confirmed case of sexual violence and was associated with a general outcry against asylum seekers, refugees, “do-gooder” (buonisti in Italian) advocates of migrant interests, and an overly tolerant and permissive immigration policy. Media headlines accounted for the rape in Rimini in terms implying the certain guilt of the accused. The main Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera , for instance, entitled its Bologna online edition, “Rimini, gang rapes a tourist on the beach, and a transsexual”, and added in the summary, “A group of foreigners attacked the couple last night: first beating the man and then abusing the woman. Then they would move to State 16, and also abused a transsexual” (26 August 2017).

In contrast, in the Florence case, though the government soon realized that the American students’ claims were fully grounded, the general public appeared more reluctant to accept the possibility that the two carabinieri were capable of committing rape. Media presentations of the case clearly stressed that the students’ allegations were yet to be proven. In fact the Corriere della Sera entitled its online edition: “Florence , the allegation of two American students: ‘We were raped by two carabinieri’ ” (07 September 2017). Following confirmation of their guilt, the two officers were quickly reconstructed as “rotten apples” in an otherwise healthy barrel of national masculinity, thus protecting the national body from implication in such sexual crime. Media defense of the carabinieri, as representatives of the nation itself, here became a mechanism for defending national masculinities.

Our final case concerns a quite different continental context and one for that matter not substantively addressed in this text. In February of 2014, Yoweri Museveni , the president of Uganda signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law. The Act criminalizes any sexual contact between persons of the same sex, where the initial bill (introduced in 2009) originally included the death penalty for certain homosexual acts . Karimi and Thompson (2014) note that capital punishment was rescinded after the UK and many other European nations threatened to withdraw millions of dollars of aid to the country. However, the bill includes a provisional of life imprisonment for several specific crimes and includes prison sentences for groups that work with or counsel the LGBT community , essentially criminalizing many organizations and individuals who seek to support or otherwise work with an already vulnerable group.

In an interview with CNN , President Museveni was asked if he was worried whether the new laws were a step backwards for the people of Uganda. He replied:

Worried? Not at all. If the West doesn’t want to work with us because of homosexuals then we have enough space here to live by ourselves and do business with other people. We see how you do things, the families, how they’re organized. All the things, we see them, we keep quiet. It’s not our country, maybe you like it. So there’s now an attempt at social imperialism – to impose social values of one group on our society. (Karimi and Thompson 2014: online)

In August of 2017, the Ugandan government canceled a week of activities scheduled for Gay Pride in the capital city of Kampala . Simon Lokodo , the state minister of ethics and integrity, accused organizers of recruiting, exhibiting, and promoting homosexuality. A Guardian report suggested that police officers were sent to hotels and specific venues where events had been scheduled in order to “arrest anyone participating in activities ” (Okiror 2017: online). While police had granted permission for the pride celebrations in 2015, it is clear that the president and the government were intent on ensuring that the LGBT community was actively silenced. Reports from Reuters (Lykke Lind 2016) suggest that gay men had been dragged from their homes by police and subjected to painful anal examinations to determine whether they may be guilty of sodomy . The murder of LGBT activist David Kato in 2011 was also indicative of the levels of violence that anyone who is openly gay may face, not just from official state actors but from the local community as well.

Some Strands, and their Unpicking

In their own ways, these three vignettes bring to the fore some important and contemporaneous themes pertaining to the shifting relations between nationalism , gender , and sexuality . In the case of the Gays Against Sharia march, we see captured here some of the most salient and pressing features of extreme nationalism’s amended relationships to some of its core associations. Firstly, we see at least some degree of dis/re-placement of a once central reference point in extreme nationalist discourses, namely, “race”. Islam , and Muslims , have emerged as absolutely pivotal reference points within nationalist narratives in the West and, in fact, beyond. Anti-Islam and Anti-Muslim sentiment has come to predominate as the key nodal point for nationalist mobilizations, and in a manner that conflates civilization , ethnicity , and religion in complex and uncertain ways. In this refrain, the Western nation itself becomes constructed as a social body conjoining civilizational, ethnic and religious elements, though still commonly under-written by the whispered subtext of race. In this way, the gendered and sexed subjects of nationalist discourse and practice become, at least in part , reconfigured (Zúquete 2008).

Secondly, and always perplexingly in this context of extreme nationalistic antipathy toward the presence of Islam and Muslims in “our national homes” in the West , the category of the nation itself somewhat gives way to the broader category/boundary of the West and/or Europe (Bunzl 2007). Western and European nations become firmly located in an extended civilizational family that despite its internal heterogeneities is rendered ever more homogenous by the socio-cultural and political consequences of its common “Muslim colonization” (Zúquete 2015).

