1. British identities and the 2016 European Union referendum: The Greens for a Better Europe and the Labour In for Britain campaigns
- Author
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Cary-Pernon, Niaz
- Subjects
2016 referendum campaigning leaflet ,Brexit ,European Union ,General Medicine ,Green Party ,identity ,Labour Party - Abstract
In the rich and varied literature on the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, the contribution of this paper consists in connecting two categories of campaigners through the concept of national identity. Indeed, this concept sheds light on the study of a multifaceted domestic situation intertwined with collective as well as regional and international questions. Two criteria were applied. The first concerns the status of campaigners: only structures that officially registered with the Electoral Commission were selected. The second selection parameter derived from existing studies. That is why the Labour Party’s and the Green Party’s 2016 European Union campaigns will be explored in a comparative perspective, adopting a comprehensive approach. The main objective is to focus on British identity debates produced in the name of collective actors. Utilizing a constructivist framework, the paper delves into the perceptions of the European Union in the Remain leaflets of the Labour Party and the Green Party. Their leaflets were intended for wide distribution aiming at persuading the electorate about a specific message. As such, their topics had to be easily grasped by a variety of people, also constituting a privileged medium for conveying identity dimensions. Therefore, after establishing the interplay between the territorial strategy and the political identity of these two campaigners in the first part, the construction of interest categories in their leaflets will be studied in order to characterize the partisan factors they expressed. This serves to explore the conception of international relations underlying their argumentation in the third part.
- Published
- 2022
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