Messy Europe

Kristín Loftsdóttir is a Professor at the University of Iceland. She directs the research project “Creating Europe Through Racialized Mobilities” Her research interests include crisis, whiteness, postcolonial Europe, gender, mobility and racism. Her publications include Crisis and Coloniality at Europe’s Margins: Creating Exotic Iceland (2019) and the co-edited Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond (2014) with Lars Jensen.

“The book is certainly an original contribution to studies of race and racialization. Through the comprehensive analysis of how crisis is entangled in political discourses, rhetoric, and affective experiences of everyday life authors convincingly illustrate what crisis does to contemporary formations of racialization, nationalisms, and national identities.” • Anthropos“This is a praiseworthy publication. Based on ethnographically rich case studies it provides several snapshots that reach deep down into the heart of the constitution of European societies. They show the diversity and complexity of issues related to identity, social inclusion and exclusion, democratic ideals, the welfare state, mobility and security, cultural fears and certainty, hegemony and legitimacy.” • Anthropological Forum“The book makes a novel contribution to scholarship on post-integration European identity politics and is crucial reading for scholars interested in crisis and crisis narratives, the anthropology of the state, migration and border politics, and everyday racisms.” • Social Anthropology“An impressive study on a very timely topic.” • Jeremy MacClancey, Oxford Brookes University“The contribution to research-based understandings of "crisis talk", "being in a state of crisis", the growing tension between legal and moral obligations, and the intersection of economics and morality is intriguing, critical, urgent, and comes precisely at the right historical conjuncture. The volume is a welcome and thoughtful effort to disentangle what is going on.” • Peter Hervik, Aalborg University

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionKristín Loftsdóttir, Andrea L. Smith, and Brigitte HipflChapter 1. Wise Viking Daughters: Equality and Whiteness in Economic CrisisKristín Loftsdóttir and Helga BjörnsdóttirChapter 2. “Latvians do not understand the Greek people”: Europeanness and Complicit Becoming in the Midst of Financial CrisisDace DzenovskaChapter 3. Fairness and Entitlement in Neoliberal England, 2005-2015Steve GarnerChapter 4. Debating Refugee Deservingness in Post-Celtic Tiger IrelandShay CannedyChapter 5. What is a Life? On Poverty and Race in Humanitarian ItalyAndrea MuehlebachChapter 6. Policing Crisis in Austrian Crime FictionBrigitte HipflChapter 7. Crisis France: Covert Racialization and the Gens du VoyageAndrea L. SmithChapter 8. Navigating the Mediterranean Refugee “Crisis”: Alter-Globalization Activism and the Sediments of History on LampedusaAntonio SorgeEpilogue: Declining EuropeThomas Hylland EriksenIndex