Thirdly, in this alignment of extreme nationalism with what might at least appear to be an inclusive orientation toward non-normative sexual and gender identities , we are reminded that nationalism operates in a context-specific political-cultural landscape. In national settings where political culture has shifted to normatively incorporate at least some basic premises and practices associated with gender equality , nationalism’s “inherent” gender conservatism must be understood as relative to the gendered political culture of the broader context in which it is located (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2015). Populist Radical Right (PRR) organizations across multiple European nation-states have variably but increasingly deployed rhetoric associated with gender egalitarianism and sexual cosmopolitanism (Spierings et al. 2017; Akkerman 2015). At the same time, we are brought to question the sincerity of extreme nationalism’s apparent embracing of a gendered and sexualized politics of inclusion . Evidence clearly indicates the Janus-faced nature of the extreme and Populist Radical Right’s deployment of gender and sexual liberalism, where such deployments appear much more about their functional utility in rendering Islam and Muslims other to the West than reflecting any authentic and extra-contextual ideological positioning (Akkerman 2015). However Janus-faced, there is nevertheless evidence to show that the extreme and populist right have become increasingly influential among European LGBTQ constituencies . Spierings et al. (2017), in a study of European Social Survey data linked to 29 elections, found that “sexually modern nativists are more likely to vote for PRRs than sexually traditional nativists” (230).

However, it becomes clear from the Gays Against Sharia vignette that strategic deployments of gender and sexual liberalism by multifarious nationalisms are in no sense destined to succeed. The forces of masculinism, that so readily, and one might say inevitably, imbue nationalism (see Nagel 1998), may place a very real limit on how fruitful such strategic deployments can be in capturing the hearts and minds of men within extreme nationalist movements. In the case of the Manchester demonstration, it was only at the point when Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson and ex-leader of the EDL) hijacked and redirected the focus of the public demonstration away from the specific matter of “gay rights” that the demonstration was able to attract a large and impassioned audience. Finally, we might also reflect upon the ideological and relational precarities of those interests, genuinely allied to gender and sexual non-conformity , who choose to make ideological bed-fellows out of (extreme) nationalists.

The Italian rape case vignettes pick up on themes that resonate powerfully with contributions found within this edited collection. Firstly, both vignettes illustrate something of the dynamics of racialization and sexism in the context of nationalistic accounts of sexual crime . In both cases, media and public/political discourses had mobilized what Farris and Scrinzi define as the “racialization of sexism ” (this volume and also Farris 2017; Scrinzi 2014a, b), where racism functions to produce differential applications of sexism, in this case, two categories of rapists. In the first category are refugees and migrants , who are rendered “culturally” and “biologically” more prone to rape, in turn confirming our fears about “uncontrolled migration ”. In the second category are those rapists who undeniably belong to the “national body” (in this case indigenous , white police officers). In this latter case, their sexual violence becomes reconstructed as an individual pathology, insulating the broader national body from any equivalent accusations of ethno-national culpability in respect of violent misogyny . It is notable that in both these cases the victims were in fact non-nationals. In the case of the Polish couple, their positioning here might be imagined to be complex. On the one hand the couple are white, European, and on vacation (and as the latter, desired visitors with a legitimate reason for their presence). On the other hand, the accession of Poland to the EU has itself been associated with mass immigration to Western Europe in a context of variably hostile media and popular-political anti-Eastern immigration sentiment. As such, the status of Poles , as “belonging ” in a Western European context, and as such being “one of us”, should not be assumed to be secure. However, set against the racialized and immigrant otherness of the attackers, who as non-white immigrants are routinely subjected to racialized exclusion from the national body, the Polish tourists become functionally included. In the context of the American students, their racial and national identity might be expected to firmly locate them within a Western collectivity within the public imaginary, but their juxtaposition to the emblematic legitimacy of white, masculine servants of the nation-state (here in the form of the carabinieri ) in fact located them in a position of conditionality.

So, and this is the second theme emerging from the two rape case vignettes, what is going on here is not just a war between the sexes, where women pay the price for their freedom, but more immediately, a war between men played out with and through women’s bodies , and in ways that are both material and symbolic (Dominijanni 2017). The former category of war is fought anytime a woman is abused and raped or becomes a victim of violence. The latter is waged through the meanings assigned to the former. As feminist literature on nationalism and gender has shown, women, and their reproductive capacity, are inextricably identified with community , territory , ethnicity , and national identity (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989). For this reason, women are framed as the future of the nation , and in a manner that authorizes their dominaiton and the control of their reproductive capacity. The national “community ” is under threat where the rapist is a foreigner.. In the Florence case, the victim’s allegations are doubted, the rape is downplayed, and the community is left safe in its national-cultural reproduction. As the feminist lawyer and activist Tatiana Montella (Cecchini 2017) argued in the aftermath of these events: “What happened this summer is something very serious. A scandalous and racist game has been played: when the rapists are migrants, women become a property to defend against the invader. But if the rapist is an Italian, then it is always the woman’s fault”.

