Social movements scholarship has long been exploring the dynamics and dialectical relationship of movement-countermovement interactions, where the former engages in challenging the status-quo, while the latter mobilizes in response to the former, in order to preserve the status-quo. However, the complexities of new social movements have showed us that some countermovements might not merely mobilize in order to roll back the successes of a movement, but engage in social movements theorists called “anticipatory countermovement”. In this article I stress that the mass anti-gender campaign meant to change the constitutional definition of the family initiated by the Social Movement Organization (SMO) Coalition for the Family (CpF) in Romania in 2018 is an unique example of anticipatory countermovement. While the campaign might be considered a failure from a realist social movement approach, I engage with a rather constructivist perspective and argue that the Referendum for the redefinition of the “family” was a success since it managed to build ”collective identities”, create palpable local alliances and cross-border relations. Moreover, I argue that it was the anti-gender actors who brought the issue of same-sex marriage to the center of the public agenda, not the LGBT community in Romania. Hence, I explore how an anticipatory countermovement managed to bring to the public agenda an issue that had never been given that much attention before, as well as how the progressive civil society and queer organizations responded, redefining the relationship dynamic of movement-countermovements. In order to do so, I choose a mixed-method research design, which allows me to produce both qualitative and quantitative knowledge about the movement, since I aim to explore three different dimensions of the (anticipatory counter-)movement: the framing, political opportunities, and transnational networking. In this sense, I engage with both explanatory and exploratory methods, namely frame analysis and social network analysis. I argue that the success of the anticipatory countermovement in fundamentally the result of transnational networking, local networking, retrogressive framing, and frame diffusion strategies.

This study examines the role and limitations of the EU in countering anti-gender movements that have taken root across Europe and gained increasing influence in Türkiye. Under the AKP government, Türkiye has become a key case of both authoritarian populism (Aydın-Düzgit, Kutlay & Keyman, 2023) and institutionalized anti-gender politics (Yetiş-Özdüzen, 2024). The increasingly visible anti-gender rhetoric of state elites has expanded the boundaries of anti-gender narratives in the public sphere. Accordingly, this paper conceptualizes anti-gender mobilization as a counter-movement sustained through mutually reinforcing discursive strategies among state elites, conservative NGOs, and religious actors (Paternotte & Kuhar, 2017; Korolczuk & Graff, 2018).

Using a qualitative document and discourse analysis approach, the study examines the EU’s normative and financial instruments, including European Parliament resolutions on Türkiye, European Commission country reports, and programming documents under the IPA framework, alongside debates surrounding the Istanbul Convention, the EU’s commitment to it, and EU-funded monitoring reports in Türkiye.

The findings highlight three main points. First, Türkiye’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention marks a clear process of “de-Europeanization” in gender equality (Aydın-Düzgit & Kaliber, 2016; Bodur Ün & Arıkan, 2022; Kollias & Messis, 2024), while EU institutions frame this withdrawal as both a symptom of democratic backsliding and an indicator of the rising anti-gender wave. Second, although the EU acts not as a “normative gender actor” but rather as a “gendered normative actor” (Chappell & Guerrina, 2020) and is ambitious in discourse more than in practice (Guerrina & Wright, 2016; Haastrup, 2018), its responses offer an important reference for countering anti-gender disinformation. Yet, these responses also trigger perceptions of external interference, reinforcing anti-gender actors’ critiques of Western hegemony (Korolczuk & Graff, 2018; Norocel & Paternotte, 2023). Third, EU-funded programs and civil society support strengthen local advocacy but remain limited by domestic political constraints and restricted civic space.

In conclusion, the study argues that the EU’s engagement in Türkiye is caught between the opportunities of normative power and the challenges posed by de-Europeanization and democratic backsliding. Understanding these limits is essential to developing effective instruments against anti-gender mobilizations without reinforcing the narratives that underpin authoritarian populism.

The UK’s accession to the EEC coincided with significant challenges to gender and sexual norms. Both the EU and the European Court of Human Rights became key drivers of UK anti-discrimination law, particularly in relation to sexual orientation discrimination, sexual and family rights and legal gender recognition. What’s more, the passing of marriage equality in 2013 became entangled with then Conservative prime minister David Cameron’s pledge to call an EU referendum to satisfy party hardliners. This paper presents the final empirical chapter in a book project on Anglo-British national identity and media narratives about LGBTQ rights during EU membership. Drawing on trans- and queer-feminist theories of nationalism, the book argues that LGBTQ rights were intertwined in different ways with media narratives of national identity throughout the UK’s EU membership. Applying feminist narrative analysis to news coverage between 1973 and 2017, this paper presents findings from the liberal and pink press.

Contrary to the idea of the British as ‘reluctant Europeans’, this paper demonstrates that there has been a discourse of European identity within liberal and queer media in the UK. This discourse has sometimes been underpinned by shared histories of the oppression under European totalitarianisms and supported transnational solidarity across the continent. Media stories also revealed a political identity as queer Europeans in which the EU was positioned as a liberal, values-based organisation that would equalise rights for LGBTQ folk across the continent through political integration and the enlargement process. Yet, characterisations of western European countries as the ‘pinnacle’ of progress and the European liberal ideal erase homophobic and racist legacies of European colonialism. Moreover, coverage during the 2010s of anti-LGBTQ politics in Russia, Poland and Hungary was reflective of what Kalmar has referred to as ‘Eastern Europeanism’ in which Central and Eastern Europe is racialised and constructed as ‘backwards’. With the EU seen to be failing in enforcing its ‘liberal values’ in member states rolling back LGBTQ rights, this pro-European narrative ultimately failed to legitimise the EU by 2016. As such, the paper serves as a reminder and a call to action to shape feminist and queer resistance in ways that do not perpetuate the same gendered and racialised ways of thinking upon which our oppression rests. Moreover, it highlights the need to rethink pro-Europeanism in ways that move away from civilisational ideas of ‘liberal values’ and ‘European progressiveness’.

This paper seeks to understand the emotional and sociopolitical consequences of fear and anger as produced, amplified, and circulated through social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. It will look specifically at the context of Moygashel, a working-class Loyalist area in Mid Ulster, Northern Ireland and received a substantial amount of attention during July 2025 due to burning an effigy of migrant workers on top of their 11th of July bonfires, a tradition that has been prominent in the Loyalist communities since the 18th century.

Throughout those summer months, it was interesting to see the use of social media by the Moygashel Bonfire Association to begin creating both fear and anger towards the migrant population within Dungannon. When thinking about social media itself, it is worthwhile considering the power it has over people in not only reflecting emotional state but also actively curating and incentivizing them. Through this, I will consider the politics of emotion in public space, and how that changes when those emotions are published online as well as using both a digital and physical ethnographic approach and content analysis. I hope to identify recurring patterns on the Bonfire Association Facebook page, how it encourages fear and anger, but it is only the group that can provide any solutions for these emotions as well as the performance of gender both virtually and in person.

Perhaps, most importantly, the central argument to this paper is that fear and anger should not be considered isolated emotions, but rather intersection between gender and emotions which shape perceptions of both self and others. Through this ‘othering’ of migrants and asylum seekers, and the normalisation of violence in public space, which is manifested through social media, I seek to understand the ways in which social media creates a springboard for the emotions of fear and anger. Ultimately, I aim to offer an analysis of how digital platforms shape emotions and vice versa whilst also understanding how the absence of political stability from the government encourages this discourse.

In recent years, the literature focusing on gender and politics within the EU has turned its attention to the growing anti-feminist and anti-gender backlash brought about by far-right actors. At the same time, migration governance has seen a progressive politicization and often figures, together with gender-based issues, among the topics antagonized by the far right. This paper brings together these developments and the respective literatures studying them and analyses how they intertwine. It does so by applying the framework of intersectionality of hate (Dupuis-Déri, 2024). The latter is built on the original concept of intersectionality popularized by Kimberlee Crenshaw (2015) but reverses it, becoming a potential tool for understanding the convergence of multiple sources of oppression. The framework is applied in the case of “remigration”, a term originated within the extreme right and now sanitised, institutionalised, and popularised by radical right parties, as the first Remigration Summit held in Milan in May 2025 shows. Remigration describes de facto programs for forced repatriation of migrants within the EU and is described as “essentially a non-violent form of ethnic cleansing” (Davey & Julia Ebner, 2019, p. 6). It was born as a political solution to the fear of a presumed ethnic replacement, spread by the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement, popular among extreme right supporters. According to this theory, the European (white) population is being replaced by non-white people through massive immigration and multicultural initiatives engineered by globalist (Jewish) elites. The Great Replacement positions the white people between two threats: immigration from outside and the white birth rate’s decline from inside due to the spread of feminism and non-heteronormative habits (Wilson, 2022). We expect that remigration-related discourse mirrors this same combination of exclusionary attitudes. Thus, throughout a qualitative analysis of the Remigration Summit social network channels, the paper aims to uncover how different categories of hate intertwine and construct the narratives around this new concept, and particularly its connection to patriarchal and white suprematist perspectives.