The example of Uganda’s passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014 provides an illuminating case of the ways in which gender , sexuality , and nation are bound together by different ideological tropes that govern different geographical regions and in turn broader differences of political culture. Uganda is one of many African countries that seeks to outlaw homosexual practices, and many of these nation-states are heavily influenced by religious doctrines that prohibit homosexuality . As seen with the quotation from President Museveni , there are other ideological lines drawn here—in this instance, for the West to mandate tolerant approaches to LGBT communities becomes tantamount to “social imperialism ”. While much of the contemporary social science and political studies literature has focused on the inclusion/exclusion of certain minority communities within nationalist discourses , it is clear that emerging nations in the Global South are grappling with the legacy of colonialism . What makes the Ugandan case so interesting is that President Museveni is a member of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) . The NRM was originally founded as part of liberation movement that sought to seize power from fascist regimes (propped up by the West in an attempt to maintain “stability” in the region and keep the threat of communist or socialist movements at bay). The NRM introduced meaningful democratic processes for the people of Uganda and sought to re-enfranchise the population, particularly focusing on traditionally marginalized groups (i.e. the impoverished, women , young people, disabled people , etc.). Museveni was part of the movement that deposed Idi Amin in 1979 (estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of Ugandans during his rule from 1971 to 1979). While the NRM brought some measure of economic and political stability to Uganda, several scholars and international organizations (Oliver 2013; African Women 2014; Amnesty International 2014; Vorhölter 2017) have argued that the continuing influence of the USA on Ugandan politics has created a situation where religious, right-wing Conservatives have overtly influenced particular policies and suggest that anti-gay legislation is shaped by the US Christian Right. This raises questions about the extent to which political decisions about the inclusion of the different minority groups, especially the LGBT community , are influenced by imperialist , Christian Right forces.

Aims and Scope of the Book

The principal objective of this text is to provide a multidisciplinary and comparison-rich platform for both established and newly emerging researchers to bring to bear their latest empirical research, and critical thinking, on the question of nationalism’s complex and shifting relationships to gender and sexuality . More specifically, the book seeks to address a number of key aims. Firstly, the text looks to advance our theoretical and conceptual understandings of how variable expressions of nation/alism intersect with gender and sexuality. Secondly, it brings to the table a range of contemporaneous empirical accounts, drawn from across the globe, to inform comparative, context-specific understandings of the interactions taking place at the interface of nation/ism, gender, and sexuality. Thirdly, the book offers a multi-sited exploration of the fluid, and always “productive”, dynamics of inclusion and exclusion associated with the nationalist project, mapping and explaining the shifting contours of belonging and otherness generated in the context of multitudinous particular nationalisms . Fourthly, and challenging a scholarly legacy that has overly focused on the masculinist character of nationalism , the book seeks to pay particular attention to the people and issues less commonly considered in the context of nationalist projects , namely, women,, sexual minorities and non-hegemonic masculinities. Finally, the book endeavors to propose an agenda for theoretically informed, empirical research fit for the uncertainties and instabilities of the twenty-first century.

The text covers an impressive empirical scope. Geographically, European case studies focus on the UK , Italy , Russia , Greece , and Romania . North America is represented by papers engaging with Canada and the US , and Latin America by a focus on Puerto Rico. The South and Southeast Asian contexts are represented by chapters on India and Hong Kong , the Middle East by papers focusing on the context of Israel and Kurdistan , and Oceania by two chapters concerned with Australia itself. The book covers a broad spectrum of linkages between nation/alism, gender, and sexuality. Multiple modalities of nationalism are addressed, ranging from the nationalisms of the “modernizing great powers ”, to extreme and populist nationalism , to anti- and post-colonial nationalisms . A particular strength of this collection lies in the manner in which it engages with the multiple, shifting, and deeply ambivalent articulations that form between these many modalities of nationalism on the one hand and gender and sexuality on the other. The diverse and context-specific positionings of men and women, masculinities and femininities , and hegemonic and non-normative sexualities , vis-à-vis nation/alism, are fully illuminated across the spectrum of case studies comprising this text.

The text productively engages with a vibrant array of contemporary theoretical lenses. Historical and feminist institutionalism , post-colonial theory , critical race approaches , transnational and migration theory , and semiotics contribute to the theoretical breath of the text. The collection also engages critically with some of the key conceptual tools available to an understanding of nationalism’s contemporaneous interactions with gender and sexuality . Muscular nationalism , femonationalism , homonationalism , state-sanctioned homophobia , the gendering and sexualization of Islamophobia , racialization and nativism , and the performativities of gendered national identities provide some of the most important conceptual resources deployed within this volume. Drawing on these and other theoretical and conceptual tools, and across the full spectrum of international case studies, the text engages with some of the most pressing questions associated with nationalism’s dynamic interactions with gender and sexuality. Nationalism’s symbolic deployments of gender and sexuality; men and women’s involvement in, and support for, nationalist movements ; nationalism’s shifting configuration of gender and sexuality rights ; the increasing centrality of questions pertaining to the presence of Islam and Muslims in Muslim-minority nations ; the role played by international mobilities in supporting and challenging the gendered and sexualized borders so constitutive of contemporary nationalisms all feature prominently within this volume. In this way, Gendering Nationalism offers an empirically rich, theoretically informed, and sustained engagement with the complex, shifting, and “productive” intersections of nation/alism, gender, and sexuality.

The Composition of the Book

Part I of the book focuses on the ways in which sexuality becomes variably deployed in the formulation of gendered nationalisms. Nick Skilton discusses mining and masculinity in the context of Australia . His historical account explores the importance of working-class masculinities in relation to the development of the Australian national imaginary ; mining , he argues, is an example par excellence of an industry whose lineage has served to underpin contemporary understandings of the nation . Working-class miners were able to exploit the raw materials of the Australian land to claim both economic status and political enfranchisement . By asserting their rights in the face of opposition from the landowning middle class , and celebrating the grit and hard work associated with their profession, Skilton argues that mining came to occupy an important place in Australia’s history, and continues to this day to be celebrated as a unique cultural, political, and financial institution.

Sikata Banerjee offers an important reading of masculinity within the Hindu Indian state. Using the 2005 film Mangal Pandey: The Rising as a way to explore popular understandings of masculinity in relation to the Hindu nation-state, she introduces the concept of “muscular nationalism ” to develop her argument, which centers on the ascendancy of a particular hegemonic mode of masculinity that has accompanied the rise of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) . Her analysis of the film offers insights into the ways in which the male body becomes an important signifier in media representations of India, and signals a move away from colonial and post-colonial cultural artifacts to new modalities that can be seen with the rise of the Indian middle class , and India’s emergence as a force in global geopolitics.

Emil Edenborg provides a compelling account of LGBT rights in Russia and Chechnya , arguing that nationalist discourses that champion “traditional values” have been mobilized as a means to maintaining the hegemonic Russian nation-state . Edenborg documents the rise of state-sponsored violence , directed particularly at gay men living in the Chechen region , and suggests the conservative religiosity of the Muslim majority in that region are often seen as motivating these attacks. He argues that these vicious assaults have more to do with homophobic Russian sentiments, initiated and extended by Vladimir Putin’s regime. This chapter offers a persuasive analysis of the role of the Russian media , exploring its framing of an anti-gay agenda, arguing that this agenda serves to reinforce cultural boundaries that mark out the geopolitical distance and differences between Russia and the West.

In his chapter on gay men’s use of public parks in Tel Aviv , Yoav Kanyas charts important moments in Israel’s nation-building process. Like the chapter from Banerjee, this chapter also explores the importance of a particular type of masculinity to the post-colonial process —Israel’s image as a nation-state relies on heteronormative ideas about the place of the family. Masculinities are constructed around very particular ideas that allow Israel to see itself as dominant, partly through the role that such renderings of masculinity play in distancing past accounts of the Jewish community as weak and in exile , and partly through strengthening their martial stand against the perceived threats from their Arab (and particularly Palestinian ) neighbors. This chapter provides archival material that makes clear how gay men were able to fight for rights in the face of political and religious conservatism tied to nationalist ideas about “appropriate” forms of masculinity in Israel.

Bronwyn Winter’s chapter offers an insightful exploration of the nature, meaning, and implications of contemporary liberal democratic nations’ inclusion of “rainbow families ” via the legalization of same-sex marriage . Winter skillfully elucidates the ambivalences and precarities associated with such inclusion , highlighting how what may be seen by some as a game-changing modernization of the family as a gender-neutral structure may in fact constitute a mode of homonormativity that further consolidates the exclusive institutional boundaries of the martial family at the very point of gay and lesbian inclusion . Such national homoprotectionism readily serves the twin purpose of rendering the non-West Rest (in particular Muslims ) as antithetical to such necessary, diversity-driven, modernization, and also disguises the partialities of the West’s own commitments to inclusion. Winter calls for further research to explore what the legalization of gay marriage actually means, both on the ground and on the inside, but also on how such families are incorporated into national socio-economic organization and symbolism, and to what effect.

With examples drawn from across four continents, Part II of the book examines the complex, yet pivotal, realities (certainly for a text such as this) of women as supporters of nationalist movements . Margaret Power’s chapter invites us to question the masculinism inhering not only within popular-political accounts of the nature and logic of nationalism but also within the multitudinous academic renditions that effectively collude in giving authorial primacy to men’s accounts of national struggle . Asserting the political and methodological standpoint of women’s own experiences of active engagement in the nationalist project, Power raises important questions about how we might re-consider, and significantly complicate, our understanding of women’s actual and potential relationships to nationalism. She also brings to the fore our need to reflect upon what the implications might be for women, in their active involvement in nationalist struggle, in their relationship to nationally sanctioned, and conventional, readings of womanhood and femininity.

Bringing directly into question a host of assumptions about the inherent masculinism of nationalism , and of women as nationalistically inactive, or even victims , Dilar Dirik offers a powerful account of the role of Kurdish women’s active liberatory resistance to the feminicidal forces of ISIS in Kobane . In this sense, Dirik illuminates the potential and accomplished links between women’s military self-defense , direct forms of democracy, and liberation. Dirik asserts the possibility of forms of “nationhood ”, in this case the democratic nationhood espoused by Öcolan and the Kurdish Freedom Movement , that takes as its central premise the permanent and substantive liberation of women , supported by an autonomous women’s movement . In this context, the ideology and practice of democratic nation ensures grassroots self-determining structures for women to define and enact their self-defined political priorities. Democratic nation provided a context in which patriarchy and masculinism could be understood as the antithesis of democratic forms of social coherence and citizenship . While brining to our attention the capacity of liberatory (non-)nationalisms to be movements supportive of gender equality and liberation , Dirik calls for further research to explore how the accomplishments of such exceptional times (in the form of inclusive social cohesion) can be sustained.

In drawing attention to the centrality of Islam and Muslims to the “othering ” practices of contemporary Western nationalisms , Jon Mulholland’s chapter draws on rich qualitative interview data with women supporters of the extreme British Nationalist Party (BNP) to explore how Islam and Muslims are signified and pathologized as a direct threat to gender-related justice and equality in the UK. The chapter illuminates the ways in which women supporters of the BNP utilize gender and sexuality to fix the nature of, and relationship between, four discursively constructed collective subjectivities, and to infuse the respective natures of, and relations between, these subjectivities, as locked into a social drama marked by a gender injustice wrought by the pathology of Muslim patriarchy . In their particular accounts of Muslim men as oppressors , Muslim women and vulnerable non-Muslim women as victims , the BNP as saviors , and liberated non-Muslim women as the saved, Mulholland goes on to demonstrate how resentful invocations of “unfairness ” inform and lend coherence to women BNP supporters’ claims of the wholescale oppression of non-Muslims at the hands of Muslim patriarchy.

Diane Lamoureux analyzes the links between feminism and nationalism in Québec from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1990s that is from the creation of the Front de libération des femmes to the 1995 referendum . She shows that initially, feminism and nationalism seemed united, where Quebec feminists defined themselves as actively involved in the project of Quebec’s national liberation. Subsequently, the voices of ethnic women of long-standing and recent immigration made themselves heard and known to a francophone majority that had tended to ignore their existence. More recently, Aboriginal women have forced a reconfiguration of the nation and have questioned Quebec’s stance toward Aboriginal nations . Lamoureux examines how the neoliberal turn of the nationalist movement , and the social justice turn of the feminist movement, opened up a space that made audible other voices in the feminist movement, and principally those of an immigrant, racialized, or Aboriginal status. She concludes by insisting on the gendered nature of the nation.

Drawing on qualitative interview data with women supporters of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) , a particularly prominent Populist Radical Right Party in Britain , Erin Sanders-McDonagh builds on existing debates about the gendered nature of women’s support for PRR parties by examining expressions of nativism . Sanders-McDonagh explores the ways in which women supporters of UKIP link their support for this political party with nativist ideas ; she argues that for the women in this sample, they clearly see Islam and Muslims (as a “non-indigenous ” presence in the UK ) as a threat to native culture and lives. Understanding UKIP as one example of a broader resurgence of Populist Radical Right (PRR) parties throughout Europe , Sanders-McDonagh illuminates the ways in which women supporters of UKIP construct representations of the “native” women in the UK as liberated vis-à-vis Muslim women, who, by being victims to Islamic patriarchal norms , are a threat to “British values ”. This process of othering becomes key to the formulation of patriotic renditions of the UK as characterized by an accomplished condition of gender equality. This chapter resonates with the chapter from Mulholland , which explores women in the far-right and their relationship to Muslim Others.

Part III of the book explores the nature and roles of migration -related border crossings , specifically in respect of how these crossings become signaled in gendered and sexualized terms. Borders function as powerful markers, or containers, of nationness , and by gendering and sexing the salience of border crossings, particular expressions of nationness become enabled, just as they become threatened. Paola Bonizzoni’s chapter critically reviews a range of themes arising from different streams of literature engaging with nation-states’ efforts to actively reproduce their national identities through the regulation of intimate cross-border lives of their aspiring citizens and residents . Family migration management embodies the public-political tensions associated with culturally problematized immigrant social reproduction : “excessive ” fertilities , “backward marriages ” and gender relationships , low-quality human capital , and welfare dependency . The chapter explores how different aspects of social reproduction—love and marriage, parenthood , fertility and childbearing , care and dependency among adult relatives—are implicated in issues of migration control , showing how matters of legitimacy and veracity have triggered an emerging set of controls centered on the intimate and bodily life of citizens. Bonizzoni concludes that the realm of the intimate delineates a porous zone between insiders and outsiders . Defining the family proves critical for understanding what immigration means for the nation , and she calls for a deeper exploration of the nexus between the governance of national reproduction, citizenship , and mobility.

By focusing on the gendered dimensions of anti-immigration ideology , policy, and politics in the case of the Lega Nord (Lega Nord, hereafter LN ), Farris’ and Scrinzi’s chapter aims to address the gaps in the scholarly literature relating to how gender impacts on activism in Populist Radical Right (PRR) Parties , particularly in respect of the LN in Italy. They draw on the empirical findings of two research projects to analyze the instrumental mobilization of women’s rights by the LN to stigmatize migrant, and particularly, Muslim communities . By combining ethnographic and documentary data, Farris and Scrinzi shed light on what they call the “sexualization of racism ” (Farris 2017) and the “racialization of sexism ” (Scrinzi 2014a, b) in the LN discourse. These concepts refer to the application of a sexualized double standard to migrant men and women, where the former are treated as “oppressors ” and the latter as “victims ”. The former concept draws our attention to the different racist registers applied to migrant men and women, respectively. The latter refers to the processes through which sexism is treated as a problem affecting only migrant communities within allegedly liberated European societies . In their chapter, Farris and Scrinzi reconstruct both the ways in which the LN has publicly presented the issue of gender equality among migrants and the party’s depictions of migrant women. They then analyze the LN agenda on gender and the family as well as its seemingly “contradictory” policy with regard to female migrants, and conclude by showing how LN activists negotiate the party’s treatment of migrant caregivers.

Bianca Cheregi shifts the focus toward the role of the media—particularly the British and Romanian media —to explore the ways in which the media frame issues associated with Romanian immigrants in Great Britain in the context of the free movement of labor in the EU. Her chapter is structured in three main parts. In the first part, Cheregi comparatively examines how frames of migration are employed in the British and Romanian media. In the second part she analyzes British media stereotypes of Romanian people . In the third part, she explores the visual framing of Romanian migrants in the national press . The results illustrate how the Romanian press reproduce the frames developed and deployed by British journalists , with seven key media frames emerging: the economic, educational, political, social benefits , employment , public security , and EU policy . Of particular importance was the manner in which Romanian migration was visually and discursively constructed through the trope of the Roma , reproducing dominant anti-Roma discourses found in Romanian society more generally.

Nicola Montagna investigates how immigration has become a key topic in right-wing nationalist parties , contributing to the framing of their political agenda and their success. These parties prioritize immigration as a pressing political issue, regarding it as a cause of economic competition and a threat to national identity and security. His chapter, which is based on 36 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with female members and supporters of UKIP, the BNP , and the EDL carried out between September 2013 and December 2014, examines how women on the nationalist right frame migration and construct it as a primary political issue. In particular, Montagna looks at three dimensions: the perception of migration as “mass migration ”, and the associated threat it is deemed to pose to national identity ; the pressure such migration is deemed to have on the welfare system ; and the impact of migrants on the national labor market . These dimensions are examined through the lens of a gendered perspective, as women nationalists signify the implications of mass immigration with particular regard to its constructed impact on women across these three domains.

Anastasia Christou’s chapter offers a welcome, and direct engagement, with the question of transnationalism , and of its uncertain relations with gender and sexuality , via a focus on the diasporic experiences of second-generation Greek migrants . Christou brings into view the emotional and performative aspects of gender and sexuality, understood as social constructions that literally and metaphorically move in the case of diasporic mobilities . Her chapter shows how second-generation Greeks navigate the challenging and at times constraining contours associated with hegemonically configured national renderings of gender and sexuality. The inherent disruptions that come with transnational , translocal mobilities introduce liminality , fragility, and fracture, into the gendered and sexualized lives of diasporic migrants. In turn, these liminal spaces and subjectivities necessitate negotiations of gendered and sexualized identities , but in a place never entirely removed from the overbearing “nationness ” of the national home, and the hegemonic heteronormative and patriarchal norms associated with that home. But such diasporic experiences also promise the possibility of plural, intersected identities that challenge primordial understandings of the national self.

Part IV concludes the book with an exploration of how contemporary nationalisms, in all their profoundly gendered ways, become differentially mediated by institutional structures and forces. Jill Vickers makes a decisive case for placing a comparative approach at the hearts of our endeavors in understanding the complex and shifting relationships between nation and gender . By adopting a triple comparative model (theoretical, historical, and ideological), and deploying a feminist institutionalist framework , Vickers brings to the fore the profoundly context-specific nature of how differential national legacies go on to frame the trajectories and parameters of nation /gender interactions . Through such an approach Vickers is able to demonstrate how diversity in gender/nation relations emerges as the necessary outcome. Considering colonial versus anti-colonial contexts , and comparing stages in the development of the nation -state, Vickers illuminates the variable determinants, natures, and impacts of women’s roles in national projects.

Offering the reader a fruitful companion to Vickers comparative account of nation-gender interactions , and drawing on a firm institutionalist framework , Susan Henders’ chapter offers a detailed and nuanced account of the implications of transition to meso-level autonomy arrangements in the context of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) . Henders goes on to illuminate the uncertainties that may characterize such devolution projects , in particular in respect of the interests of women . Whether women’s rights are enhanced or impeded in such contexts is shown to depend on a host of context-specific structural, institutional, and ideational variables. While Henders insists that democracy is no guarantee of equality for women, the Hong Kong case clearly indicates that non-democracy (in this case characterized by a concentration power in the hands of a state-business elite ), allied to neoliberalism , provides a fertile ground for the advance of a patriarchal nationalist agenda unsupportive of women’s individual and collective struggle for inclusion and participation. Henders calls for more research to explore the conditions in which democratization in such contexts might lead to more woman-friendly outcomes.

An Agenda for Research

On the basis of our reading of existing research, and on the conclusions drawn by our own contributors, we propose some features of a necessarily selective research agenda to address what remain important deficits in the contemporary literature.

An important, yet remarkably under-developed trajectory of research, relates to the systematic comparative analysis of men and women’s respective relationship to the key issues that populate the nationalist agenda , such as migration , Islam , globalization , and national identity . Research has mainly centered either on gender-undifferentiated participation in nationalist and far-right politics , with an implicit focus on male activism (Klandermans and Mayer 2006; Mammone et al. 2012, 2013) or on female participation (see the seminal works by Blee 2003 and more recently Blee 2008). Research explicitly concerned with exploring the similarities and differences in how such issues are thematized by female and male supporters and activists remains surprisingly scarce.

An emergent and increasingly influential trajectory of research and writing has sought to counter enduring assumptions, both of a scholarly and popular nature, that nationalism remains so much a masculinist project that we can afford to render consideration of women’s active engagement in, and support for, nationalism , as something of a sideshow. Seminal theoretical contributions have offered powerful and fruitful (re)framings of our understandings of nation/alism’s relation to gender and sexuality (Puar 2007; Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989, 2005; Yuval-Davis 1997; Dhruvarajan and Vickers 2002). Important contributions have been made to our appreciation of the historically important role played by women in early twentieth-century “great power ” nationalisms (see Vickers, this volume (Chap. 17), Blee 2008; Jeansonne 1997). Relationships between nation , gender , and sexuality have been explored in the post-colonial context (see Vickers, this volume (Chap. 17), Mcclintock 1997). The increasingly significant presence of women as supporters and activists in extreme nationalist movements has also become a focus of influential research (Köttig et al. 2016; Blee 2003). But it stands as testimony to the strengths of such masculinist assumptions , that a further “shout-out” remains so urgently needed for more empirical research that takes as its focus women’s active involvement in, and support for, nationalist movements. Though hardly scientific, a mere cursory search reveals that the internet is currently awash with popular and mainstream accounts of nationalism’s, and in particular extreme nationalism’s, increased effectiveness in capturing the hearts and minds of young women . The Statesman invites us “to talk about the online radicalisation of young, white women” (Tait 2017); The Guardian accounts for the transformation of the Polish Far Right under the heading “‘More girls, fewer skinheads’: Poland’s far right wrestles with changing image” (The Guardian 2017); and Marie Claire (2017) asks of “far-right millennials: what drives young women to extreme politics?”. Never before has the need to understand women’s involvement in, and support for, nationalism been more necessary. Such research, wherever possible, should take as its primary objective, the adoption of methodologies concerned to give voice to the women themselves, as a necessary bulwark against masculinist paradigms that assume men are both the natural objects and speaking subjects of nationalism.

There has been recent, and buoyant, interest in the connections between nationalism and sexuality. Jasbir Puar’s seminar text Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, published in 2007, was one of the first texts that sought to provide a theoretical approach to deconstructing the complicated ways in which some Western nations embraced homosexuality as a way to demonstrate their “tolerance” vis-à-vis the new Muslim threat that emerged post-9/11 . While the LGBT population , and gay men in particular, have long been seen as a threat to hegemonic modes of masculinity, particularly in the case of the US , the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s only served to further disenfranchise an already vilified and vulnerable population. To have the LGBT community championed, less than a decade after members of the US Senate tried to initiate the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, as part of a movement that saw gay marriage as immoral and a stain on the American “Way of Life”, remains a remarkable move. In the wake of 9/11 (and perhaps not coincidentally, with the advent of antiretroviral therapy that meant HIV was no longer a veritable death sentence), there was a notable discursive shift in the direction of inclusion—with many politicians and public figures welcoming the LGBT community in an effort to demonstrate the open and tolerant nature of liberal democracy.

Puar argues persuasively that this move was not based on any real or meaningful concern for LGBT rights but rather served a politically expedient end: to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq . Politicians who had frequently worked against women’s rights in the USA now found themselves needing justification for attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and found fertile ground in the construction of narratives alleging Islamic opposition to “women’s rights” as demonstrative of a “backward” unenlightened civilization . Fekete (2006) provides evidence of a similar trend taking hold across many northern European countries, and suggests that the “war on terror ” focuses specifically on Islam as the enemy par excellence. In order to extend the sense of menace that the uncivilized Muslim Other is constructed as posing, highlighting Europe’s commitment to equality for the LGBT community became a useful way of underpinning a “clash of civilizations ” thesis. While a number of contemporary social science and political studies scholars are beginning to explore these connections (c.f. Gerhards 2010; Akkerman 2015; Mulholland this volume), there is more to be done here. Several of the chapters in this collection make some headway in trying to explore new directions and complications that come with the ways in which LGBT communities are either embraced or disavowed at different times in different geopolitical contexts. Chapters from Edenborg , Kanyas , and Winter in particular explore the ways in which religion in two very different national contexts (respectively, the Russian Federation , Israel , and Australia ) intersects with masculinity and sexuality in quite variable ways, and extends existing scholarship from critical race scholars and feminists on how masculinity and the nation are intertwined (c.f. Nagel 1998), and augments still emergent literature on the complex role of queerness in nationalist politics (c.f. Sharp 2007; Talburt and Matus 2014; Brubaker 2017; Mackie 2017).

Even more recently, we have witnessed what promise to be influential developments in the morphology of nationalism, with the emergence of the so-called Alt-Right. Though it is undoubtedly true that there is much yet to untangle in some of nationalism’s contemporaneous inclusions of non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality , and that this untangling remains as important and productive as it is incomplete, the recent emergence of the Alt-Right movement suggests some influential countering of these now important developments. The Alt-Right, while closely associated with the USA, has extended its influence throughout the world, with groups such as the Australian Nationalist Alternative, the UK-based Hope Not Hate and National Action , the French Bloc Identitaire and Génération Identitaire , and German Identitäre Bewegung . According to Hawley (2017), “the Alt-Right is unlike any racist movement we have ever seen. It is atomized, amorphous, predominantly online, and mostly anonymous” (3). Though fluid and uncertain in its nature, reach, traction, and trajectory, the Alt-Right is most commonly associated with a certain revival of ultra-conservative positions on race purity and relatedly gender and sexual traditionalism , within a broader anti-libertarian and anti-egalitarian frame (Hawley 2017). Though notoriously difficult to pin down, conceptually and empirically, the Alt-Right has been strongly linked to biological racism , anti-Semitism , nativism , and masculinism.

Unlike expressions of nationalism that have strategically sought to include ethnic and sexual minorities , and even to embrace liberal democratic renditions of diversity , as pivotal devices for constructing cleavage vis-à-vis the “Muslim Other ”, the Alt-Right is premised on forms of white supremacism that see practically all forms of non-white, non-gender-normative, and non-heterosexual difference as a threat. Its successful usage of social media has also supported its influence among the young (Hawley 2017). The infancy of the Alt-Right, allied to its remarkable influence, at least on-line, render it an urgent focus for critical research attention. Indications clearly suggest that the Alt-Right may be linked to a rolling back of nationalism’s (circumscribed and strategic) engagement with non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality (via homonationalism ), and the interests of gender and sexual equality more generally, via an insistence on a return to more traditional readings . Kelly (2017) argues that the Alt-Right can be understood as a “new brand of masculinity politics…[and more specifically as]…a digital coalition of identity politics for straight white American men” (68). Kelly (2017) goes on to claim that,

the alt-right’s positions on race and national security are linked to their more implicit anxieties about the evolving nature of American masculinity…It has created an idealised avatar of white masculinity in opposition to what they perceive as the inherent savagery of Islam and the emasculated figure of the Millennial

Tracking the development of Alt-Right nationalisms, in all their gendered and sexualized dynamics and manifestations, presents itself as a pressing need.

Conclusion

The complex, fluid, and increasingly uncertain relations between nationalism, gender, and sexuality require us to adopt a careful, nuanced, and deeply contextual approach to their understanding. Embracing the latest theoretical and conceptual developments, and deploying these in the context of grounded empirical research, offers invaluable opportunities to problematize what have become established as academically hegemonic assumptions about the nature of nationalism’s intersections with gender and sexuality. The chapters in this book offer a diverse but consistently engaged exploration of these intersections, raising important questions, challenging prevailing assumptions, and suggesting fruitful avenues for future investigation.